I looked at the clock. Twelve forty.

“Did she check in?”

“That’s the thing. She won’t. I’ve asked her three times. She says she’s not a patient and she’s not here for anybody, and she’s not leaving.”

Denise raised her eyebrows. “She’s very polite about it. She’s read the entire *Highlights.*”

I went out to the front.

She was sitting in the corner chair by the fish tank, in a gray wool coat too good for that room, with a leather folder in her lap and both feet flat on the floor like a woman in a job interview.