"You'll have to ask her," Lazaro said. "I think she's going to tell you. I think she's telling a lot of people a lot of things tonight."
When Arliss Duchene came back into the consultation room it was after eight o'clock, and she looked like someone who had been carrying the tote bag up a long hill. She sat down in the armchair across from Emi and set the legal pad on her knee, and it was covered, both sides of four pages, in small slanting handwriting.
"Okay," she said. "Here's where we are, and I'm going to tell you both at once because I think you've earned it. Emiliano, your mom is going to stay here tonight so the doctors can watch her breathing. That's not a punishment, that's medicine. Tomorrow, if she's okay, they'll let her go home. I'm not going to place you in foster care tonight."
The boy's breath went out of him in a sound like a tire going flat.
"But," Arliss said, "and it's a real but, I can't send you home to an empty apartment tonight, and I can't send your mom home tomorrow without a plan. She's agreed to some things. She's going to start outpatient treatment again, not just the Thursday meetings, a counselor too. She's going to get that tooth dealt with, and I happen to know a dentist at the community health center on Lake Street who owes me a favor, so that's going to be this week, not December. And for the first few days she's home, I need another adult who's agreed to be around. Somebody who can check in, morning and night. Somebody you can call. And tonight I need somewhere for you to sleep that's not here, and it has to be with a person I can run a background check on in the next hour."
Emi looked at Lazaro. Lazaro shook his head, slightly.
"Not me," he said, to the boy and to Arliss both. "Felony record. She can't, and she'd be right not to. I'm not offended."
"He's right," Arliss said. "I'm sorry. I'd ask if it were up to me." She turned to the boy. "Your mom says there's nobody. Your old babysitter moved. Is there anyone else, Emi? Anybody at all? A teacher, a friend's parent, somebody from church?"
The boy thought hard. You could see him thinking. His lips moved through a list of names and discarded each one. His eyes filled up.
And Lazaro, sitting there with his leg out straight, thought about the only telephone number in his flip phone besides his sponsor's and his parole officer's, which was no longer his parole officer since his term ended four years ago, but which he had never deleted. The other number was for Suds City Laundromat. He'd put it in years ago in case the drop light ever started a fire.