The Sleuth Will Set You Free - A Gallagher Girls Story

Chapter Eleven

Bill was still asleep.  A part of me hoped that if I stayed with him, he'd wake up, but a larger part of me knew that the human brain didn't work that way.  The doctors had said he would wake up when his body knew it was safe, though I couldn't imagine that the world was ever going to be safe for William Kasey again.

So I left, knowing that I had an exam the next day and that spending another night in that plastic chair wasn't going to do anyone any good.

"You know," Macey said as she stood up from her bench and fell into step beside me.  "I'm sure there are more productive ways to spend your time than coming here every day."

"Probably," I agreed, but I knew it didn't matter.  Productive wasn't my concern.  Bill was the only thing I cared about.  He was the only thing that made me feel something—anything.  Even if looking at him was a punch in the gut, at least I wasn't numb anymore.  Even if hearing him call my name was like another stab in the back each and every time, at least the absence wasn't swallowing me whole.

I wanted to be there.  I wanted to make sure that his flowers got changed and that his hair didn't tangle.  I wanted to make sure that someone really was coming in and taking care of him.  I wanted to be there when he woke up.

Because at one point, he had been one half of a pair that had known me better than I knew myself.  At one point, he had been one of my closest friends, and until he had a chance to prove me wrong, I was going to keep believing in that.

Macey looked down at me as we walked on, her mouth ticking upwards into something that wasn't quite a smile.  "You've got loyalty, kid," she said.  "That's a good thing to have."

I hear everything and, when I say that, I don't just mean that I hear conversations that I'm not supposed to or the forbidden footsteps that are supposed to be silent.  I mean that I actually hear everything.  A lying heartbeat.  A careful touch.  And in that moment, I could hear an undeniable asterisk in Macey's tone.  "But...?" I offered.

This time, she really did smile.  "But you've got to be careful with that sort of thing," she warned.  "There are a lot of people who would kill to have that on their side—and yes, I do mean that they would actually kill to get you to join them.  You have to be careful about where your loyalties lie.  Ask Bex about Mexico City and what happens when you're helping out the wrong people—it's not pretty."

"What are you saying?"

She stopped in her tracks, making me stop, too.  The look in her eyes told me that I didn't have permission to look away.  Not until I heard her out.  "I'm saying that, until your friend wakes up, we don't know whose side he's on, okay?  Until we do, you should just be careful about giving this much of yourself to him."

I hadn't known Macey for very long.  It had only been about a month.  But if there was anything I had learned about her in that time, it was that Macey McHenry called them as she saw them.  I liked that about her.  It was nice having some transparency—someone who understood that spared feelings didn't matter nearly as much as a stable state of mind.

"Listen," she said when I didn't respond, taking off in her long-legged stride once again.  "I've spent too much time giving away parts of myself to people who didn't care, so I'm not going to sit back and watch you do the same.  Just be careful.  You don't want to spread yourself out too thin, and you especially want to make sure that the people who have your loyalty aren't going to use it the wrong way.  When this is all said and done, you want to be able to say that every last bit of yourself is on the right side of things, got it?"

It didn't feel like any of this would ever be said and done, but I accepted her words of wisdom, knowing that I'd be an idiot if I didn't.  Macey wasn't stupid, of that, I was certain.