Chapter 3 - The road Grace walked
Officer Brooks arrived at 2:58 p.m.
He was a large man with a voice so gentle around Grace that she stopped trembling whenever he spoke.
He knelt rather than standing over her.
“Can you help me find your house?”
Grace nodded.
“There’s trees.”
Brooks smiled softly.
“We have lots of those.”
For the first time, Grace almost smiled too.
“There’s a blue mailbox.”
“Good. What else?”
“It leans sideways.”
She remembered part of a road name.
A bridge.
An abandoned gas station.
A church with a white roof.
Fragments of a seven-year-old’s world.
Dispatch began assembling them.
Meanwhile, nurses cleaned Grace’s feet.
She cried when antiseptic touched the deepest cuts but never asked them to stop.
Sarah examined her hands.
“How did these get so bad?”
Grace looked at the wheelbarrow.
“The handles hurt.”
“How far did you push it?”
“I don’t know.”
Brooks eventually estimated several miles.
Possibly more.
Then Grace grabbed Sarah’s sleeve.
“Are Noah and Emma dead?”
The room seemed to shrink.
Sarah held her hand.
“They’re very sick.”
“Are they going to wake up?”
“The doctors are doing everything they can.”
Grace lowered her head.
“I should’ve left sooner.”
“No.”
Sarah became unusually firm.
“Listen to me, Grace. None of this is your fault.”
“But Mommy told me—”
“You are seven.”
Grace stared at her.
“You did something most adults couldn’t have done.”
Behind the neonatal doors, an alarm sounded.
Grace jumped.
“That’s Emma.”
We had no idea how she knew.
But she was right.
Dr. Miller appeared moments later.
“Both babies have pulses.”
Sarah exhaled.
“But they’re critical.”
Grace understood only one part.
“They’re alive?”
“Yes.”
Her entire body collapsed against Sarah.
For the first time since entering the hospital, Grace allowed someone else to carry her.
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But miles away, Officers Hayes and Brooks’s partner had found the crooked blue mailbox.
And the front door of Grace’s house was already open.
