April 9, 2026
Kim heard the news from Frank.
He called Monday morning, which was unusual. Frank didn’t call. Frank showed up, drank the terrible coffee, complained about whatever was bugging him, and left. Calling meant something was wrong.
“The Sergeant collapsed Saturday,” Frank said. “Cardiac. He’s in the hospital.”
Kim leaned against the counter. The shop was empty, as usual. Morning light came through the front window and caught the two small flags on the wall. “But he’s alive.”
“Barely. Brandon Wise talked to someone at Meadow View. They’re saying days.”
Kim closed her eyes. Two days ago Ron Drummond had been standing at this same counter, holding a flag like a prize, telling her to put them back up. Two days ago he’d been alive in a way that filled the room.
“His friend?” Kim asked. “Annie? How’s she?”
“At the hospital. Been there since Saturday, from what I hear. Her mother, too.”
Kim thanked Frank and hung up. Then she turned the sign on the door to CLOSED, grabbed her coat, and drove to the hospital.
She wasn’t sure why. She’d met Ron once. Spoken to Annie twice. She had no claim on this man, no history, no standing. But the feelings wouldn’t let go. The flags on the wall. The promise to Charlie. The look on his face when he’d said, “Can you afford to lose yourself?”
She owed him a visit. At least that.
The ICU waiting room was tight and overlit. Annie sat in a chair by the window, legs pulled up, sneakers on the seat. She wore the same Pax River hoodie from the bookstore, but her hair was down, messy. She was staring at her phone, but not doing the teen scroll.
A woman Kim didn’t recognize sat next to her. Forties, maybe. Short dark hair, professional posture even in a plastic hospital chair. She had a Meadow View lanyard around her neck and a paper coffee cup balanced on one knee. She was watching Annie how mothers watch their children when they can’t fix what’s broken.
Annie looked up. “Kim?”
“Hi.”
The woman beside Annie glanced at Kim, then Annie, reading the connection.
“Mom, this is Kim,” Annie said. “She owns Good Yarn. The bookstore. Where we got the puzzles.”
Her mother rose and extended her hand. “Carol McDonald. Annie’s mom. I’m the director at Meadow View.”
“I’m so sorry about the Sergeant,” Kim said.
Carol nodded. A gesture that holds back everything behind it. “Thank you for coming. Annie mentioned you. Said Ron really liked your store.”
“He was there Tuesday,” Kim said. “With Annie. He seemed—” She stopped. He’d seemed fine was what she wanted to say, but that wasn’t true. He’d seemed like a man running on borrowed time who’d decided to spend it well.
“He seemed like himself,” Annie said.
Kim sat in the chair across from them. The TV on the wall was tuned to CNN, sound off. Footage of a rally somewhere on the other side of the country. Broken signs, a flag being pulled in two directions. Nobody was watching.
No one in the waiting room said anything.
But all three of them were watching.
“How is he?” Kim asked, pulling their collective attention from the news back to the room.
Carol glanced at Annie before answering. “Stable. Unconscious. His doctor says if he wakes up, it’ll be—”
“—Remarkable,” Annie finished. As if she’d heard the word too many times.
Kim looked down the hallway toward the ICU rooms. She could see a nurses’ station and, beyond it, a row of glass-walled rooms.
“Annie told me about the promise,” Carol said. “To his brother.”
“He told me, too,” Kim said. “At the store. He said Charlie made him promise to see the 250th.”
“Annie’s been here since Saturday,” Carol said. “I can’t get her to eat.” She hesitated. “I’ve watched a lot of people die in that building.” A small shake of her head. “I didn’t expect this one to hit her like this.”
“Mom.”
“I’m just saying.”
“He finished the first puzzle book,” Annie said, turning to face Kim. “The morning before it happened. He was on the second one when—” She stopped. Swallowed. “It was on the floor when they found him.”
The three women sat until the moment passed.
“He told me something at the store,” Kim finally said. “Right before he left. He said I should put my flags back up. I’d taken them down because a customer complained.”
“Did you?” Carol asked.
“Put them back up? Yes. Maybe I overreacted by taking them down, I don’t know. Business has been slow this spring, and it just felt like I had no energy to argue with her. Pax River just doesn’t feel like it used to. No one seems to agree on anything anymore.”
The stillness returned, and the women sat in comfortable silence. Carol refilled her coffee. Annie leaned her head against the window and untied and retied her shoes. Kim watched the hallway—the nurses moving between rooms, the machinery of keeping people alive.
She thought about Ron’s face when he’d held that flag. Eyes closed. That peaceful pause. Like he was remembering every hand that had ever held it before him.
She thought about Charlie’s promise. “See the 250th for both of us.”
She thought about Annie, eighteen years old, sitting in a hospital for two days because she’d promised a dying man she’d help him. “Whatever it takes,” she’d said. And here she was. Taking it.
Carol came back with two coffees and handed one to Kim without asking.
“Thank you,” she said.
More quiet, and Carol noticed that Annie’s eyes were closed, her breathing slow. Not asleep, it seemed, but close.
“She won’t leave,” Carol said, softly enough that Annie wouldn’t hear. “I’ve tried.”
“She promised him,” Kim said.
Carol smiled, slight but sweet. Not quite understanding, not yet. But the beginning of it.
Just after 1:00, Kim drove back to the shop, unlocked the door, turned the sign back to OPEN, and waited.
Not one customer. Not one. All afternoon.
She eyed the flags on the wall. Still there. Still hanging.
If he wakes up, she thought, I’m going to do something.
She didn’t know what yet. Didn’t have a plan, didn’t have a name for it. Just a feeling, solid and stubborn, sitting in her chest where the stone used to be.
Something.
New chapters posted every Monday and Thursday until April 23.