I did what he said. My wife Karen came running out of the house screaming Emma’s name. She got in the front. The biker never looked at her. His eyes never left Emma’s chest, watching her breathe.
“I hit her with Narcan fourteen minutes ago,” he said, starting the engine. “I carry it because of my grandson. I’ve been expecting this night for eight months.”
He pulled away from the curb slowly. Like Emma was made of glass.
“Name’s Frank. On the way to the hospital you’re going to hear some things. It’s going to break you. But you hold it together until she’s admitted. Understand?”
I nodded.
“My grandson Kyle is seventeen. Lives two towns over with my daughter Rachel. I put a tracker on his truck in August because things weren’t adding up. Tonight the tracker pinged your neighborhood at eleven thirty. Something made me get up.”
He turned onto the highway.
“I found her in an upstairs bedroom. End of the hall. Three boys were in there with her. She was on the bed. They had her shirt half off. She wasn’t moving.”
Karen made a sound I had never heard come out of a human being.
“I threw Kyle into the dresser first,” Frank said. “Then the second one into the window. Third one ran. I gave her the Narcan, carried her out the front door. Called 911 from the porch. Police are meeting us at the hospital. A unit is already at the house.”
I looked down at Emma. Her chest rose and fell. Slower than it should. But rising. Falling.
“The three boys that did this to her,” Frank said. “One of them is my grandson.”
Karen turned around in her seat. Her face was gray.
Frank was quiet for a block. Street lights slid across Emma’s face. I had her head in my lap. I was running my fingers through her hair the way I used to when she was six and had bad dreams.
“My daughter Maggie,” Frank said. “Kyle’s aunt. She took her own life in 1997. She was seventeen. Four months before she did it, three boys got her drunk at a basement party and took turns with her in a laundry room. Nobody believed her. I was deployed in Bosnia. Got home two months after the funeral.”
He took the exit to Mercy Hospital.
