Part 3
“We are going to keep you safe,” Alvarez said. “And we’re going to keep your father safe while he’s with us. I can’t promise what another person will choose later.”
June stared at the phone. Her mother’s breathing came softly through the speaker, uneven but restrained.
“He said if I made him go back to jail, there wasn’t any point living,” June said. “He said that would be because I picked Mom.”
The door to the adjoining office had not latched completely. Aaron heard her.
“That’s not what I said.” His voice came through the gap. A chair scraped, followed by an officer telling him to sit down. “June, I was upset. You know I would never put that on you.”
June flinched at every word. Nathan moved to close the door, then stopped with his hand above the knob. He looked at Alvarez. She nodded, and he shut it gently.
“You didn’t make your father say those things,” June’s mother said through the phone. “You don’t have to take care of either one of us.”
June picked at the Army button with one thumbnail. “You didn’t throw Grandpa’s stuff away?”
“No. His flag is on the bookcase. Your dad’s boxes are in the storage unit, just where we told him.”
The child looked toward the closed door. The lie about Grandpa’s things seemed to land differently from the lie that her mother no longer wanted her. It was smaller, perhaps, but easier to hold in her hand.
“My purple sneakers are at home,” she said.
“One is under your bed. The other is by the couch because Pepper sleeps with his nose in it. He won’t let me move it.”
June’s face crumpled.
This time she reached for the phone.
Alvarez carried it to a quieter room and went with her. Nathan remained in the hallway to give a preliminary account. The missing-child bulletin confirmed that Aaron had taken June from her grandmother’s driveway during a court-approved visit supervised by the grandmother herself. He had pushed her down when she tried to stop him. She had a broken wrist, but she was home from the hospital.
Updates arriving from Maryland confirmed that Aaron had booked a motel under his own name. When June chose to give Alvarez a brief account, she said he had bought the grilled cheese she liked and let her choose the cartoon channel. She also said he had taken her tablet, kept her in the bathroom while he slept, and told her that her mother had agreed to give her up.
Nathan thought of the water bottle at June’s mouth and the fresh crescent in her wrist, both made by the same thumb.
An hour later, Rachel Pike arrived with a victim advocate and a police officer from Maryland. She came through the security door too fast, saw the uniforms, and stopped herself before entering the room where June waited. She was a small woman in hospital scrubs, one knee of her pants streaked with something dark from the floor of wherever she had been when the call came.
“Does she know I’m here?” she asked.
Alvarez nodded. “She wants to see you. Slowly. Let her decide the contact.”
Rachel pressed her palms together to keep them from shaking. Nathan recognized the effort. It looked like holding a rifle steady when every muscle wanted to move.
June stood beside a chair inside the room. She had taken off the sweatshirt, revealing a yellow T-shirt with a faded planet on it and more bruises along one forearm. Rachel went down on one knee six feet away.
“Hi, Junie.”
For several seconds, neither moved. “Is Grandma mad at me?” June asked.
“No. Her cast is bright green, and she’s complaining that nobody will let her drive. She says none of this is your fault.”
“Dad said she fell.”
“She fell because he pushed past her.”
Rachel’s voice broke on the last word. She did not repair it or make an excuse for him.
June crossed the space in three running steps. Rachel caught her and sat down hard on the carpet. They stayed there, June’s face hidden against her mother’s neck, while the people in the room found reasons to look elsewhere.
From the hall came Aaron’s voice. “Junebug?”
Rachel stiffened. June did too.
The officers were moving Aaron to another exit, but he had seen through the open doorway. He stopped walking. His hands were secured in front of him, and for the first time that day he looked less angry than lost.
“Tell them you asked me to take you,” he said. “That’s all you have to say. We can fix the rest.”
One officer urged him forward.
Aaron planted his feet.
“June, look at me. I am your father.”
Nathan stepped into the doorway, not to hide Aaron from her but to keep him from coming closer. He felt June move behind him. Months of repetition told him to square his shoulders, control the space, issue the next command.
He did none of those things. “Do you want the door closed?” he asked her.
June looked around his arm. Aaron’s face changed when their eyes met. For one moment Nathan saw the father who had remembered grilled cheese and birthdays, and the child who must have spent years waiting for that version of him to stay.
“I didn’t ask you to take me,” June said.
Aaron shook his head once.
“You said we were going for ice cream. You locked the car when I screamed.”
“You were scared because your mother—”
“Stop.”
June’s hand found Rachel’s. “I want the door closed now.”
Nathan shut it. Aaron did not fight the officers. His footsteps receded down the hall, uneven at first, then lost beneath the voices from the visitor center.
June sat with a medic while Rachel answered questions. She startled when a chair leg scraped and refused food until someone brought a sealed package and let her open it herself. When the medic asked to examine the bruises beneath her sleeve, June said no twice before saying yes with her mother beside her.
Nathan’s part was nearly over. Before she left for the hospital, June came to where he waited and held out the brass button.
“Can you put this at Grandpa’s grave?”
He did not take it immediately. “I can, if that’s what you want. Or Officer Alvarez can keep it safe until you decide later.”
June considered both choices. Then she closed her fingers around the button.
“Later,” she said.
“Later is fine.”
Outside, afternoon light had shifted across the plaza. The ceremony had continued without him. Baines waited at the foot of the steps.
“The child is safe,” Baines said.
“Yes, Sergeant.”
“You were right to recognize the emergency. You also left before you had confirmation that relief had the post. For eleven seconds, the mat was empty while I moved another Sentinel into place.”
Nathan looked toward the black mat. “Both facts go in my report,” Baines said. “Not just the better one.” “They should…”
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