The Fugitive Grandma

Chapter 47 - The Message

Saint Jude’s was a church that had hoped to get bigger, but stayed very small. Once upon a time they had planned to expand, before the lawsuits against the archdiocese sucked up all the money. As a result, the weekend services were usually standing room only.

The Saturday following the Great American robbery, Millie, Elmer, Silvia, and the Santana family all attended an evening mass.

The moonlight reflected off the gently bubbling water fountain that lay at the heart of a concrete dais beside the parking lot. The fountain was surrounded by statues of Mary, her infant, angels, and many saints, including the church’s namesake.

Sabrina Santana, walking out of the church a few steps ahead of her parents, leaned over the fountain and dropped a penny into the pool. It was her habit since she was a little girl to throw coins into the fountain when she really wanted something. Tonight there were many wishes.

The wish first was for her father. She knew he’d been sad and frustrated ever since he lost his position at the supermarket. It was the only job he’d ever had in his whole life, and now he was struggling to find something new. Every morning, after dropping her off at school, she knew he spent the rest of the day hunting for work.

Sabrina’s next wish was that she could stay healthy. The school was counting on her to help the team win the title. She could only play if there were no more asthma attacks, no repeats of the collapse on the field earlier in the season, when Johnny came to her rescue.

She was on the new medication now, little white pills that they had given her after the collapse, the ones she overheard her parents saying were extra-expensive. They’d kept her out of trouble for the rest of the season. But for the title games, she couldn’t rely on medicine alone; she had to hope and pray that nothing would go wrong.

The last wish was for Johnny. Since he disappeared a week ago, she thought back many times to that day on the field when she lay helpless in the grass, gasping for air. She remembered the blurry view from the ground of Johnny running to her side, parting the crowd of people around her. She remembered him carrying her backpack and helping her place the inhaler against her lips.

Sabrina never told anyone that Johnny had called her on the phone that day after he disappeared. She didn’t tell the police detective, her parents, or her teacher. The kids and teachers at school talked about Johnny and Stella. They said that her friend and his grandma had done something terrible. She didn’t believe this. She knew about Johnny’s crazy dream of being a hero. She had finally come to believe in his crazy dream. This was her final wish as she stared into the moonlit fountain. It was a wish for Johnny’s dream to come true.

***

As the rest of the parishioners trailed Sabrina out of the church, clusters of friends and neighbors lingered around the fountain, chatting as they made their way out to the parking lot.

By the statue of Saint Jude, Vince, Elmer, Millie, and Silvia spoke in hushed tones so that no one else might hear them over the gurgle of the fountain.

Silvia gave them her account of everything that happened during the Great American robbery. She and Marco were fired in the aftermath, but Lowry didn’t press criminal charges against them for the fight at the checkout counter.

“Maybe they were trying to sweep this whole thing under the rug,” Elmer suggested.

“Not much chance of that anymore. Jeez, it’s all over the news now,” Vince said, shaking his head. “Such a sweet lady, such a good kid. How did it ever come to this? They don’t deserve this situation. I wish there was something we could do to help them out.”