Page 10 of Top Shelf

“Moreno listens when something is worth hearing.”

She pauses. “Okay, see, that comment actually was supportive.”

“Good.”

Her phone buzzes, and her whole face changes as she looks down at it. “Carina says Moreno has started pacing.”

“Then go.”

“I’m going, I’m going.” She backs up a step, pointing at me with the folder. “I’m still making fun of the Roxette thing next time I see you.”

“I know.”

“And Priscilla… She’s named after…?”

“The queen of the desert.”

Her eyebrows pull together in a way I remember from rehab, usually five seconds before she told me I was compensating with my hip again.

“You are so much weirder than you look,” she says.

“I do not care.”

Heidi grins, but it falters when her phone buzzes again. She swears under her breath, then turns for the doors. But just before she goes in, she pauses and looks back at me one more time.

“Viktor?”

My gaze holds hers.

“Thank you. For the ride. And sorry for teasing Priscilla.”

I shrug. “She will survive.”

Heidi groans, but she’s smiling now too. My own phone vibrates just before she reaches for the entrance, and I pull it from my pocket.

Mamma.

I stare at the name on my screen. In the entryway, Heidi stops with a hand on the door and glances at my phone, then to my face. She does not know who is calling. She does not know why my hand has tightened around the device or why the morning suddenly feels colder than it did five seconds ago.

“You should get that.”

It’s the same voice she’d use in rehab when I had pushed too hard and pretended I had not. It is softer.

With a nod, I answer before the door finishes closing behind her.

“Mamma.”

“Viktor,” my mother replies in Swedish.

Denver slips sideways. The Moreno Clinic remains in front of me, the windows glinting and American traffic humming and Priscilla warm beneath my thighs as I lean back, but my mother’s voice places me elsewhere.

Green fields and lake water. The kitchen in the family home with summer light across the table. My grandfather’s empty chair.

“You heard from Lund,” I say.

“Yes.”

My grip tightens around the phone and my eyes close for a moment. Our family lawyer, Lund, has an office in Eskilstuna in Sweden. He speaks carefully in matters of grief, which makes me dislike him, though the terms of my grandfather’s will are not his fault.