“Come to the Hospital”
“I need you to come here. Please.”
“Jeffrey — “
“There’s one thing you need to see. And once you see it, you’ll understand why I walked away from you.”
His breathing was wrong. Ragged, with pauses that didn’t belong.
“Please, Ruth. Hurry.”
I grabbed my coat off the hook and my keys off the counter.
“Where are you?”
Forty Minutes
It’s forty minutes from my front door to that hospital if you obey the speed limit.
I did not obey the speed limit.
“Hey, Ruthie”
He looked at me from that bed and smiled, and it was the same smile, and that was the thing that broke me completely.
“Hey, Ruthie.”
I cried before I could stop myself. I’d promised myself in the parking garage that I wouldn’t.
“Hey, idiot.”
He laughed. It turned into a cough.
And then I saw what was sitting on the chair.
My Father’s Box
It was a wooden box. Dark walnut, about the size of a bread loaf, with a brass latch and a hinge that had always been a little loose.
