My name is Caleb “Grinder” Hayes, and I have ridden beside Rook for twenty-seven years. I have watched him pull motorcycles from ditches, sit through funerals without moving, and rebuild an engine after a shop fire warped half the tools around it.
I had never seen him afraid of a six-year-old girl.
Lucy looked impossibly small beneath the hospital blanket. A clear tube entered her nose. Adhesive sensors dotted her chest, and a brace kept one hand from curling inward. Machines measured rhythms most of us did not understand.
Eli understood more than any child should.
He washed his hands at the sink, checked the date on the whiteboard, moved a chair beside his sister, and positioned Rosie under her left arm without disturbing the lines. Then he opened his library book.
“Chapter Twelve,” he said. “Yesterday Mary found the key.”
He read slowly. When he encountered a difficult word, he sounded it out rather than skipping it. Lucy did not move.
