Twenty-seven.

I bent and pulled the lace on my right boot loose, then drew it tight again.

Higgins watched me do it and didn’t say anything about it.

I read the page to the bottom and turned it over, in case there was more on the back.

“The hospital that first took her would have called the county,” he said.

“We are the county.”

He switched the light box off, and the office went back to being an office, with a coffee ring on the desk and a calendar two months behind.