He stretches his legs and stops at Margaret’s bed to fix her blankets before sneaking into the hall, closing the door quietly behind him. He signs out at the reception desk, passing a woman on her way in. She pauses and does a double take.
That’s right, lady, he thinks. It’s me.
He guessed correctly: the story is a big deal. Six months since the tabloids got wind of things, and they continue to outdo each other, competing for who can snap the creepiest photo of the Lawrence House, enticing shoppers at the checkout lines with yet another interview with “The Neighbor Who Called 911!”
Sam was impressed with Sidney Pigeon’s take-charge attitude about the whole thing. On the phone to 911, summoning the chief of police and an ambulance that apparently took no more than four minutes to arrive. It was the same driver who had come for the body of Agatha Lawrence three years before, this time arriving to cart away her biological son, who’d died in the same room. Cause of death: overdose of zolpidem, leading to cardiac arrest. In other words, Albert put himself to sleep and then died of a broken heart.
The Monster of Chestnut Hill. That’s what people have come to call Albert, and Sam has to admit it’s catchy. But one thing they haven’t written about Albert Bitterman is that, like his mother, he was found to be generous at the time of his death. He took care of Sam’s debt. The copies of the credit card bills Sam had discovered in the purple binder—Albert wasn’t merely filing them away for posterity. He was also paying them down, sending out checks, wiping it all away, as well as making a hefty donation to Rushing Waters that would cover, among other things, Margaret Statler’s room and board for the next thirty years.
Sam puts the car into drive and is about to pull out when he sees the green Mini Cooper speeding into the parking lot toward him. The car stops next to his, and Annie rolls down her window.
“What are you doing?” Sam asks. “It’s my day to visit.”
“I know.” She nods at the passenger seat. “Get in.”
“Why? I thought you said I had to meet the movers.”
“I lied. They’re coming tomorrow. Get in.”
Sam does as he’s told. “Where are we going?” he asks, buckling his seat belt.
“You’ll have to wait and see,” she says, plugging in her phone and hitting play on a song list marked “SAM.” Depeche Mode’s “Just Can’t Get Enough” blares as she pulls out of the parking lot. At the bottom of the hill she heads out of town, toward the interstate. He puts it together. It’s the chase.
“We robbed a bank,” he whispers, venturing a guess, adrenaline rushing. “And we’re making a quick getaway.”
“Wrong,” she says.
They drive another few minutes. “You’re an Uber driver, and you’re kidnapping me.”
She shoots him a look. “Too soon, Sam,” she says, turning up the music.
He leans his head back and keeps his eyes on her as she drives. She’s prettier than ever with short hair. She required one hundred and six stitches in her scalp, and suffered a serious concussion, but she’s recovered. As has he—physically, at least. Albert was telling the truth: Sam’s legs weren’t broken. It was eventually determined through security footage obtained by the police that Albert took the supplies to cast Sam’s legs from the closet at the Rushing Waters Elderly Care Center, where he was a volunteer companion at bingo twice a week. It’s how he got the pills, too; swiped them from Margaret’s stash, left unattended on a medical cart in her room. Albert replaced them with uncoated ibuprofen, an infraction that cost the head nurse and two staff members their jobs.
That said, it hasn’t been easy. While his nightmares are decreasing in frequency, the anxiety remains, and he hasn’t returned to seeing patients. His dream office is no longer available, for obvious reasons, and even if that wasn’t the case, he’s been afraid the dynamic would be too disrupted. Every time he’s run into patients, it’s been painfully awkward. But he’s ready to get back to work—in New York. They’re moving back next week. Annie accepted a position at Hunter College, and they’re moving into a two-bedroom in Brooklyn, keeping the house for visits back to see Margaret every few weekends.
They drive west for an hour, listening to the playlist Annie made—Wham!, INXS, Jane’s Addiction—stopping for cheeseburgers and vanilla milkshakes at McDonald’s at the small town of Middleburgh. Annie eventually gets off the interstate and follows the GPS for another thirty miles down a two-lane highway, until they reach a marker announcing “Welcome to Cooperstown, Home of the Baseball Hall of Fame.” Annie gets into line behind a long row of cars headed toward the parking lot. A digital sign flashes: “Parking for ticket holders only!”