Free Pitch Black by Susan Crandall

came back to bite her in the ass; thanks to her, the kid knew how to present an argument.
    “Give me a minute to throw on some clothes. I’ll come back and shower after I drop you off at school.”
    He nodded and backed away, pulling closed her bedroom door.
    Twenty minutes later, they entered the hospital. Madison said, “Visiting hours don’t start until one in the afternoon, so just keep walking like you’re supposed to be here.”
    On a normal day, Ethan would have given her a load of crap, throwing her own lectures about picking and choosing which rules to follow right back in her face. Today wasn’t a normal day.
    They took the elevator to the third floor and walked past the nurses’ station without pause. Not that it looked like any one of them had an interest in who was coming and going anyway; they were deep in conversation about a television drama that had aired last night.
    The door to Jordan’s room was closed.
    “Let me check it out first,” she said.
    Ethan looked uneasy. She resisted the urge to smooth his hair away from his eyes.
    Easing the door open, she slowly peeked inside. The drapes were open. Bright sunlight flooded the room and reflected in Jordan’s unblinking stare. Disappointment sat like an indigestible meal in her stomach. If it hit her this hard, how was Ethan going to feel?
    Before she could consider that question further, he walked past her and up to Jordan’s bedside. To her surprise, Ethan took Jordan’s hand. “Hey.”
    Jordan didn’t show a flicker of response. She was struck then by his eerie resemblance to a wax figure. If anything, he looked worse than he had yesterday.
    Madison tensed, waiting to see how Ethan handled the lack of improvement.
    He only hesitated a second. “You’re lucky, dude,” he said in a tone remarkably close to regular guy talk. “You get to lay here in bed all day instead of going to listen to Mrs. Hillenberg go on and on and on about O. Henry’s ‘incredibly deep and multi-layered’ short stories.” He altered his voice to sound remarkably like the English teacher. Then he reverted to himself to add, “She never mentions the fact that the guy was a drunk and a convict.”
    Madison was impressed with the way he managed to make this one-sided conversation seem natural. And she was more than a little shocked with his expanded knowledge of O. Henry. It made her wonder if maybe his outward derision of the author was just for adolescent show—a defensive carryover from his previous life.
    It hadn’t taken long for her to see that he used posturing and tough talk to camouflage his fascination with books and language. She supposed in the cruel world of his childhood, such interests would have been considered weak. And to show weakness was to open the door to being a victim.
    After a short pause he said, “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk until you’re ready.” Suddenly his face brightened, as if he’d found the key to a mystery. “In fact, I want to be the first one you talk to. So keep quiet until I get back to torture you with all of the garbage Mrs. Hillenberg lays on us today.”
    She wondered if his challenge had gotten through to Jordan. Would it be motivation for the boy to reach out when Ethan returned?
    He took a step back from the bedside, keeping his gaze on Jordan for a second longer. Then he turned his eyes toward Madison. He was a master at disguising his inner feelings, but she swore she saw relief there, running somewhere just beneath the worry and sadness.
    THE BUZZ AT THE SMOKY RIDGE CAFÉ was all about Steve McPherson’s accident. Gabe didn’t need to hear the comments to know that. It was written on every face in the place as they looked at him when he walked in. Curiosity filled the eyes of people who knew from experience he wouldn’t discuss anything associated with his job. That fact didn’t keep them from wanting to ask.
    He took a seat at his usual breakfast table in the rear of the dining room. Today he