My Brother's Keeper by Keith Gilman Page A

white light seemed to burst in his eyes. He was holding onto the steering wheel, trying to stop the spinning in his head. A chill moved through his body. He was trying to control the shaking. Maggie was looking at him as if he was a stranger, his behavior beginning to frighten her.
    â€˜What’s the problem, Dad?’
    â€˜I know her.’
    â€˜You know who?’
    â€˜Catherine Waites.’
    â€˜Who’s Catherine Waites?’
    â€˜The girl from my dreams, the girl I saved. The girl I saved and then lost everything. My God, I haven’t heard that name in so long. She was nine years old at the time.’
    â€˜You saw her? It’s the same girl?’
    â€˜It must be. After all these years. And she was right there and I didn’t even recognize her.’
    â€˜Where did you see her?’
    â€˜There was an accident this morning in front of Jimmy Patterson’s. She lost control coming down Remington Road.’
    â€˜Are you sure it’s her?’
    â€˜It’s her. And I just stood there and watched. It was Jimmy that helped her, not me.’
    â€˜You saved her life once already, didn’t you?’
    â€˜I wish I can say that I had saved her. Oh, I protected her at the time. But I didn’t save her from anything. That guy I crippled, it was her uncle, her pedophile uncle, and it wasn’t the first time she’d been molested.’ Lou’s mouth hung open and a broken laugh escaped. It sounded more like the groan of some wounded animal. ‘And it wasn’t going to be the last, if you’d seen her mom’s latest boyfriend in the courtroom.’
    â€˜There’s nothing you could have done about that. It wasn’t your job to solve people’s problems. Don’t beat yourself up over it. The way I heard the story you did the right thing. You took a dangerous predator off the street. And if he was made to suffer, so what? He got what he deserved.’
    â€˜I hit him four or five times with my nightstick, Maggie, in the back of the head. I could have just reached down and pulled him off her. A swift kick in the ribs would have done the trick. I saw him on top of that little girl and I lost it.’
    â€˜They should have pinned a medal on you.’
    â€˜Well, instead I was strongly advised by the department to take an early retirement, a polite way of saying get lost. The alternative would have been criminal prosecution. The charges were dropped at the time to avoid a messy lawsuit. I was proud to be a Philadelphia cop. I thought those guys were my friends and suddenly nobody wanted to be associated with me. Arnold Stegman walked.’
    â€˜You mean he rolled. You put him in a wheelchair, remember.’ Lou turned his head slowly toward his daughter. He reached his hand behind her neck, her hair tangling in his fingers. He kissed her on the top of the head. ‘You ever see her again after that?’
    â€˜I heard from her once, a couple years after the incident. She wrote me a letter, thanking me. She must have been about twelve or thirteen by then but I remember reading it and thinking that she still sounded like the same nine-year-old girl. She said that her mom thanked me too but her mom wasn’t very good at writing letters so she was writing for both of them. You know what she asked me? She wanted to know if I’d mind being her dad for a while. She’d said her mom had broken up with Jessie and wasn’t home much anymore. I guess Jessie was the boyfriend I’d seen in the courtroom. “For a while,” she’d said. How do you become someone’s dad for a while?’
    Maggie folded her arms across her chest as if the cold was beginning to sink in. Lou rolled up the window. They both watched the squad car pull away, the cop giving a brief wave, a half-assed salute as he passed.
    â€˜You still have the letter?’
    â€˜I could probably dig it up. Why?’
    â€˜I’d like to see