Chapter 48: A Room for February

Reina Morales's sister set a glass of tap water on the restitution agreement, dead center, and sat down behind it. "We sign after you do," she said. "If that moves before you finish, we take our names back." Su looked at the glass. It was a diner tumbler, thick at the base, and the water in it stood level and ordinary under the heater's orange light. The blue key coil hung twice around the woman's wrist. "The fund needs every name," Victor said, very quietly, from her left. "I know what it needs," the sister said. The rear clinic held eleven people and two heaters, and the January cold beat both. Su sat because standing took a balance she no longer had. Her right arm lay under a charcoal wrap. The hand had not come back. Her left hand rested beside the glass, and she kept it flat on the…