The Saint of Carleton Estates

"Emmy, the people I work with test this blanket and are trying to figure out how it works."

"It's a miracle, Paul. Bobby's miracle. That's how it works." It's not like she was telling him a secret. Paul had to have known that.

"Emmy, we've destroyed the blanket. Each time we've taken it, my team has pulled it apart, thread by thread. We've burned it. We've cut it up. We've melted in the strongest acids. We've exposed it to radiation. We've locked it in the most secure vault we know how to make." The military man, who hadn't said anything at all, looked a bit angry at Dr. "Please call me Paul" Romano for telling Emmy some things that he himself thought were very important secrets. "But every week it reappears here, looking the same, feeling the same. Even smelling the same. It's the same blanket. How is that possible?"

"Paul," Emmy sipped her tea. She loved tea in the afternoons. It made Roberta very calm. "Do you have friends?"

Paul looked a bit shocked by the question. "Yes, yes I have friends."

"Would you do anything for your friends?"

"I'm not sure what you mean."

"It's a simple question. Bobby was a simple man but he enjoyed his friends. His enjoyment for them gave him the desire to help them, even if it was at great cost to himself. He ended up giving his life to save his friends.

"Would you do that for your friends, Paul?"

"I don't know. I hope I would."

"I agree with that. When I ask myself the same question, I hope I would too. If I'm honest, I don't know, really. But Bobby knew."

They spoke a while longer, and made a deal. In exchange for a lifetime of money, Emmy would keep the blanket at her place. She would use it to swaddle Roberta after she was born, for as long as she felt she needed to. After all, it wasn't as if the blanket could be damaged by an infant.

And, it wasn't like Paul had a lot to negotiate with. He knew Emmy could always take the blanket whenever she wanted to. In a way, Paul was happy with that.

Paul, Emmy and the military man signed official papers and shook hands. This time, the serious men left empty handed. It would be some time before they carried a blue blanket off with them, but there was time enough for that later.

Once she was ready to let the scientists of GOLDEN HALO do research and pretend to try to understand miracles, she would call Paul and arrange for the blanket to go on loan for a few weeks at a time, mostly in winter so that the Estates barbecue schedule wouldn't be interrupted. GOLDEN HALO would do its work burning, soaking, cutting, dissolving or whatever such people do to innocent blankets, but then Emmy would get it back, for whatever purposes she wanted, whenever she desired. And this schedule would go on until GOLDEN HALO figured out how the blanket worked, including how it kept coming back to Emmy, fully restored, whenever she wanted it, or until Emmy decided that she wanted to just keep it safe and secure, where no one would ever disturb it or her memory of the Saint of Carleton Estates.