Five Minutes More by Darlene Ryan Page B

bookshelf. She’s wrong. I know she is. I knew my father better than anyone.
    A wadded-up ball of paper sits in the middle of the broken shelf from the cupboard.
    For a moment I forget how to breathe. Then somehow I suck in air with a gurgle that sounds like I’m choking. I slide out of the chair onto my knees. A wadded-up ball of paper... with my father’s writing on it.
    No.
    My hand reaches out and jerks back. I try again and pick it up this time: a couple of sheets of ripped-up, crumpled whitepaper, covered with my dad’s sharp-edged writing. My fingers shake so much the paper falls to the floor.
    â€œMom,” I croak. My breath starts coming faster because, Oh my God, oh God, I know what it is. My hands are scrambling to smooth out the pieces, and I hear my voice screaming for my mother as though it’s someone else’s. And then she’s behind me. “Daddy,” I manage to choke out, but she’s seen the jagged words on the scraps of paper.
    â€œNo,” she whispers, closing her eyes for less than a second. She pushes me into the chair. “I’m going to do it, baby. Sit. Sit.”
    My knees buckle. Every part of me is shaking now. Mom kneels, pulls apart the last of the wadded paper and begins fitting the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. She fumbles around on the floor and grabs half a roll of duct tape. Tearing pieces of tape with her teeth, she fits the bits of paper together.
    I am so cold, and I feel as though I’m sliding down, down into a dark tight tunnel. Mom’s repeating something, almost under her breath. My father’s name: David, David, David, David.
    â€œIt doesn’t make any sense,” she says, smoothing the paper flat. I don’t have any answer. I don’t think she’s looking for one. I can’t even make out most of the words on the patched pages, the writing is all scratchy lines. Only one scrawl of letters near the bottom even looks like a word—
Nothing
. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s too cold, and I’m too tired.
    I hear Mom say my name as though she were a long way away. She peels off her sweater and pulls it over my head without even slipping my arms through the armholes.Then she pushes into the chair beside me and pulls me into her lap. “It’s okay,” she says, stroking my hair.
    I pull my arms in against my chest under her sweater and let my mother’s warmth soak into me. She turns us in the chair and pulls the phone closer. My mind holds pieces of the conversations, lets others go. “...it’s an emergency. Find him. Mark—we...David left a note...okay. I can do that.” She hangs up and dials again. “Detective Ridley, please. It’s Leah Patterson. It’s important.”
    I can only focus on fragments of what comes next. Mark’s a lawyer, my dad’s friend. He comes. And a police officer. “She needs to go to the hospital,” somebody says. But we were already there. Then Mark folds my fingers around a cup. It’s warm and smells like chocolate. I take small sips and watch the tropical fish swim across the screen of the computer that no one thought to turn off.
    I don’t even know I’m crying until Mom wipes my face with the heel of her hand. We’re alone. I’ve lost some chunk of time.
    â€œI don’t...understand,” I say.
    â€œNeither do I,” she says, her voice raspy, like it hurts her throat for the words to come out. “I’m sorry.” A tear gets away and runs down her cheek. She leans over the back of the chair and wraps her arms around my shoulders. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she says against my hair.
    I don’t say anything. The fish glide through the make-believe water.
Sorry, sorry, sorry
, echoes inside my brain.
    Something cool brushes my cheek. My mother’s hand. I smell cherries—that hand lotion she uses.
    Where am I? I want a drink. My lips are