“It might take ten, fifteen minutes, so use the washroom, freshen up.” She gave me a once-over. “Put on more lipstick. And pull the sweater down.”

“If I pull it down anymore, I’ll fall out.”

“All the better.”

“So what’s my story?” I said as I pulled open the front door. “Your niece? Nurse? Tax accountant?”

“For occupation, we’ll stick with the truth.”

I stopped, the door half open. “Seriously? Dressed like this?”

“He’ll love it.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

FIFTEEN

I waited in the atrium. The nurse had said there was a sitting room, but I preferred to stick close to the door, where escape was within sight. The smell is what did it to me, that unforgettable mix of disinfectant, overcooked vegetables and mortality that hits you in the gut and screams “run, while you still can!”

The last time I’d set foot in one of death’s holding pens—sorry, “retirement homes”—I’d been thirteen, visiting my great-aunt Anna. The same Aunt Anna who’d sworn she’d die if her kids ever put her in a home. She didn’t belong in a retirement home. First, she’d never retired, having run a cake-decorating business right up to the minute her kids stuck the For Sale sign on her front lawn. Second, though she was ninety-one, her brain was as sharp as ever, which was part of the problem. With her body wasting, she needed live-in help and she could be difficult. When the third nurse quit, Aunt Anna’s children gave up and put her in a home. Two weeks later, the old woman’s prediction came true. She died. There’s a moral in there somewhere. I think it’s “don’t have kids.”

Evelyn came to collect me about ten minutes later.

“Now, he knows what you are,” she whispered as she steered me down the main hall. “But I didn’t give a name. Don’t use Dee. That’ll be your official name and we don’t want him knowing that.” She stopped outside a room and grasped the handle. “We could go with—”

“I’ve got one,” I said and pushed open the door.

The door opened into the living room area of a hotel size suite. A couch, a chair, a coffee table and art prints on the wall, all very Holiday Inn, reasonably new, but definitely bargain-basement quality. A decent enough place to spend the night…but the rest of your life? I fought back a shiver.