Page 98 of The Saint

She pulled at her hand in mine, but I held firm. Instead, she lifted the other from under Alvarez’s coat and swatted my hand away from her face. “Was feeling fine before you started poking at me,” she grumbled, then dabbed her fingers at the deep purple bruise around her eye, and the blood-encrusted gash across her brow.

“Can you sit up?”

“Now why would I want to do that?” On the other side of Mrs. T, Alvarez chuckled, and it just egged her on. “I’m all nice and warm for the first time all day and you want me to get up? What’s wrong with you?”

Sirens sounded in the distance, and footsteps pounded on the ground not far away. Mrs. T squeezed my hand, her eyes locking on mine. “Thank you, my boy,” she whispered, then reached out to Alvarez. “Thank you both.”

The man eyed her little hand wrapped around his, then looked up. “Anything for a friend.”

“Must be some friend,” she murmured as Jael and a handful of others crested the top of the rock and came our way.

Mrs. T introduced herself to Jael and the others, while the sirens cut out and some paramedics carried a stretcher our way. Penny arrived by car moments later, and she and her grandmother burst into tears. Mrs. T was loaded into the ambulance with Penny by her side, and I promised them I’d meet them at the hospital just as soon as I could. I watched the ambulance drive away, and it felt like it was taking the tension of the past eighteen hours with it as it went.

Jael came up beside me, her hand sliding into mine. I turned to her, pulling her into my arms and hugging her as tight as I could.

“Thank you,” I murmured against her head. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

She looked up at me, her chin resting against my chest. Her head shook slightly. “You’ll never be without me. You know that, right?” She reached up, taking my face between her palms and pressing a quick kiss to my lips. A crooked grin tugged at her mouth. “Someone’s gotta keep you from getting into trouble.”

I kissed her back, letting my cold lips linger on hers. “I wouldn’t want it to be anyone other than you.”

“I love you, Rolly.”

“I love you, too.”

26

ROLLY

While Mrs. T’s hand was warm, it felt fragile beneath my fingertips. I held on to her as hard as I dared, worried she was slipping away and there was nothing I could do to help. She slept peacefully, the thin hospital blankets pulled up under her armpits, her breathing quiet and unlabored. The bandage and bruising on her head and the cast on her left foot were the only signs that anything was wrong at all.

But in my heart, I knew, there was no coming back from this.

Penny had enough trouble getting help for Mrs. T when she was fully mobile. The wandering away from home was made possible only by a lack of supervision. Mrs. T did well when she had someone in the house all day. But without someone there, watching her, reminding her to stay inside, she was bound to escape.

Now, finding someone to care for her while she recovered from the surgery that put pins in her ankle would be nearly impossible with the funds that Penny had.

The scary thing was, she’d never left the house at night before. We could only consider ourselves lucky that the night hadn’t been colder, that the thin layer of snow that now covered ground hadn’t come twenty-four hours earlier. But we were left feeling hopeless as we wondered what had caused the change, what had made her get up in the darkness and walk away.

The uncertainty hung over our heads like a guillotine, ready to crash down.

With the hand not holding hers, I gripped the ballpoint pen bearing the hospital’s logo, sketching clumsily on a pad of paper I’d found shoved in one of the bedside drawers. I wanted to capture Mrs. T’s peacefulness, to commit it to memory and onto paper so it could never be lost. Maybe then, I could hold on to her, too. Keep her safe.

Outside the door, quiet footsteps sounded. I lifted my gaze from my drawing, a smile tilting my lips as Penny and Jael walked into the room, holding paper cups of coffee.

“Hey,” Penny whispered, going to the other side of Mrs. T’s bed. “How’s she doing?”

Swallowing down the lump in my throat, I told her, “Good. She’s been sleeping the whole time.”

“She probably needs it, after everything she’s been through.” Jael slid her hands across my shoulders before she leaned against me and wrapped her arms around my neck. I nudged at her with the side of my face, and she pressed kisses into my skin.

“You two are too cute.” Penny’s nose was scrunched up, and soon her smile lit up the room as she laughed.

“She blushing?”

“She’s blushing,” Penny said as Jael hid her face in the crook of my neck.

“Stop.” It was a quiet murmur. A teenager’s plea, long and drawn out, like we were her parents, dead set on embarrassing her. It only caused Penny to laugh harder. It caused my shoulders to shake. I let go of Mrs. T’s hand and turned to my girl, pulling her into my lap.