“Well-aged by now,” Amalia added.
Graham tried to take the bottle from Molly but he began to lose his balance and clutched the rock wall instead. “I’ve got it,” Amalia said, and she somehow managed to take the bottle and still hang on to Molly at the same time.
“What’s booze?” Molly asked.
“Stuff Uncle Trevor and I shouldn’t have been drinking when we were kids.” He held on to one of the rocks, hoping his legs could keep him upright another minute or two. “We were being disobedient.”
Molly looked at him sharply, an expression of fake shock on her face. “Bad Daddy,” she said. She reached deeper into the hole and he worried about what else she might find. She pulled out a stack of baseball cards and a cigarette lighter in the shape of a pistol, followed by a length of gold-wrapped condoms. “Candy!” she said. “Can we eat it?”
He laughed and let go of the wall to take them from her. It took him two tries to stuff them into his jeans pocket. “They’re way too old to eat,” he said.
“You boys were rowdy,” Amalia said.
He wondered if the gold-wrapped condoms made Amalia remember being with him.
Molly peered into the hole. “That’s all there is,” she said.
“So, what do you think?” he asked her as Amalia lowered her to the platform. “You want to hide your treasures up here?”
She looked up at the hole in the wall high above her head. “I won’t be able to reach them,” she said.
“In a few years you’ll be able to when you stand on the bed. And for now, Amalia or I—or Mom—can get them for you.”
She opened her bag and looked inside. “Okay.” She still sounded uncertain.
“You don’t have to,” he said.
“I want to.” She reached into the bag and pulled out a shell, which she kissed noisily and then handed to Amalia, who put it into the hole with an amusing sort of reverence. This was going to take awhile, Graham thought, and he climbed carefully off the platform and sat down at the little table.
Five shells, a couple of shark’s teeth, a tiny doll, a glass bird, and many kisses later, Molly’s treasures were in the wall. “I don’t want to put my palm stone in there, though,” she said. “I need to keep it in my pocket.”
“That’s fine,” Graham said as he watched Amalia slip the plaster fieldstone back in place. She looked at her watch as she stepped off the platform. “I’ve got to run,” she said, pushing the neatly made mattress back in place against the wall. She pulled an elastic band from her wrist and used it to tie her hair back. “It’s my afternoon to clean your mother’s house,” she added.
He grimaced. “I hope she left it pristine for you,” he said.
“Her house is always pristine,” Amalia said. “I’m sure she cleans before I get there.”
“Thank you for helping with the springhouse,” he said. “Molly? Can you thank Amalia?”
“Thank you.” Molly raised her arms into the air and Amalia bent over to hug her.
“You’re welcome, baby,” she said. “Have fun on that bike!”
Once Amalia left, Graham looked toward the window she’d been painting. He stood up and walked over to touch the sill. Nearly dry already. He could give the window its final coat. Save Amalia from having to do it tomorrow.
“Can we go home?” Molly flopped down on the bed closest to the door. “I’m hungry.”
It was past lunchtime, but it would take him no time at all to slap the paint on the window frame. The panes were already taped off. Ten minutes, tops.
“I’m going to paint the window,” he said. “I’ll just be a few minutes. You can ride your bike if you want, but remember what I told you about turning onto the path instead of going down the hill.” They would take the eastern side of the loop road home, he thought. Much flatter.
“I remember.” The thought of her bike seemed to energize her and she ran out of the springhouse, leaving the door wide open behind her. He heard the snap of twigs and the rustle of brush as she raced down the path.
He painted the window, ignoring the buzzing in his legs, but by the time he was outside and lowering himself onto the seat of his scooter, he was nearly too exhausted to raise his hands to the handlebars. A nap after lunch, he thought. Definitely.
He was halfway up the path to the road when he heard Molly scream, the sound sending a wave of terror through him. He pressed his hand hard on the throttle. He shouldn’t have left her out there alone. He hoped she’d simply tumbled off the bike as she turned onto the path. Something minor. A skinned knee. But the scream continued and it sounded too far away to be coming from the path. Too far away and too filled with terror, and he knew there was nothing minor about whatever had happened. God, no. He could picture it. She rode too fast, missed the turn to the springhouse path and couldn’t stop as her bike sailed toward the Hill from Hell.
He reached the road and turned left toward the hill, terrified now by a sudden leaden silence. All he could hear was the occasional song of a bird somewhere in the woods and the frantic hum of the scooter. “Molly!” he shouted.
“Daddy!” Her voice echoed through the trees. He rode his scooter down the hill with as much speed as he dared and when he was halfway to the bottom, he could see Molly crumpled on her side in the woods at the base of the hill, half screaming, half whimpering. He welcomed the sound. At least she was alive. He could see exactly what had happened, the scene laid out in front of him like a painting. There was a fallen tree a short distance into the woods. He’d seen that old dead tree a hundred times. Her bike must have hit it and sent her sailing over the handlebars. Please, God, he thought. No broken neck.
He reached the level part of the road and got off his scooter, grabbing his cane. Molly tried to get up but screamed in pain.
“Stay there, Moll,” he called to her. Her screams had stopped, but the whimpering continued. She sounded like an injured puppy. “Don’t try to move.” He picked his way toward her through the brush, his legs slow and uncooperative, his feet getting caught in the vines. He saw the bike on its side, nearly bent in two, and felt bile rise in his throat.
“Daddy,” she moaned.
“I’m almost there, darling,” he said, holding on to every branch he could grab to help him stay upright as he worked his way toward her.
Reaching her, he managed to half sit, half fall onto the earth next to her, not stopping to wonder how he would ever be able to get to his feet again. “Can you roll onto your back?” he asked.
She tried, but she yelped when she put a hand out to turn herself over. He saw her misshapen forearm, the sickening bulge close to her wrist.
“I think you broke your arm,” he said.
“No!” she wailed. “I don’t want a broken arm!”
“Let me help you onto your back.” He helped her as best he could, trying to protect her arm in the process. She lay on her back, her braids snaking through the leaves, and he saw the scrapes down her cheek, blood beading up like tiny red pearls. He hoped those scrapes would not leave scars. Her blue eyes were blurry with tears and he realized that her glasses were missing. He glanced around her at the forest floor, but it was hopeless. Those glasses were gone.
“I need to go home to call an ambulance,” he said.
“No!” she cried again, a fresh fountain of tears spilling down her cheeks. “Don’t leave me here!”
“It’ll only take me a few minutes.” They were no more than a hundred yards from the house, yet he wasn’t sure how he’d be able to get to his feet, much less make it back to the road and his scooter.
“It doesn’t hurt so much now,” she said, her voice catching. “I can come with you.”
“I want you to lie here like this,” he said, reaching out to touch her cheek. “Very still. Just calm and—”
“Don’t go!” There was real fear in her eyes. It was so rare to see her afraid these days and it broke his heart.
“Where’s your palm stone?” he asked.
Her lower
lip trembled. “My pocket,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.
He reached into her pocket and pulled out the stone, then pressed it into the palm of her left hand and she curled her fingers tightly around it. He struggled to lean forward to kiss her forehead. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “I promise.”
“Don’t go,” she whimpered again, but he could tell by the hopeless tone of her voice that she knew he had to.
“Sing something,” he said as he looked around him, wondering how he would get to his feet. “What’s your favorite song these days?”
She sniffled. “The ‘if I had a hammer’ song,” she said.
“Really? Where’d you learn that?”
“Amalia.”
He smoothed her bangs back from her forehead and smiled. “My little pacifist kid,” he said. “I love you.” He reached toward the trunk of a sapling and tugged with an arm that seemed completely devoid of strength. For a frightening moment, he was afraid he would never be able to get up. He and Molly would be stuck there for hours and hours, waiting for someone to spot his scooter on the loop road and think to look in the woods. But he finally managed to get to his feet and work his way slowly, clumsily back to the road, Molly singing about the hammer of justice in a small, tearful voice behind him.
Yes, he would have to call the ambulance.
And then he would have to call Nora.
* * *
Nora actually beat them to the emergency room. Her pharmacy was close to the hospital, plus it took forever for the EMTs to evaluate Molly in the woods before loading her onto a backboard. Graham hated leaving her alone in the ambulance, but he needed his van to be able to transport his scooter to the hospital.
On the phone, Nora had greeted the news with complete silence before kicking into high gear, asking technical questions about Molly’s injury, telling him how to handle the staff in the ER in case he and Molly got there before she did. No one other than Graham would have been able to tell that there were tears behind her words. Nora hid her vulnerability well.
Now, he and Nora sat in the curtained cubicle with Molly as she waited to be discharged from the ER. The head of her bed was raised and her swollen, broken arm was in a splint held close to her chest by a sling. She wouldn’t be able to get a cast until the swelling went down in a couple of days. She was still crying, more from the shock of what had happened than from the pain, Graham thought. She leaned against him where he sat on the edge of her bed. She kept squeezing his wrist with her good hand, as though she was afraid he might disappear. Her need for him could scare him sometimes. Every once in a while, he felt the weakness in his legs begin to creep into his arms and he knew he wouldn’t always be able to hold her like this. He forced the thought from his mind. Right now, he could hold her. Right now needed to be his focus.
Nora had been amazing. She’d worked as a hospital pharmacist when she first got her degree, and she knew how to manage the system. Molly’d been x-rayed, diagnosed, and treated in record time. Between Nora’s efficiency and his calming influence on Molly, they’d practically sailed through the last couple of hours. “You two are quite the team,” one of the nurses had said to them. He’d smiled at his wife. They were a team. They had been from the start.
She hadn’t said a word about the training wheels. Not a word of blame. Nothing.
Now she got to her feet. “I have to go back to work, honey,” she said to Molly. “But I’m going to pick up some ice cream on my way home tonight. What do you think?”
That got a half-smile from Molly, the first he’d seen since that morning in the springhouse. She took her hand from his wrist to rub her nose. “Chocolate?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” Nora said. She kissed Molly on the forehead, then leaned over to whisper in Graham’s ear. “I’m not angry,” she said. “And I love you.”
* * *
He was reading in bed that night when Nora walked into the bedroom carrying something glittery in her hand. It took him a moment to realize what it was. The condoms.
“I found these in your jeans pocket,” she said. “Thought you might want them.” She dropped them onto the sheet above his waist.
He couldn’t begin to read her face. “Um.” He wanted to laugh but thought better of it. He remembered the scent of Amalia’s hair as she stood next to him in the springhouse, and he felt guilty for no good reason. “I can explain,” he said.
Her face suddenly softened and she let out a laugh herself. “Relax,” she said. “I saw the expiration date. Nineteen sixty-nine. Yours and Trevor’s from your misguided youth?”
He breathed a sigh of relief. “Exactly,” he said.
She sat down on the edge of the bed and rested her hand on his arm. “How did it go at the springhouse today?” she asked.
“Great.” He told her about the beds and the sink and the microwave.
“Was Amalia there?” she asked.
“Yes. She was a big help.”
“She took the training wheels off?”
He nodded. “With my permission.”
“Have you told her about Molly’s arm?”
“Not yet.”
“Let her know I don’t blame her, okay?”
“You don’t?” he asked. “Do you blame me?”
“Neither of you,” she said. “I thought about it and it was the right thing to do. Taking the training wheels off.” She sighed. “I can’t wrap Molly up in cotton batting, much as I’d like to.”
“I should have been watching her.”
She nodded. “I wish you had been, but I don’t want to make you feel any shittier than you already do.”
He smoothed a strand of pale hair away from her cheek. “Thank you,” he said. “For everything, Nora. I mean it. Everything.” His voice felt husky. He knew she understood exactly what he meant. He owed her so much. She leaned forward and kissed him.
“You’re welcome,” she said.
* * *
“King me,” Graham said, placing his red checker on Molly’s back line. They were sitting at a small table on the front porch, playing their fourth checkers game of the afternoon.
“You cheated,” Molly said. “You moved your man backwards.”
He laughed. “Did not,” he said. “Just because you’re losing, you don’t get to accuse me of nefarious dealings. So king me.”
She pouted but topped his checker with another. He’d held back to let her win the first three games, but not this time. She needed to learn she couldn’t always be the winner.
A week had passed since the accident. Molly now wore a cast and sling on her right arm and yesterday had been the first day she seemed to have zero pain. Over the last couple of days, relatives had stopped by to fuss over her and autograph the cast. Amalia had drawn a string of kittens on it from one end to the other. Molly’s blue glasses were back on her nose where they belonged. Nora had been determined to find them, and find them she did.
They continued playing, but Graham’s mind wandered. It was such a beautiful day. Nora was at work even though it was a Saturday, and he wondered what he and Molly could do to take advantage of the warm, sunny weather. All he knew was that he couldn’t handle one more game of checkers.
“You won,” Molly said sulkily as his king ate up her last checker. “Fair and square, I guess.” She looked up at the sound of a red truck heading toward the house. “Why’s Uncle Trevor here?” she asked.
“Don’t know,” Graham said, as he folded the checkerboard and put it back in its box.
Trevor got out of the truck and started up the sidewalk. “Hey bro,” he called as he neared the porch. “I have a surprise for you. Let’s go for a ride.”
He figured Trevor had come up with something more for the springhouse. “I’m hanging out with Molly today,” he said. “Nora’s at work.”
“Molly can come, too.” Trevor stood at the bottom of the porch steps, hands in his pockets. “How are you feeling, Molly?”
“All right,” she grumbled. She was as
bored as Graham was.
“Shall I take the scooter?” Graham asked.
“Don’t need it if you can manage about ten yards with the cane,” Trevor said.
That ruled out the springhouse. He had no idea what Trevor was up to now, but he was ready for anything that would get him away from the checkerboard.
“All right,” he said, getting slowly to his feet. He looked down at Molly. “Let’s go see what Uncle Trevor’s got up his sleeve,” he said, holding his hand out to her. She knew—she had to know—that he needed to hold her hand for balance more than she needed to hold his, and she walked slowly and carefully down the porch steps next to him.
Once they were in the truck, Trevor headed toward the loop road. He drove up the Hill from Hell and next to him, Graham felt Molly shudder.
“I’m never ever riding my bike down this stupid hill again,” she said. “Not ever.”
Trevor laughed. “That’s a plan,” he said.
“But I’m still going to ride without my stupid training wheels,” she added, in case they thought she was chickening out altogether.
They rode past the path that led to the springhouse and the road that led to Amalia’s. They passed his mother’s house with its circular driveway. Where the hell were they going?
He was surprised when Trevor turned onto the short dirt road that led to the zip-line platform.
“What are we doing here?” Graham looked through the dashboard at the platform high above them as Trevor turned off the ignition. Something was different and he squinted, trying to figure it out. Was there some sort of machine up there? A big hunk of yellow metal?
Trevor followed his gaze. “I’ve been working on this over the last couple of weeks,” he said.
“On what?” Graham asked.
Trevor smiled. “How would you like to ride the zip line again, bro?” he asked.
Graham turned to face him. “Quit messing with me,” he said.
Trevor laughed. “I’m not.” He pointed to the top of the platform. “It’s a hoist,” he said.
“What’s a hoist?” Molly asked, but Graham barely heard her.
“You’re kidding,” he said.
“I kid you not. And today we’re going to give you a ride.”