Then Maggie is jumping at Ian and he leans down to accept her hug. She wraps her arms around him and kisses him and says, ‘You’re bleeding, Daddy. You’re bleeding,’ and he kisses her cheeks and her eyes and her mouth and he can feel her heart beating against his stomach, and tears well in his eyes, the first time he has cried in a long time.
Henry falls to the ground and a puddle of blood spreads like a blanket beneath him.
‘Maggie,’ Ian says. ‘My Maggie.’
But then he sees Beatrice lean down and pick up Henry’s pistol and he swings the shotgun up, aiming at her. But he does not fire. He sees immediately that she does not intend to continue Henry’s fight. She stands and she looks toward them and tears well in her eyes as she says, ‘I’m sorry.’ Then she puts the pistol into her mouth.
It’s a semiautomatic and the safety’s off, so all she has to do is pull the trigger.
Diego walks down the street toward them and they wait, Ian and Maggie, with her small hand in his large hand. Ian looks down at her and smiles. She looks up at him and smiles back and her green eyes that could break your heart if she wanted them to smile also. He can hardly believe it is her hand he’s holding. His daughter. His little girl. His Maggie. He thinks of holding her on the day she was born. He thinks of standing over her crib and watching her sleep. He thinks of the first time she wrapped her tiny fist around his thumb. He thinks of changing her diapers. He thinks of her cradled in his arm, taking a bottle. No matter what happens next he knows what he’s done and what he’s become, it was a price worth paying. He would pay it twice and again if he had it still to give. And if there’s more to pay he will pay that too.
Diego looks sick. He is pale and sweaty and his eyes are far away.
‘I killed one of them,’ he says.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ian says. ‘I didn’t want you to have to do that.’
‘The bullet hit him right here.’ He touches his own cheek.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Right here,’ he says.
They take the white Toyota back to the falling-down house Ron lived in before he decided the world was no longer his home. Diego, Ian knows, would try to talk him into heading to a hospital if he weren’t lost inside himself, but he is, and Ian does not intend to go anywhere tonight. He is too tired. If he wakes up tomorrow he’ll think about it, but he believes he’s earned a few hours with his daughter. He believes she’s earned a few hours with her daddy.
They get to the house and open the door and go inside.
Diego finds a bedroom in the back and goes there and sits alone.
Maggie eats and talks and talks and talks, as if she has not spoken to a soul in years. Ian sits with her and listens. She tells him about the Nightmare World, and about counting till her head was filled with numbers so that the bad thoughts could not get in, and about how Henry’s brother Donald brought her books and even gave her lessons sometimes, in history and math, and about Borden and how he was her only friend, and about how she tried to escape, how she ran through the woods and how his voice, her daddy’s voice, gave her hope and made something in her that she thought was cold burn hot. She asks about Mommy and he tells her that Mommy is waiting for her return. He tells her that Mommy loves her very much. He tells her that Mommy will probably let her sleep in bed with her for a long time. He tells her that she is the strongest, bravest person he has ever met. He tells her that she is a miracle.
The hours they spend together are the best hours he’s ever lived and the truest, and when they fall asleep beside one another on the fold-out sofa-bed with Maggie’s head leaning against his shoulder and her small hand in his large hand he has a smile on his face and the dreams he dreams are of the future, a bright future full of joy and laughter.
FB2 document info
Document ID: fbd-16baac-cde3-7849-e9ad-cda1-1a22-66d00f
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 23.09.2013
Created using: calibre 1.3.0, Fiction Book Designer, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software
Document authors :
Jahn, Ryan David
About
This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.
(This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)
Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.
(Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)
http://www.fb2epub.net
https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/
The Dispatcher Page 27