Then he was quiet for a while. My grandfather sang in the front room. The clock ticked over the stove. I knew what was coming and I sat there and waited for it with my hands under my legs.
"I called your mother," the captain said. "At the hospital. She's coming home. She'll be here at eight."
"Okay."
"I told her what happened over there. I told her you were the one who heard it. And I told her where you were when you heard it, and why, and what you'd been doing every afternoon for a month, because she asked me, and because it's the truth, and because I'm not going to sit in her kitchen and lie to her." He looked at me. "You understand why I did that."
"Yes, sir."
"I want you to tell me something, and I want the truth. If that little girl's monitor had been on channel B, or if she'd been on the other side of the block, or if that dog hadn't hollered at the mailman every day so Ingot would get worked up about your bag. If none of that. And your grandfather fell this afternoon, on the floor, trying to get up to tell somebody about that chimney. Would you have heard him? At the station, with the volume on two, with Chuy's radio going?"