Chapter Twenty-Five

Mom. I’ve got to get to Mom. Tell her to hang on. Make sure she’s alive. I roll to my side and try to push myself to my hands and knees, but my head is throbbing.

Gunshots crack and pop. Voices call orders over my head. Boots pound past me. Officer Rodriguez hovers by my face. “You crazy girl. Why did you do this by yourself? Why didn’t you call me last night?”

My voice doesn’t work. My throat is so dry it takes all my effort to speak. “You made it,” I whisper.

“I got your message. We were already on the way when your sister called.”

“Meg?” The word is barely louder than my breath.

“In my car with your boyfriend. Worried as hell, but okay.”

I try to stand, but my head pounds. Officer Rodriguez presses me back against the pavement until I am flat on my back. “Stay down.”

“The mechanic?”

“We’ll find him.” Officer Rodriguez squeezes my shoulder.

“Mom.” I reach for his arm. “Get Mom.” My voice wobbles and my vision swims. “She’s in that room. That room over the office.”

His hand stays firm against my shoulder. “We’re on it, Mattie. Just stay down.”

“Go now.” Tears leak down my cheeks. “Please?” I grip the fabric of his shirtsleeve. “Please?”

“Stay flat. Promise?”

His request feels cruel, like acid burning my throat. I ache to run back to the garage, fly up the stairs, and wrap my arms around Mom. I need to know she’s like me: scared, traumatized, but alive. I loosen my grip and let that be my answer.

Officer Rodriguez keeps pressure on my shoulder and waves over another officer. I try to follow everything that’s happening, but my eyelids slowly slide shut. I work at prying them open, but give up and listen to the activity surging over me. Rodriguez’s heavy hand leaves and a lighter one takes its place.

Is it relief that’s making me so weak and drowsy? Meg is safe with Jack in the back of a squad car and the police will get Mom.

“Blink if you can hear me.”

My eyes fly open. The face of a young woman hovers over me. Was I sleeping? How long? Where is Mom? Where is Meg?

A light shines in my eyes. “Hmmm,” she says.

I stare into the glare. “Mom?”

“We’re getting her,” the woman says. “I need you to follow the light, okay?”

“I need to get up,” I whisper. “To see her. Please?”

“Not yet, honey. You’ve had a bad crack on the head.”

A male EMT wraps a collar around my neck and puts plastic tubing under my nose. A cool stream of oxygen flows into my lungs. They lift me onto a flat board, strapping down my body and head. The EMTs raise me to a gurney and cover me with a warm blanket. Only then do I tremble from the cold.

Their speed and efficiency confuses me. The gurney starts to move, and I panic. Will they let me see Meg and Mom before whisking me off to a hospital?

“Meg?” My voice barely reaches the EMT at the head of my gurney. “Mom?”

“Mattie!”

I can’t move my head to see her, but the pounding of her tennis shoes tells me she is running. “Meg?” The gurney wobbles and my sister is beside me.

“I was so scared,” she cries. “So scared.”

“Me too.” My words catch in my throat, fighting for space with sobs of relief. “Me too.”

My gurney wobbles again as Meg climbs up its side.

“Hey,” the EMT reaches for Meg. “Get down, kid. You can’t be up there.”

Meg kicks at the guy. “I’m not getting down, and you can’t make me!” She scrambles the last few inches and throws herself beside me.

“Mattie!” Jack appears beside my bed. “Are you okay?”

My eyes and lower arms are the only parts of my body I can move. I grip my sister’s hand. “Thanks, Jack. Thanks for taking care of Meg.”

“My God, Mattie,” he says. “I … I’ll do anything. Anything you need. Just … just let me know.”

I turn my eyes back to the EMTs and look from one to the other. “Don’t separate Meg and me. Do you hear me? Don’t separate us.” My voice sounds raspy and low, not at all normal. “We’re not leaving until we see Mom.”

The woman leans over me. “We’ve got to take you in, Mattie.” She gives me a sad smile. “It’s cold out here, and you’ve got a bad concussion.”

“I’ll scream. Fight.” I force my voice to be strong.

Meg twists around and yells, “And I’ll kick and bite and punch and you will be really, really sorry you didn’t let us see Mommy.”

I am tired and weak, but I piece together every bit of strength I have to prepare myself for battle. The EMTs back away, and Meg snuggles next to me. My body is rigid. Tense from worry. Are they getting a needle full of drugs ready to shoot into my arm? Will I be asleep in minutes? Meg could be put in foster care without me there to protect her.

The EMT returns, but he has a sideways grin and an arm full of blankets. “You win, girls.” He spreads warm layers over us and tucks them in tight. “You’ve been through enough without fighting us too.” He tops off our mound of covers with a foil blanket.

Tears slide down my cheeks and soak into the padding around my head. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.” The EMTs stay close, but they let us lie in our cocoon—warm and safe and together.

Jack’s fingers brush across my cheek. “I’m right here, Mattie. Right beside you if you need me.”

“I owe you, Jack.” I press my lips together to keep from breaking into sobs.

Meg tightens her grip on me and whispers, “You’ll be okay, Mattie, and so will Mommy.” Her little hand pats my shoulder. “We’ll get a house and we’ll start over. Just the three of us. And we’ll be so happy because we will be together and never be apart again. Forever and ever and ever.”

Meg’s words comfort me, like she’s the sixteen-year-old and I’m six. They are a little girl’s words, but her thoughts are my thoughts and my dreams. And even if Meg and I end up in foster care, I’ll fight to keep us together so that I never have to leave her alone again.

Activity swirls around us. Cops come and go. EMTs rush past carrying equipment. I grip Meg’s hand so tight I’m afraid of hurting her.

Finding Mom wasn’t supposed to be like this. When I thought she was in Darren’s apartment, I pictured her bound and gagged like in one of those old black-and-white movies. Alert. Whole. Relieved to see us and scared, but not really harmed. I’d untie Mom and we’d hug and cry and carry on about how scared we were. Meg and Mom and I would be together, distressed by what we’d been through, but whole and happy.

How could I have been such a child? So naive. So full of storybook endings that I shut out the ugly truth of the real world. The mechanic was cold and inhuman enough to sell people to the highest bidder. How can a person lack those basic bits of compassion that even animals feel for each other?

Meg squirms around until she can look me in the face. “Why don’t the police people and the ambulance people bring Mommy? Why are they so slow?”

Her face wrinkles with worry, making me want to paint over the ugly truth of Mom’s ordeal. But Meg isn’t that same baby girl she was a week ago. “She’s hurt, Meg.” I swallow the lump rising in my throat. “Probably pretty bad.”

Tears turn Meg’s eyes into watery pools. “But we’ve got each other,” I say, “and if Mom comes back, we’ll help her get better. Okay?”

Meg’s lips quiver, and she lies next to me, her small body shaking. I hold her hand and whisper words like “It’s okay” and “We’re together” over and over.

I breathe in the warmth of my little sister and replay memories of Mom in my head. Like how she smiles when she sees us come in the door and laughs at Meg’s knock-knock jokes, even when they don’t make any sense. How she keeps the apartment clean, cooks our meals, and scrubs our clothes. How she loves us no matter how snotty we get.

Mom’s life would’ve been so much easier if she’d given me away when I was born. Instead, she raised me with love and kindness. Something the mechanic knows nothing about.

Officer Rodriguez walks to our gurney. His face softens, and a hint of a smile flips up one side of his mouth. Meg pops up, ripping open our cozy little cocoon. My heart soars.

“She’s alive.” He glances between Meg and me. “She’s pretty beat up and not totally conscious, but she’s one tough lady. Just like her daughters.”

So many tears stream down my face that I can barely see through them. Meg claps her hands and squeals.

Jack’s hand squeezes my shoulder. “That’s great, Mattie.”

“We want to see her,” I say. “We have to.”

“It’d be better if you waited.” His brown eyes zero in on me. They are soft and kind, but they tell me that Mom is hurt more than he wants to say.

“We have to see her,” I repeat.

Officer Rodriguez studies me before turning to Meg. “You stay here until we bring your mom over, got it?”

Meg bounces, rocking my gurney with her excitement. “Got it.”

Officer Rodriguez moves away, and the garage grows quiet and still. The EMTs beside me turn to watch. I can’t see what is happening, so I picture Mom being brought from that ugly prison of a room. I see her lying on a board like mine, suffering and in pain, but living and breathing, with her heart pumping strong and true. I listen to directions bouncing back and forth between the EMTs.

“Easy now.”

“I got her.”

“Slow and steady.”

“Tell me what’s happening, Meg.” I squeeze her hand. “I can’t see, so tell me everything.”

“Mommy’s all strapped down like you, with one ambulance guy on each end of the board. It’s really narrow stairs so they’ve got to be really, really careful.” Meg stops to take a breath. “And now they are putting her on a wheely bed like yours and tying her down like you, and—”

Meg scrambles from my bed and is gone.

“Meg?” I stare at the darkness over my head, feeling more lost and alone than ever. I can’t see Mom or hold her, brush her long hair away from her face. I can’t do any of the sweet, comforting things she always does for me.

Sobs surge through my body. I fight the straps holding me. “Mom!” I scream. “Mom!”

Jack’s hand grips my shoulder and his face hovers over me. “Hold still, Mattie. She’s coming.”

I force myself to relax. To breathe. I listen to the brush of feet on concrete and the soft turning of wheels. I feel the movement of people. Excitement surges through me. “Mom?”

Meg grabs my hand. “Mommy’s right here. Right beside us.”