“Yeah.”
“I was going to kill you with that crowbar. My arm was coming down.”
“I know.”
“How did you not flinch?”
He thought about it for a long time.
“Because I deserved it,” he said. “Not for tonight. For 1997. For not being there when Maggie needed me. I’ve been walking around for twenty-eight years waiting for someone to finish what I should have done to myself a long time ago.”
I put my hand over my face.
“Your daughter is going to live,” he said. “That’s what matters right now.”
A doctor came out at 7:15. Emma was stable. Kidneys took a hit but nothing permanent. She was asking for me.
I stood up. “Frank. Come with me.”
“She doesn’t know me.”
“She’s going to.”
Karen saw Frank behind me in the doorway. She walked across the room and hugged him. This man she had met ninety minutes ago in the worst moment of her life. She sobbed into his shoulder and he stood there with his arms at his sides because I don’t think he knew what to do.
Then he brought his hand up and held the back of her head.
Emma was watching from the bed. “Daddy. Who is that?”
“That’s Frank. He saved your life.”
Frank came to our house the Saturday after Emma got home. Didn’t call first. Just pulled up in that Ford truck with a cardboard box.
Inside was a photo album. Faded green cover. Edges soft from being held.
“This was Maggie’s,” he said. “I wanted Emma to see it.”
He sat on the coffee table in front of her and opened it on her lap.
“This was my daughter. She was about your age in most of these.”
Emma looked at the first photo for a long time. Then she started crying.
Frank didn’t comfort her. Didn’t say anything. Just sat with his hands on his knees and let her cry over a girl who died before Emma was born.
They went through every page. Frank told a story about every photo. Maggie at graduation. Maggie with her first dog. Maggie at seventeen, three weeks before the party, smiling like the world was going to be kind to her.
When they finished, Emma closed the album.
“I want to know everything about her,” she said. “Everything you remember.”
Frank nodded. His eyes were wet.
“Then I’ll tell you. We’ll have time.”
All three boys took pleas that spring. Kyle got eleven years. His mother wasn’t in the courtroom. Frank wore a suit. When the defense attorney said Frank had a vendetta because of Maggie, Frank said: “Sir, I would have done the exact same thing if it had been your daughter in that bed. You and I both know that.”
The attorney sat down.
