Forty minutes, on a hard chair, in a hallway that smelled of floor cleaner and something underneath it that I could not name, watching the second hand of a clock on the wall drag itself around and around.

I almost left, twice.

Both times I told myself I was being absurd, that I was a solitary man with no business walking into a county facility at dawn on the strength of a feeling, that Greg had meant for me to write a check and go home.

And both times, just as I gathered myself to stand, I thought about the number nineteen, and I sat back down.

I did not know yet that I was waiting for my daughter.