Page 168 of Roadrunner

“Long enough to leave that,” Riley said. “Found it in a box in the clubhouse storage room, he said. Was going to throw it out. Didn’t.” He picked it up, turned it over once like he was checking it was real, and set it back down with more care than its size accounted for. “Told me to tell you that you earned it. Twice.”

I looked at the leather a long time before I let myself go back under.

You earned this, twice.

I didn’t ask what he meant by it. I didn’t need to. I already knew what the first time had cost me, and what the second one had, and apparently Price, of all people, was the one who’d been keeping count.

Addy’s voice found me at some point after that, and then Addy herself, and I surfaced for exactly enough of it to hear her say “she’s perfect” and feel her mouth against my cheek, and not enough to remember if I said anything back.

Arthur came in last, and for him, I was awake for every second of it.

He’d been in the hallway the whole time. I knew that. He’d been there since Riley called him at four in the morning and he’d arrived at the hospital at four forty-five without being asked how he’d gotten there, which was a question I decided not to examine.

He came in once everyone else had gone quiet.

He was in the clothes he’d clearly thrown on in the dark. His hair was uncombed. He looked young in the way he rarely looked young. Uncertain in the way he was almost never uncertain.

He stood at the side of the bed.

He looked at Elena.

She was awake. She’d been awake for the last twenty minutes. Her eyes were the unfocused newborn eyes that were looking at everything and seeing it all differently than the rest of us.

Arthur looked at her for a long time.

“Hey,” he said quietly.

Elena looked in the direction of his voice.

Something moved across Arthur’s face. Private and enormous and quickly smoothed.

“I’m Arthur,” he said. “I’m your brother.” He looked at her steadily. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

He looked up at me.

His eyes were bright.

“She’s good,” he said. With great authority.

“She is,” I said.

He looked at Riley.

Riley put his hand on the back of Arthur’s neck briefly. The way fathers do.

Arthur leaned into it slightly.

Then he straightened.

“Can I hold her?” he asked.

“Sit down,” Riley said.

Arthur sat in the chair beside the bed. Riley placed Elena in his arms with the careful instruction of a man who knew what he was doing, which surprised me and then didn’t.

Arthur held his sister.

He looked at her face.