“Don’t hit me. I’ll be good.”
Those words had come out before I touched him.
No explanation Michael could give me over the phone could erase that reflex.
No family reputation could erase it.
No money could make me forget it.
I had already spent five years living with one signature.
I was not going to spend another night pretending that fear looked like discipline simply because the people involved were powerful enough to rename it.
Then time moved again.
Roughly twenty minutes after the call, headlights swept through the rain beyond the clinic windows.
A black SUV pulled in beside the curbside mailbox and came to a stop.
Noah was still sleeping.
The twelve dollars were still in the grocery bag.
And the person I had called had arrived.