Nell could feel the power of that morning, the sunlight against her skin, his bloody fingers across her lips. “Why — didn’t you tell somebody?”
“I still committed a murder, Nelly.”
That’s why he had told her to get her father. That’s why he had never come back to kill her, too. “Why—” She shook her head in an attempt to clear it. “Why did you come back here?”
“Wisconsin is my home, Nell.” He was leaning on the cart for support. “I wanted to die at home.”
“But your experiment?”
He smiled. “I’ve outlived most of my siblings for a good twenty years. And the formula wasn’t quite right for me at first. We’ve changed it, so yours is better from the start.”
“Mine?”
“Nelly.” He bowed his head slightly and ran his fingers through his thick, silver hair. The gesture made her think of the old Karl, the one who had taught her how to laugh and how to hit home runs.
“What did you think? That I was poisoning you?”
She nodded.
“I’m not. I’m trying the drug on you. I know I should have asked, but you didn’t trust me, and it was just easier to do it this way.”
“Why me?” she asked.
“Lots of reasons.” The cart slid forward slightly and he had to catch himself to keep from falling. “I don’t know many people who still play baseball when they’re seventy years old. Or learn to walk again when the doctors say they can’t. You’re strong, Nelly. The power of your mind is amazing.”
“But what if I don’t want to live any longer?”
“You do or you wouldn’t be out here, trying to catch me.”
“I have caught you.” The hallway was empty. Usually it was full of people walking back and forth.
“I know,” Karl said. “What are you going to do? Call a nurse, tell them to arrest me? There’s no statute of limitations on murder, you know.”
Nell studied him for a moment. He was thin and his skin was pale. He was ninety-five. How much longer could he live?
“I don’t want any more of your medication,” she said.
He stood motionlessly, waiting for her to say something else.
She moved her walker forward, on the other side of the cart. “And I don’t want to talk anymore.”
She didn’t let herself look back as she slowly made her way down the hall. Imagine if she could walk without a walker, without pain.
Imagine if she could live longer than her father, who had died when he was ninety-eight. She wasn’t ready to give up living yet. Some days she felt as if she had only just started.
When she reached her own door, she stopped and looked back at Karl’s. Once she had believed in Karl and his miracles. She did no longer.
The world has reduced itself to the ball clutched in Pete’s hand.
“Throw it straight,” Chucky yells.
Pete spits. Nell barely notices. She watches that ball, knowing that when he throws it she will hit it with all her strength. Time seems to slow down as the ball whizzes toward her. She knows how the ball will fly, where it will end up, and she swings the bat down to meet it. There is a satisfying crack as they hit and time speeds up again.
“Holy cow!” Chucky cries, but Nell ignores him as she drops the bat. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the ball sail over the creek.
She runs as fast as she can. Her right foot hits first base, and she keeps going, flying, like the ball. It disappears into the weeds behind the creek as her left foot hits second. Her glasses bounce off her nose between second and third, and she is navigating according to color.
Her lungs are burning as her left foot hits the rock that is third base.
“Go, Nelly! Go!”
She runs toward the blurred shapes behind home. There is a stitch in her side and her entire body aches, but she keeps moving. She leaps on home base and her team cheers, but she can’t stop. She has run too hard to stop right away, and she crashes into Chucky, who hugs her.
“Great!” he says. “That was great!”
She stands there, savoring the moment. Karl would have been proud of her. But Karl would never know. She wipes the sweat off her forehead and says, “I lost my glasses.”
As Chucky trudges out to retrieve them, she realizes she can get no higher than this; her tiny girl’s body, for all its batting accuracy, will prevent her from going on. But she doesn’t care. If she can’t play on a real team, she will hit home runs until she is a hundred, long after these boys are dead.
“That was great, Nelly,” Chucky says as he hands her her glasses.
“Really great.”
She checks the lenses, which haven’t cracked, and then bends the frame back into shape. “Not bad for a girl,” she says with a glance at T.J. Then she goes over to the grass and sits at the end of the line, hoping that she’ll get another chance at bat.
The sound of running feet woke Nell up. She had heard that sound before. Someone had died or was dying and they wanted to get him out before the other residents knew.
She grabbed her glasses and got out of bed, carefully making her way to the door. They were gathered in front of Karl’s room. Two men wheeled a stretcher out. The body was strapped in and the face was covered. Quickly they pushed him out of sight.
She crossed the empty hallway. The tile beneath her feet felt cold and gritty. They had left Karl’s door open, and she stopped just outside it, catching the smell of death under the scent of ink and books.
“Nell?” One of the nurses started down the hall toward her.
“Is he dead?” she asked.
“Mr. Krupp? I’m afraid so. I’m sorry if it disturbed you.”
“No, not really,” Nell said. She drew her nightgown closely about her chest. She was getting cold.
“He probably shouldn’t have been in this household,” the nurse said. “He was much too sick, but his family wanted him to have a private room.”
Nell wondered how the nurse expected her to believe that.
One glance inside Karl’s room made it obvious that he hadn’t been bedridden. Nell surveyed the room once more. The desk top was bare and the vials were gone, but otherwise it looked the same.
The nurse finally reached her side. Nell recognized her as the round-faced one who usually gave her her medicine, Dana, LPN.
“How did you get out here?” Dana LPN asked.
“Walked,” Nell said.
Dana LPN shot her a perplexed look. “Well, let’s get you back to bed, shall we?”
She put her arm around Nell’s waist and helped her back to the room. The support wasn’t necessary until they reached the door.
When Nell saw her walker in its usual place beside the bed, her knees buckled.
“Nell?”
Nell straightened herself and pushed out of the nurse’s grasp. She made her way to the side of the bed and lightly touched her walker.
“I’m fine,” she said.
She climbed into the bed and lay there until she heard the nurse’s footsteps echo down the hall. Then she got up and walked slowly around her room.
You’re strong, Nelly, he had said. The power of your mind is amazing.
She walked to the door and stared at Karl’s empty room across the hall. The drawing was still there, its spirals twisting like a mal-formed ladder. Beneath the stunned joy that she was feeling, frustration beat at her stomach. She would never know if it was her own determination or Karl’s bitter medicine that made her legs work again, just as she would never know if he had actually killed her sister or if he had been lying. She wanted to believe that it was the power of her own mind, but her mind’s healing took time. She had started to walk within days of receiving the medication.
Nell went back to the bed and sat down, wondering what Anna would say when she learned that her mother could walk again.