Chapter 21: The Second Envelope

Mace's POV

I woke to a tube in my side and a nurse telling me not to pull it.

The ceiling was white, and the window was gray with early light.

Somebody was holding my hand.

Mallory sat in the vinyl chair beside the bed with her head against the rail and her boots still on.

She had dried blood under her fingernails.

The sparrow lay in her other fist, and she hadn't let go of it even asleep.

I lay and watched her for a long time.

For three years I had kept a promise I made to her mother in a hospital room down the hall from this one.

Her mother had made me say it twice.

I will look after her, and I won't tell her who her father was until she leaves him on her own.

I had thought I understood what I was promising.

I had not understood that I would be a coward about it, and that the keeping would feel so much like the failing.

She had left him on her own.

She had done it with her bare hands in front of the whole club, and I had stood behind her and watched.

"You're awake," she said, without opening her eyes.

"How long?"

"Eleven hours." She lifted her head. "The doctor said it was a pneumothorax."

"I know. I told you."

"You were insufferable about it."

"I was right."

She laughed, and her face crumpled, and she bent over and pressed her forehead to my knuckles.

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