Part 7

PART 5: Five Minutes My father stopped in the middle of that hospital hallway. For a second, I thought he was going to do what he always did. Raise his voice. Pull rank. Remind everyone in earshot that he was a colonel and they were not. He didn't. He just stood there in his wet blazer, with my mother's letter still folded in his hand. "You're right," he said to Matt. "I don't get to." Matt blinked. He had been ready for a fight. He didn't know what to do without one. "I didn't come because she was on television," Dad said. His voice was hoarse. "I came because your mother wrote me a letter eight years ago, and your sister finally read it to me tonight. And because I was wrong." He took a breath. "I was wrong about you, son. About your job. About Jess. About everything. I am so sorry." The hallway was so quiet I could hear a monitor beeping somewhere behind a closed door. My brother's chin started to tremble. Matt is thirty-four years old, with twenty-two stitches in his arm and two days of mud on his jeans, and in that moment he looked about twelve. "Don't say it to me," Matt said finally. "Say it to Jess." The door behind him opened. Jess was standing there. She had heard all of it. She's a small woman with a ponytail and tired eyes, and she was still wearing her diner apron under her coat, because she had been at work when the sirens went off on Friday. My father looked at that apron for a long moment. "Jess," he said. "Nine years ago, I said the word waitress like it was something dirty. My wife was a waitress. She was the finest woman I ever knew. And you are the woman my granddaughter's going to grow up to be. I'm sorry." Jess didn't cry. She just studied his face, the way you study a dog you're not sure about. "Five minutes," she said. "She's tired. And if you make her cry, you leave." "Yes, ma'am," my father said. He went in. Matt followed him. Rachel and I stood in the doorway, holding each other's hands like we were little girls again. Lily was sitting up in the bed with her left leg in a bright purple cast, propped on two pillows. Her hair was still a little dusty. Somebody had brought her a balloon shaped like a puppy, and it bobbed against the ceiling every time the air conditioning kicked on. In her lap, she was holding one pink sneaker. She had refused to let the nurses take it away. She looked at my father. Then at the picture in Matt's wallet, lying open on the blanket. Then back at him. "Are you my grandpa?" she said. "You look like the picture. But older." My father made a sound that was half a laugh and half something else. "I am," he said. "I'm sorry I'm late." He said it like he meant nine years, not nine hours. I think Jess heard the difference. I saw her arms unfold. Lily thought about that. Then she pointed at me. "Aunt Erin found me," she said. "Under the bleachers. She's a soldier." "I know," my father said. He didn't look at me. He kept his eyes on her. "Your aunt is a much better soldier than I ever was." I had to grab the doorframe. Lily held up her one pink sneaker. "I lost my other shoe. It's still in the gym. Aunt Erin looked, but she couldn't find it." "Then I'll find it," my father said. Lily studied him with her serious little face. "Promise?" "Promise." The five minutes turned into an hour. Jess let it. He asked Lily about her school, her friends, her favorite color, which is purple, and her favorite animal, which is a horse, but only a brown one. He listened to every answer like it was a briefing at the Pentagon. Somewhere around midnight, Lily fell asleep holding my father's finger in her fist, and he didn't move his hand once. Not when his arm went numb. Not when the nurse came in to check her vitals. Rachel drove me back to her house at one in the morning. I slept on her couch for eleven hours straight. When I woke up, the sun was already high, and I had a message from Matt. "Where's Dad? His car's been gone from the hospital lot since six this morning. He won't answer his phone."