Chapter 10
Maria
When the authorities came to speak to Maria, they didn’t find her. She and her parents had cared for Manuel at home for a long time. Keeping a catatonic at home and out of a center was illegal. Now she did the same for Todd.
There was a false back to the closet, a great hiding spot, and a catatonic person was a perfect hider. They stayed where you put them, completely still for an indefinite amount of time. She was sure there were limits to how long they could stand motionless, but she’d never had any cause to test those limits. The occasional cough or sneeze was an issue, but her and her mother’s fastidious house cleaning made that a much less common occurrence then one might suspect from someone hiding in a closet behind a rack of winter coats.
The first time they kn
