Chapter 17: Come Back When You Said

Roderick's POV

At four in the morning I stood in Leah's sister's front hall, still in yesterday's tuxedo.

I'd come straight from the ballroom and been too wired to sleep on the couch.

Leah came down the stairs holding the rail.

She'd told me not to come up, so I hadn't.

"Junie's asleep," she said. "She made you something."

She held out a folded piece of paper with the corners taped.

"We told her last night, both of us, like I said we would. She asked if it would hurt. I said a little. She said, 'Then he needs a picture.'"

I unfolded it in the light from the kitchen.

It was a man with a large square head and a heart on the outside of his coat.

He had a plus-sign on one arm and a small round boy on the other, with a whistle.

Underneath, in careful capitals, she had written: DADDY COME BACK WHEN YOU SAID.

I couldn't read it twice.

"Put it in your pocket," Leah said. "She said you'd forget it otherwise."

"I won't forget it."

"Put it in your pocket anyway."

I put it inside my coat.

She didn't kiss me.

She did put her hand flat on my chest, over the paper, and leave it there for as long as it took me to breathe in once.

In the hospital, they put a needle in each of my arms and sat me in a reclining chair with a blanket and a screen showing a movie I didn't watch.

A machine on my left took my blood out, and a machine on my right gave it back.

A nurse told me it would take several hours.

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