“Why would he do that?” I asked.
“I do not know,” the boy said, taking a step backward into the dark. “But he told me to tell him if you seemed confused when you got out of the car. He wanted me to write down the times.”
The cold plastic of my car key biting into my palm as I watched the boy slip into the shadows.
I stood by the passenger side of my Buick for a long minute, letting the exhaust fumes clear. The drive back from the Shell station took twelve minutes, every mile spent rehearsing how to breathe.
David was sitting in his green leather armchair when I walked into the living room. A medical journal lay open on his lap, and his spectacles sat low on the bridge of his nose.
“You were gone a while,” he said, not looking up from the page.
“There was a line at the pump,” I said.
I hung my woolen coat in the hallway closet, my fingers brushing against his heavy dark winter coat. A small piece of stiff paper nudged against my knuckle from his breast pocket.
I pulled it out. It was a gloss black business card with gold lettering that caught the light of the hallway bulb.
Arthur Sterling, Attorney at Law, the card read. Beneath the name, in smaller print, it said Guardianship and Estate Planning.
I kept my fingers flat against the card, feeling the raised ink. I walked into the kitchen and set my purse on the small wooden table.
“David,” I called out, keeping my voice level. “Whose card is this in your winter coat?”
He came to the doorway, holding his spectacles in one hand. He looked at the black card in my palm, then checked his gold watch.
“It is just a professional contact for one of my geriatric patients,” he said.
His voice had that slow, comforting weight he used when a patient asked about a difficult diagnosis. He walked over and gently took the card from my hand.
“Mrs. Gable’s daughter was asking about local options for her mother’s care last week,” he added.
“I did not know you kept legal contacts in your coat,” I said, my thumb touching my silver wedding ring.
