“B?o’s been hurt!” he shouts. He quickly dials the Goldens’ house and informs Tom, who has just walked in the door. Adrenaline pulses through his veins. “Meet me at the hospital as soon as you can!”
Once B?o reaches the emergency room, the X-rays reveal just how lucky he was that Jack reached him when he did. Had he ingested one more stone, he might have suffocated. The two that he ingested will fortunately pass through his system with the help of some cod liver oil. After she’s been brought to the hospital by Tom, Anh never leaves B?o’s side.
Laid out on the hospital gurney, B?o looks tinier than she remembered him even just a few hours before. A little boy the world has finally given her, and she knows it’s her duty to take care of him, protect him as though he was her own.
But several other figures are also there with her in the hospital waiting room. Tom has quietly relieved Jack, who went home immediately after the doctors said B?o would recover. Dinh and Sister Mary Alice are also lending their support. Grace will arrive a few hours later after she has managed to console Katie and assure her that the school’s grounds crew will wash off the graffiti early the next morning. “It will all fade away,” she tried to comfort her eldest as she took her handkerchief and blotted her daughter’s cheeks. “No one will remember this in a few days, I promise you …”
“A few days?” Katie shakes her head. “I think everyone’s going to be talking about it for years!” She sobs.
“I know it hurts now,” Grace whispers as she brushes the hair out of Katie’s eyes. “And I hate to see you in pain.…” She leans down over the bed and kisses the top of her daughter’s head, inhaling the fragrance of her shampoo, her baby-powder perfume, traces of her daughter she has only smelled this summer at a distance—are so close now it brings tears to her eyes. How wrong she’s been to think her daughter no longer needed her. Her heart swells and breaks at the same time as she struggles to find the right words to assure Katie that this terrible ordeal that feels so humiliating to her now will eventually pass.
“Your grandfather believed one thing, Katie—the best way to vanquish painful memories is to move forward.” She lifts her daughter’s hand from where it rests on the flower quilt and brings her fingers to her lips and kisses them.
“But, Mom, everyone at school will be talking about me.”
Her eyes glance at the plastic clock mounted on the wall, then an old Snoopy doll on a bookshelf, a remnant of Katie’s childhood that Grace is surprised to see Katie has not yet packed away, despite her attempts this summer to reinvent herself.
“Minute by minute, you’ll get past this, until one entire day passes into the next and it’s all been forgotten.”
Katie closes her eyes, exhaustion washing over her. “I think it was Buddy, Mom. And I didn’t say anything bad to him. I only told him he was embarrassing me after he asked me to leave with him in front of all my friends.”
Grace doesn’t answer. She pulls the sheets closer to Katie’s chin. “For tonight, let’s focus on you and B?o. I promise we’ll talk about Buddy soon, but for now, I want you to try to get some sleep.”
That same night, Adele will be awakened by the bright lights of a police car streaming through her bedroom. She will wrap herself in her pink chenille bathrobe, the sash tied tightly around her waist. Her fingers clawing at her heart when the officers inform her they must speak with her son.
CHAPTER 68
SCHOOL BEGAN LIKE ANOTHER CYCLE OF LIFE, A SEASON ALL ITSown. B?o started his first week of school knowing he had at least one friend at Bellegrove Intermediate and another who, although older, gave him a pocket watch after he was released from the hospital. “It was waiting for its new owner,” Jack said as he gifted him the timepiece they’d restored together. Anh started working part time at Kepler’s Market and soon began saving for a down payment to rent a nearby apartment for her and B?o.
One afternoon during those first weeks of autumn, Anh finally did what she had wanted to do since she brought B?o home from the hospital. She wanted to personally thank Jack for how he had the saved the child she now considered her son.
She knew how deeply private he was, that he kept himself away from prying eyes, but she felt compelled to express her thankfulness to him. So, despite her self-consciousness about her English, Anh heard the encouraging words of Dinh in her head, reminding her that she needed to honor Jack in some way for his heroic act.
Anh realized it was still too early in the day for Jack to be working at the store. That he was probably tucked inside his apartment, maybe reading or watching TV. But she hoped that he’d still allow her to say some words of gratitude in person to him, so she walked to the side entrance of the old brick building and looked for the single buzzer for the apartment upstairs. She took her finger and pressed it.
The sound of the buzzer caught Jack off guard. He had been living above the Golden Hours for nearly five years, and he could still count the number of times someone had rang the intercom. Tom had stopped by on a few occasions during his first few weeks there, when Jack hadn’t even unpacked yet, and there were a few visits from a plumber or electrician coming by to make a repair that Jack himself couldn’t fix.
The voice on the other end now surprised him.
“It is me, Anh,” she announced. “I have come to thank you.”
Jack was still in his bedclothes. His hair uncombed. His face unshaven. The only one who had begun his morning ablutions was Hendrix, who had eaten his breakfast and now sat curled next to Jack’s chair calmly licking his front paws.
The apartment reflected Jack’s near-monastic way of life, so there was hardly anything now to clean up. “Just give me a minute,” he spoke into the receiver quickly, reaching for his khakis draped over one of the two chairs by the small card table where he ate. “I’ll let you up in a sec.…”
He jumped up, hurriedly brushed his teeth, and quickly combed his hair to hang over the left side of his face.
After he buzzed Anh in, Jack quickly pulled the duvet over his bed and glanced around the studio apartment. There was little else he could do in such a small amount of time except apologize about the sparseness of his existence.
He opened the door just as she was coming up the second flight of stairs. She carried in front of her a small basket of perfectly ripe apples and pears.
“I wanted to bring you gift.…” She offered him the fruit. “I hope I don’t bother you … coming to your place.”
He felt awkward and humbled by the earnestness of her gesture.
“You saved my boy.” She touched her chest. “I must find right way to thank you.”
“It was just fortunate that I took my walk a little earlier than normal that night,” he said, deflecting her praise. He felt shabby standing in his worn clothes. “I suppose we all just have to be grateful for this guy,” he gestured toward Hendrix, who had happily trotted to the door to greet the unexpected guest. “He’s the one who wanted to head out early.”
