Part 4
Grant had known the sentence was coming.
Knowing did not make it easier to hear.
Talia explained that Noah was now in emergency protective custody. The county had to search for relatives, verify his identity, investigate any parental claims, and place him with a licensed caregiver.
Grant understood every word. He also understood that rescuing a child did not create a right to keep him.
Still, when Noah woke and began to cry, he turned toward Grant’s voice before anyone else’s.
Mara lifted the baby and checked him, then placed him carefully into Grant’s arms. “He knows your rhythm,” she said. “That’s all. The way you hold him. The sound of your chest.”
It should not have felt like so much.
Grant sat beside the crib until evening. Talia interviewed him in the fire station office, asking about his military service, income, health, home, criminal history, and family.
When she asked whether he lived alone by choice, he answered honestly.
“My wife died seven years ago. She was pregnant.”
Talia lowered her pen. “I’m sorry.”
“I was deployed.”
“You don’t need to explain that.”
“I know.”
But he did need to say it. He had spent years letting people assume solitude suited him, because correcting them required admitting what it had cost.
Talia resumed writing. “Do you have experience caring for infants?”
“Since last night?”
The corner of her mouth moved, though she did not quite smile. “Before last night.”
“No.”
“Would you be interested in becoming a foster placement?”
Grant looked through the office window. Mara was feeding Noah while Sadie watched from the doorway.
The question frightened him more than Dean Hollis had.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s a reasonable answer.”
The emergency foster parents arrived after the highway reopened the next morning. Joe and Lila Haskins were a retired teacher and a mechanic who had cared for more than a dozen infants during investigations and family crises.
They were gentle, prepared, and clearly experienced.
Grant disliked them immediately for being exactly what Noah needed.
Lila did not take the baby from him. She waited until Grant stood and placed Noah in her arms. That small courtesy nearly broke the control he had maintained since the porch.
Sadie rose when the infant carrier moved toward the door.
“She can’t come,” Talia said softly.
Sadie pushed past Grant and positioned herself in front of Lila. She did not growl. She simply stood there, staring at Noah.
Grant knelt and placed both hands against the dog’s neck. “He’s safe.”
Sadie looked at him.
“I promise.”
For several seconds, she refused to move. Then she stepped aside and watched the carrier disappear into the Haskinses’ vehicle.
Tucker whined from beneath a chair.
Grant drove back to the cabin with both dogs and no baby.
The front door had been forced open. Drawers lay overturned, bedding had been pulled apart, and the laptop was gone. Dean and Cole had searched for the memory card after Grant escaped.
They had found nothing.
Grant repaired the door before he cleaned anything else. Sadie walked through every room, searching. Each time she returned to the kitchen, she looked toward the empty place where Noah’s makeshift bed had been.
The cabin felt larger than it had before the storm.
For three days, Grant told himself the emptiness was familiar.
On the fourth, he called Talia.
“What would I have to do?”
She did not ask what he meant. “Background checks. References. Training. A home inspection. Infant-safety requirements. Medical clearance. It won’t guarantee placement.”
“I understand.”
“Do you?”
“No,” Grant said. “But send me the forms.”
The following six weeks reorganized his life.
He attended foster-parent classes in a county office where everyone else seemed to arrive as a couple. He installed smoke alarms, locked medical supplies, added railings, bought a crib, and converted the small room where he had stored military gear into a nursery.
Mara helped him choose bottles and explained that newborns did not care whether blankets matched. She came to the cabin after her hospital shifts, usually with a practical excuse and sometimes with food.
“You bought twelve pacifiers,” she said during one visit.
“I didn’t know which type he’d use.”
“He may hate all of them.”
“That seems inefficient.”
“He’s a baby, Grant. Efficiency isn’t the system.”
Tucker grew quickly and developed a habit of stealing clean diapers from the open packages. Sadie recovered more slowly. The wounds beneath her harness healed, but she continued sleeping beside the empty crib.
Grant visited Noah at the Haskinses’ home whenever Talia permitted it. He learned to prepare formula without checking the instructions three times. He learned that Noah settled when carried near a window and became furious when his socks slipped off.
Lila watched the two of them one afternoon and said, “You know you don’t have to look like someone’s grading you.”
“I’m not good at this.”
“No one good at it thinks they are.”
The investigation moved more slowly than Grant wanted, but it moved. State officers closed Haven House and relocated four women to legitimate shelters. Records on Claire’s memory card matched bank transfers, falsified consent forms, and payments routed through several private adoption intermediaries.
Cole Vance was arrested after investigators found Claire’s phone and one of Haven House’s missing intake ledgers in his vehicle.
Dean Hollis disappeared for nine days.
He was taken into custody at a bus terminal in Utah after using someone else’s identification. Authorities charged him first with offenses they could prove quickly, while prosecutors continued building the larger case.
None of that returned Claire to Noah.
Two months after the storm, Grant received provisional approval as a foster parent. Talia arrived at the cabin with the Haskinses behind her and Noah secured in the back seat.
Sadie heard the baby before the vehicle doors opened.
She ran from the porch despite the stiffness in her hind leg and stopped beside the carrier. Her entire body trembled as Lila set it on the ground.
Noah opened his eyes.
Sadie lowered her muzzle until it touched the blanket over his feet.
Grant looked away long enough to regain control.
Inside, Lila walked through the feeding schedule. Talia reviewed appointments, visitation rules, court dates, and the limits of provisional placement. Grant signed every page.
When the others had gone, he sat in the rocking chair with Noah against his chest. Sadie lay beside him. Tucker rested beneath the crib with a stolen washcloth.
For the first time since the night of the storm, the cabin sounded right.
The phone rang before sunset.
It was Talia.
“We completed another records search,” she said. “Grant, we found Noah’s family…”
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