Page 117 of Split Decision

A bad feeling.

"How long between when you left her place and the accident?" I ask.

"Twenty minutes, maybe." He turns his head toward me. "She lives in Midtown. I was taking the surface streets."

Twenty minutes. Enough time for a phone call. Enough time for a message to someone who was already positioned.

I don't say this.

I can't say this. Not here, not now, not with two cracked ribs and sutures over his eye, and my mother about to come back through the curtain. I think about what Bill said this morning—if anything physical happens, call me before you call anyone else—and I think about the notebook in my kitchen drawer and the six patterns and Marin's name third from the bottom on a 2011 roster, and I sit in this chair, and I hold all of it.

"I'm glad you're okay," I say again.

He looks at me for a long moment.

"Something's going on," he says. Not a question. "You and Andi. Something's been going on for weeks, and neither of you has said anything."

"Brandon—"

"I'm not asking you to tell me right now." His voice is even. Tired, but even. "I know you have reasons for whatever you're doing. I know you'd tell me if you could." He looks back at the ceiling. "I just want you to know that I'm not as far behind as you think I am."

I look at him.

"I know," I say. And I mean it differently than he knows I mean it.

The curtain opens, and Marin steps through.

She's composed—perfectly, entirely composed—in the specific way of someone who has been managing themselves in a waiting room for forty minutes and has it under control. She crosses to Brandon immediately, her hand going to his, her attention entirely on his face.

"How are you feeling?" she says. Her voice is warm. Concerned. Real.

"Better," he says. He squeezes her hand.

She looks at me. Holds my eyes for exactly the right amount of time—not too long, not too brief. "I'm glad you're here," she says.

"Are you?" I ask.

It comes out wrong. Too flat. She hears it—I see it register in the slight adjustment of her expression, somethingrecalibrated—and then it's gone, replaced by the warmth, and she turns back to Brandon.

I stand up.

"I'm going to call Andi," I say. "I'll be outside."

Brandon nods. My mother comes back in as I leave, and I hold the curtain for her, walk down the ER corridor to the exit doors, stand in the Atlanta afternoon, and call Andi.

She picks up before I've finished exhaling.

"He's okay," I say. "Two cracked ribs. Wrist. Sutures."

"Luke." Her voice is quiet. Precise. "The other driver?"

"Didn't stop." I look at the parking lot. The ordinary afternoon. "He was coming from Marin's."

A silence.

"She was already at the hospital when he arrived," I say. "He didn't call her. She said she had a bad feeling."

The silence on Andi's end has a specific quality. Not shock or surprise—but the opposite. The specific stillness of someone fitting a piece into a space that was already shaped for it.