He asked, “How’s Tessie?”
“Better,” she told him, leaning against the stair railing. “She’s getting better.”
“What about your folks?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, and the truth was, she did not want to consider the question. Cathy seemed better, but her father was so angry that every time Sara looked at him, she felt like she was choking on guilt.
Footsteps announced the presence of at least two people above them. They both waited as two nurses came down the stairs, neither of them doing a good job of hiding their snickers.
When they had passed, Sara said, “We’re all tired. And scared.”
Jeffrey stared at the front entrance of Grady, which loomed over the parking deck like the BatCave. He said, “This has to be hard for them, being up here.”
She shrugged this off, climbing the last stairs to reach the landing. “How did it go with Brock?”
“Okay, I guess.” His shoulders relaxed more. “Brock is so freaking weird.”
Sara started up the next flight of stairs. “You should meet his brother.”
“Yeah, he told me about him.” He caught up with her on the next landing. “Is Roger still in town?”
“He moved to New York. I think he’s some kind of agent now.”
Jeffrey gave an exaggerated shudder, and she could tell he was making an effort to get past the argument.
“Brock’s not that bad,” Sara told him, feeling the need to take up for the mortician. Dan had been mercilessly teased when they were growing up, something Sara could not abide even as a child. At the clinic she saw two or three kids a month who were not sick so much as tired of the relentless teasing they got at school.
“I’ll be interested to see how the tox screen comes back,” Jeffrey said. “Rosen’s father seems to think he was clean. His mother’s not so sure.”
She raised an eyebrow. Parents tended to be the last to know when their kids were using drugs.
“Yeah,” he said, acknowledging her skepticism. “I’m not sure about Brian Keller.”
“Keller?” Sara asked, crossing yet another landing and heading up another flight of stairs.
“He’s the father. The son took the mother’s last name.”
Sara stopped climbing, more to catch her breath than anything else. “Where the hell did you park?”
“Top floor,” he said. “One more flight.”
Sara grabbed the railing, pulling herself up the stairs. “What’s wrong with the father?”
“There’s something going on with him,” he said. “This morning, he acted like he wanted to talk to me, but his wife came back into the room and he shut up.”
“Are you going to interview him again?”
“Tomorrow,” he said. “Frank’s going to do some digging around.”