The Time Keepers

Chapter 67

CHAPTER 67

W ITH B ?O STILL IN HIS ARMS, J ACK REACHES THE PAY PHONE outside the hardware store and immediately calls 911.

“I need an ambulance …” he pleads to the operator.

The boy is gripping his abdomen, twisting in Jack’s arms.

“You’re going to be okay,” Jack whispers over and over again.

The little boy moans, his wet tears penetrate Jack’s shirt. “Help is on the way, little man. Just stay with me and try to breathe!” A part of him is suddenly channeling Doc, using the same words he used to reassure, to calm.

He holds B?o closer and warms him with his body heat. He reaches for the phone to make one more call.

“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.