I took the elevator up to the fourth floor.
The yellow fire doors were open.
The telemetry monitors were humming their quiet, regular rhythm.
I walked down the hall to Room 412 and pushed the door open.
***
VIII.
The Room with the Sun
The morning light was streaming through the high windows, washing the seafoam green walls and the cartoon beluga whales in a warm, golden glow.
Maya was awake.
She was sitting propped up against two oversized pillows, the plastic oxygen tube gone from her nose, wearing a clean, bright yellow hospital gown covered in smiling suns.
Her cheeks were no longer waxy; they were flushed with a soft, healthy pink, and her dark hair had been brushed back and tied with a tiny red ribbon that Grace had found in her bag.
On the bed beside her sat Leo and Clara, their small legs tucked beneath them, eating dry Cheerios from a plastic bowl while watching a cartoon on the wall-mounted television.
And sitting on the edge of the mattress, holding a small plastic cup of apple juice, was Grace.
She had washed her face.
Her damp hair was pulled back into a simple, practical knot at the base of her neck.
She was wearing an oversized gray Northwestern sweatshirt that Noreen had brought her from the staff locker room, her bare feet tucked into blue hospital grip-socks.
When I stepped into the room, Leo saw me first.
He set the plastic bowl down on the blanket, slid off the mattress, and walked across the linoleum toward me.
He didn’t run.
He walked with that same serious, measured, old-man stride he had used under the bus shelter in the rain.
He reached my knees, looked up at my face—at the bruises, the cut lip, the dried blood on my collar—and then he reached out his small hand and placed it firmly into mine.
His fingers were warm.
“Mommy said you had to go to work,” Leo said, his gray-blue eyes searching mine with that unblinking, devastating clarity.
“I did, buddy,” I whispered, dropping to my knees on the linoleum so our eyes were level.
“I had to finish a job.”
“Is the job done?” he asked.
I looked over his shoulder at Grace.
She was looking at me, her hazel eyes wide, clear, and shining with tears that she was no longer trying to hide.
On the bedside table beside her, resting next to Maya’s toy stethoscope, was the blue-bound legal instrument from the Circuit Court of Illinois that Marcus Vance’s office had messengered over twenty minutes ago—the formal decree confirming the total liquidation of Carter Holdings and the appointment of Grace Bennett as the managing trustee of the entire estate.
