Anna shook her head, saying, “Not your fault. I told the sheriff it wouldn’t do much good, but orders are orders.”
The nurse nodded sympathetically, adding, “If it was up to me, I’d ship him back downstate in a minute, what with what he did and all. You’ve read the file, so you know,” the woman went on with a ripple of her shoulders. “I wasn’t born yet, but my mother, she read about it in the papers. Terrible, wasn’t it?”
They were walking down the hall now, already too far away for Alvin Miner’s weak voice to carry through the thick door, but Anna thought she heard it anyway, echoing in her ears as the nurse prattled on about the case Anna was more than familiar with, and what shook Anna the most was the tone of her great-grandfather’s voice.
He wasn’t asking anyone to look after his c
