He looked away. How infuriating, I thought.
“They couldn’t save my brother,” I continued, raising my voice. He turned back to me. “Willie couldn’t speak now even if he wanted to, or smile or thank anyone for anything, especially my grandfather. You know, he’s paying for everything that’s being done for you. He even hired a private detective to find out who you are and who did this to you.”
He turned to me. His eyes blinked, but he still didn’t speak.
“Why don’t you at least say thank you? Didn’t your parents teach you any manners? Who are they? Where do they live? Why aren’t they looking for you? Why isn’t anyone looking for you? Don’t you want to go home?”
His lips trembled a bit, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he looked away again.
“You’re going to have to talk someday. It’s stupid now to pretend you can’t. People want to know what happened to you and how they can help you and how to get the people who did this to you and put them in jail.”
He looked at me again, this time his eyes a bit wider. Was I finally getting him to talk?
“Yes, jail, if they deliberately poisoned you. Who would do such a thing to you? Was it someone you knew? It was someone you trusted, right? Or were you kidnapped, and no one would pay your ransom? That’s it, isn’t it?” I asked harder. It seemed right, seemed like I might have solved the mystery. I had read stories about things like this. I couldn’t wait to suggest it to my grandfather. Then he might return to the police and get it all solved, and the boy would be on his way back to his family.
His lips moved like he was tasting something, and then he turned away again quickly, as if someone was talking to him on the other side of the bed, too.
“What’s your name? Tell us! Who did this to you?” I demanded, raising my voice even more. “This is stupid! No one can help you if you don’t talk! I know you can talk. You need to trust us. We’ll get you home! Talk!”
A nurse appeared in the doorway and came rushing over to me. “Why are you shouting at him?” she asked.
“He’s just being a stubborn little brat,” I said. “My grandfather is helping him, and he won’t even say thank you.”
“Maybe you should step out,” she said.
“Gladly,” I said, and walked out into the hallway. I could see my grandfather talking with a doctor near the nurse’s desk. I folded my arms across my chest and leaned against the wall.
When she emerged from the poisoned boy’s room, the nurse glared at me and then walked to the desk. She said something to the doctor and my grandfather. They both looked my way and then continued talking. I shuddered a little. Grandpa did look annoyed. Suddenly, the nurse behind the desk called to him and handed him a telephone. I watched him talk and listen. He handed back the phone and turned to walk toward me.
“I wasn’t really shouting at him, Grandpa,” I said. “I just think he could talk if he wants to. I tried.”
“Oh, he could talk,” he said. “But you gotta wonder why he doesn’t want to.”
I hung back when Grandpa went to the boy’s bedside. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I knew he was talking to him. The boy seemed to be paying attention, too, more than he had to me. Grandpa reached down and touched his hand. Then he turned and walked toward me.
“I have to get to the office,” he said.
“Now?”
“That was Mrs. Mallen calling me here. One of our trucks was in a bad accident about an hour ago.”
“Oh, no. Was the driver hurt?” I knew some of the drivers by first name now. My favorite was a man they called Curly, but it wasn’t because he had curly hair. Grandpa explained that everyone teased him and called him that because he could curl up anywhere and fall asleep. Even though he was a little more than six feet tall, he could twist his body so that he could put two chairs together and take a nap. He called me Starlight, because he said I had two eyes that could be stars.
“Some broken bones,” he said as we walked to the elevator.
“Was it Curly?”
“No,” he said, smiling. He knew how fond I was of Curly. “It was a new guy. He’ll be all right. We just have a delivery problem. I’ll take you home first.”
“What did the doctor tell you just now?” I asked after the elevator doors closed.
“That as he first thought, it was going to take a while, maybe quite a while, for the boy to get well,” he replied. “He’ll need physical therapy. He’s still evaluating the extent of the damage caused by the poison. He said it looks to him like a slow but steady ingestion of arsenic. Most likely, then, not an accident.”
Accident? I thought. The word brought Willie back to mind instantly.
“He’ll need lots of tender loving care,” Grandpa said as the doors opened for us.
“Who doesn’t?” I muttered, mostly to myself.