She was crying now.
"I had a son," she said.
Her voice was very soft.
"His name was Daniel. He drowned in Lake Michigan when he was 14 years old."
"He would have been exactly your age."
Eli did not know what to say.
So he said nothing.
He just held her hand.
"You are not going to die tonight," Maggie said. "Do you hear me, Eli Carter?"
"You are not going to die tonight."
"I will not allow it."
He nodded.
He believed her.
He did not know why.
But he believed her.
The hours after that were a blur.
She made him talk.
She made him tell her about the houses he wanted to build.
She made him describe every one in detail.
The number of rooms.
The placement of the windows.
The kind of stone he would use for the fireplaces.
She told him she had a husband named Beau who would like him.
She told him her husband was a complicated man who looked frightening but had a soft heart.
She told him about the free clinic she ran on the east side.
The cot in the back room where she sometimes slept when a patient was bad off.
She talked and talked.
Her voice grew weaker.
Eli understood she was talking to keep herself awake.
He understood he was listening to keep himself awake.
Somewhere in the deepest part of the night, the two of them became something they had not been before.
They became bound.
They became something that would not let go.
Around four in the morning, she stopped talking.
Eli's heart seized.
He shook her good shoulder gently.
Terrified.
"Maggie. Maggie."
Her eyes opened slowly.
"I'm here, baby."
"Don't go to sleep."
"I won't."
"Promise me."
"I promise."
The first pale gray of dawn began to show above the rooftops.
The wind had finally died.
The world was more silent than Eli had ever heard it.
Maggie opened her eyes and looked at him with a clarity that surprised him.
"Eli," she said. "It's time."
"The diner on Eighth. They open at six."
"You go there now. You tell them there's a woman in this alley who's been shot and has hypothermia."
"Tell them to send an ambulance to the alcove by the vent at the auto-parts store on Fifth and Main."
"Then you leave. Do you hear me? You leave."
"You disappear."
"The men who tried to kill me may still be looking. They cannot see you."
"Do you understand?"
"I'm not leaving you."
"You are."
Her voice had iron in it now.
The iron of a woman who had told men three times her size what to do and had been obeyed.
"You are leaving."
"You've saved my life. Now you have to save your own."
"I will not have your death on my conscience, Eli."
"Please."
He looked at her.
He looked at the parka still wrapped around her shoulders.
His only coat.
The thing that had stood between him and the cold for two winters.