Chapter 21: Terms for Rodney

Rodney woke up on Monday afternoon with a tube in his chest and Mara in the chair by his bed.

He looked at the ceiling, then at her, and his eyes filled.

"Don't," she said. "I'm not here to cry with you."

"Okay."

"The doctor says you keep the lung. You're going to be in this bed for two weeks, and then you're going to do what I say."

His mouth twitched.

"You sound like Dad."

"Don't ever say that again."

"Okay."

She took a folded paper from her pocket.

She read it flat, because her voice would not hold if she looked at him.

"One. You give the deputy a full statement about the gas station and about every man who was there."

"Yes."

"Two. You leave Blackwater Ridge the day you can walk, and you stay gone a year. You don't call. You don't send money."

She did not look up.

"You don't show up outside my glass at five in the morning."

His face crumpled.

"Mara."

"Three. After the year, you write me a letter, on paper, and I decide whether to open it."

He pressed the heel of his hand against his mouth.

"That's fair," he said, through his fingers. "That's more than fair."

"Four." Her voice cracked. "You eat something. You've been a skeleton since Nebraska."

He laughed and cried at once, and she let him, and after a while she took his other hand.

On Tuesday, the town reopened her clinic for her.

The woman in heels came with a bucket and her mild husband.

The widower arrived with the golden retriever puppy and a thermos of peach juice.

A teenager brought in her rabbit, just to have a reason to stand in the room.

By noon, the last scraps of poster tape were gone from the glass.

The blue vase with its gold seams stood on the front sill, next to the plain white one.

By dusk, everyone had gone home.

Mara locked the front door and found Nash waiting in the supply room.

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