Most of All You: A Love Story(94)
My head swam with everything that had happened since I’d walked into Sal’s hardware store the afternoon before. I was still having trouble believing it hadn’t all been a strange, fuzzy, half-formed dream. And yet, the joy that moved through me at the thought of Wyatt Geller at home with his parents right this very minute felt overwhelmingly real. They’d come into my room that morning and had barely been able to form words. His mother had hugged me so long and hard, it’d hurt my battered body, but that didn’t matter. They had their son back. I hadn’t been so lucky to be reunited with my parents the day I’d shown up in the hospital after facing the same trauma Wyatt had faced. But he had. He had, and I’d taken a part in it, and I took deep comfort in that.
We’d both arrived at the hospital together, and I’d later learned that after Wyatt had run up the basement stairs, he unbolted the front door and raced out into the street, waving his arms frantically, too terrified to yell at all.
It just so happened that three college kids on their way home from playing hoops in the neighborhood had been walking by on the other side of the street at that exact moment. They’d stopped when they saw Wyatt, and the one girl in the group stayed with him and called the police, while the other two ran into the house to help me. Wyatt had found his voice once the three of them rushed to meet him, and he told them where to find me. “The good guy has his feet tied together,” he kept repeating over and over like a mantra.
There had been a car pulling into the driveway at the same moment Wyatt came running out—most likely the man Neil Hardigan had called—and when the college kids came running toward him, the car backed out quickly and raced away. The police, with information retrieved from Neil Hardigan’s computer, had later arrested that man as he was packing up his car to make a getaway.
The police also hinted to me that the information they were currently confiscating from the hard drive of Neil Hardigan’s house would not only put him away for a very, very long time, but had revealed a ring of pedophiles in the area, including information on Gary Lee Dewey. Gary hadn’t kept such information at his home, but Neil had, and with his arrest, authorities had hit the jackpot. Men linked to them both were being rounded up all over the East Coast right this very moment.
The police had questioned me extensively the day before, and I was told the news media had been camped out at the hospital’s entrance through the night. It was surreal. It was familiar.
The door opened and George came in, holding a package in his hands. He set it down on the table next to my bed and put a hand on my shoulder, squeezing it very gently. I’d only seen him and Dominic briefly the night before. They’d been stunned, quiet, George had tears in his eyes as he said, “This is the second time you’ve escaped from a basement and landed yourself in the hospital. Let’s not do this again, what do you say?” I’d laughed and heartily agreed.
“How are you feeling this morning?”
I grimaced a little as I stretched my neck. “Like I want to get out of here.”
George smiled. “The nurse outside said the doctor would be in with your release papers in a few minutes.”
I nodded, looking over to where George had placed the package. “What’s that?”
“I’m not sure. The woman at the nurse’s station said it was dropped off for you.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Huh.” Picking it up, I noticed that only my name was written on the front. It felt so light, I wondered if anything was even in it.
Setting it on my lap, I untied the string and took off the brown wrapping. There was a plain white box inside, and I removed the lid carefully. Sitting on top of the white tissue paper inside was a folded piece of paper. I opened it, reading the line once and then again.
To Gabriel, finder of beauty, rescuer of souls.
My heart started beating faster as I put the note aside and pulled out the extra tissue paper to finally reveal what had been placed carefully inside a nest of cotton.
I let out a strangled gasp as I lifted out Lady Eloise of the Daffodil Fields, marveling as I turned her in my hands, studying every side. She had been painstakingly put back together, piece by piece, sliver by sliver, so that she was now whole again, though not perfect. Tiny cracks and small missing pieces appeared everywhere from her toes to her hair, but somehow, ah, somehow, she was even more beautiful.
Ellie. God, Ellie.
I set the doll back down in the soft nest and picked the note back up, my eyes moving over every loop and curve of the handwriting. Ellie’s handwriting. I’d never seen it before, but now I knew what it looked like, and I studied it greedily, desperate for another small piece of her I hadn’t had until now.
“Ellie?” George asked quietly.
I only nodded. After a minute I looked up at him. “What if she doesn’t come back, George?”
George’s eyes were filled with a pained sympathy. He paused for so long, I wasn’t sure if he would answer my question. But finally he said, “Then I guess you have to find meaning in the ones who stayed.”
A gut-wrenching sadness overwhelmed me, the overpowering love I still had for Ellie rushing forward to mix with the myriad of emotions from the last twenty-four hours. I wanted more than just the doll. I wanted her. I missed her smiles, her kindness, her inner beauty, her intelligent mind, her soft skin, her body molded to my body each night. Having gone without it for so long, and then to have had it back so briefly, I missed being touched. Her touch. And in that moment, not having her right there with me felt too painful to endure.