Burn Read Free

plate in her hands. “It’s just cake.”
    â€œSlide the cake through the metal detector.”
    She sighed, but set the plate on the conveyer belt next to her shoulder bag. The regular security guard wouldn’t have made her do this. Veronica knew her – she would have gazed up just long enough from her knitting project to smile and wave Lona through.
    When this new guy handed back her plate, the frosting had a thumb print in the middle, the clingy plastic wrap dipped down into the hole like a moon crater. “We just have to check,” he said defensively. “People could hide keys or knives in there.”
    She made her way back to the residential wing. It was craft hour; some patients were painting watercolors in the common area. Mrs. O’Hare’s Monet was beautiful. She was a retired art teacher. It must be sad for her husband, who Lona saw visiting sometimes. Mrs. O’Hare remembered everything about how to hold a paintbrush, but had no idea who he was.
    Before Lona could open the door to the intensive care wing, it flew open and a bosom-heavy nurse smashed into her, trilling a theatrical scream.
    â€œChrist, Lona.” Rowena was her favorite nurse on the ward. A retired opera singer who still behaved like she was on stage. “Oooh, what’s that? Someone having a birthday?”
    â€œI did,” she admitted. “Yesterday.”
    â€œHappy Birthday! Party?”
    â€œA little one.”
    â€œAm I going to be disappointed when I ask if that cake is for me?”
    â€œI’m sorry. I should have brought more.” She’d planned to. But when she got up this morning Gamb was eating it with a fork, digging out the frosting flowers without even having the decency to look guilty. Lona salvaged the only intact piece she could.
    â€œOh, my butt doesn’t need it anyway.” Rowena absentmindedly ran a hand over the thick padding of her hips. “He’ll be excited to have the cake. And the company. Nobody else ever comes to visit him.” She checked her watch. “You all should stop by the common room later. After crafts we’re showing a movie.”
    Lona nodded, but she doubted she would come to the common room. The idea of lingering nauseated her. She made these visits in secret. Fenn wouldn’t understand why she came here; she could barely understand. She hated herself every time she walked through the door.
    His hair had gone white, the fast-forward aging that happens sometimes with trauma victims. Not salt and pepper but salt and nutmeg, with flecks of his original warm brown. Today he wore a fleece tracksuit that zipped up the front – he was allowed to have zippers but not buttons, which could be removed and swallowed – and a pair of white Velcro shoes on his feet. He was not allowed to have lace-up shoes.
    â€œHi, Warren.”
    He looked up from the picture book on his lap. She knew the title without having to see the front; it was a favorite.
Dilbert Ducky’s Big Adventure
. Sometimes he pressed the book into Lona’s hands, asking her to read it to him, but not today. Today his eyes lit up when he saw the cake in Lona’s hands.
    â€œCookie!”
    â€œClose. It’s cake. It’s birthday cake, Warren. Yesterday was my birthday.” She crumpled the plastic wrap into a waste can and searched for a plastic spoon in the drawer where he sometimes collected them. He wasn’t allowed forks. “Do you want to feed yourself?”
    He opened his mouth like a baby bird. She spooned a small bite in, using the hard edge of the utensil to scrape a smear from the corner of his lip.
    Why was she here?
    Six months ago, she couldn’t have imagined this. Six months ago, Warren was just the Architect, the man who designed the Julian Path as a monument to his dead son. He was also Genevieve’s father. The Architect responded to the trauma of her death by erasing all of his memories with an