Chapter 15: At the Gate

Rhett's POV

I had dropped Effie at school myself that morning.

She had insisted on riding in the truck and holding my cane across her knees.

When Bailey's call came, I was in the farmhouse yard with Edith's gardener, and my left leg had not forgiven me for the night before.

"Bridget has her at the gate," Bailey said. Her voice was flat and fast. "I'm eight minutes away."

"I'm four minutes out," I said.

I did not remember getting into the truck.

Marlow Falls Elementary had a chain link fence and a painted sign with a smiling sun on it.

Six or seven mothers stood along the fence line, pretending to look at their phones.

Bridget stood at the gate in her cream blazer, holding Effie's left hand in her right.

She was smiling at everyone, and she was crying a little, which she did very well.

Effie had Gerald under her arm and her mouth pushed out.

I parked half on the curb and got out.

The leg took my weight, and I did not use the cane.

I walked up the sidewalk slowly, because a man who runs at his sister in front of a school is a man the mothers remember.

"Sarge," Bridget said brightly. "Thank goodness. Tell the teacher I'm taking her to the pediatrician for her cough."

"Effie doesn't have a cough."

"Grandma thinks she does."

"Grandma is at the farmhouse, and she doesn't think anything of the kind."

Her eyes went over my shoulder to the mothers and came back.

"Don't do this here," she said quietly. "Don't you dare do this in front of them."

I knelt down.

That was a mistake, because my thigh pulled, and I felt the stitch there open a little.

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