Chapter 24: Come and Get Me

I sent the message to David a little after four in the morning, from the kitchen floor of my apartment.

I had come to pack the last boxes, and I had stayed because the room was empty and I wanted to remember it.

I held the phone in both hands.

The four of them were at the cabin, asleep or pretending to be.

I typed it with my thumbs, fast, before I could be reasonable.

Come and get me.

I'm awake.

My eyes are open.

I sent it, and I sat on the floor with my back against the cabinets, and waited.

I didn't have to wait long.

Headlights swung across the bedroom ceiling a little while later.

I heard the front door.

Then four sets of boots on the stairs, and Bernard's voice saying, in a stage whisper, "Which one's the bathroom?"

"She's in the bathroom," David said. "She said the bathroom."

I opened the door.

They stood in the hall in their coats, with snow in their hair.

Bernard had a quilt over his arm.

Ellis had a thermos.

Garson had the truck keys, and David had nothing in his hands at all.

"You came," I said.

"You asked," David said.

"Ask me the right question."

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then he smiled, the slow, rare one, the one I had first seen through the kitchen doorway on Wednesday morning.

"Zelda," he said. "Say the word and we take you."

"Take me."

"Awake?"

"Awake."

"Eyes open?"

"Every minute of it."

Bernard whooped.

He swept me up into his arms before I finished saying it, quilt and all, and I shrieked and grabbed his collar.

"Put me down!"

"No."

"Bernard!"

"You said take you. This is how it's done."

"You're carrying me down three flights!"

"I carried you down six. This is a promotion."

They walked me out like that, all four of them in a bunch.

Ellis held the doors and Garson turned the light off behind us.

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