Corbin.

Not to sell what happens in his room.”

Her smile fell off all at once.

“You’re a caregiver who arrived here five minutes ago,” she said, cold now.

“Don’t mistake your little duties for influence.”

“It’s precisely because it’s my job,” I said, “that I know where the edges of it are.”

She left.

That afternoon I told Garrett exactly what had happened, in full, and for the first time since I’d arrived I watched real distress move across his face — not surprise, which would have been better, but the tired grief of a man having something confirmed that he’d been praying he was wrong about.