Page 91 of The Forbidden Center

“Would Mormor let us stay with her?”

“She has already offered.”

“You told her?”

“The day it happened.”

Tova studies me.

“You didn’t tell Colt.”

There is no accusation in it. She has put two facts beside each other and noticed the distance between them.

“Maren told him.”

“That’s not the same.”

“No.”

She carries her bowl to the sink.

“You tell me that a lot.”

“What?”

“That the real version matters.”

She rinses the bowl before I can answer and leaves it upside down on the towel, and she is twelve, which is old enough to find hypocrisy and young enough to enjoy the finding.

The lawyer has put a legal pad between us, and my immigration file to her right.

The file is thicker.

This feels unfair.

Her name is Elena Treviño and she wears dark blue glasses and has read every page the clinic copied for me. I know this because six yellow flags rise out of the packet, each one beside a date I had already written into my own list.

She turns the approval notice toward me. “Your employment ended January thirty-first. The regulation gives you up to sixty consecutive days after your job ends. Sixty is the outer limit.”

“Outer limit.”

“Not a promise. I’m not going to call a maximum a guarantee.”

I take out my pen. “When does the count begin?”

“February first. Today is day nine.”

I write it down.

“Fifty-one days.”

“At most.”

“And Tova?”

“Her status is derivative of yours. She’s on the same clock.”

The pen presses through into the paper underneath the number, and I lift it before the point goes through the page.