Part 4
“Give her some space,” Daniel said. “We’re coming.”
“Her mother’s sitting with her. Nobody’s pushing.”
“Tell Tessa we found all five. June too.”
“I have. She wants to hear it from you.”
He drove to the hospital with Boone lying behind the partition, his chin resting on the edge of the seat. At a traffic light, Daniel reached through the opening in the partition and laid a hand on the dog’s shoulder. His own hands had begun to shake now that there was nothing urgent for them to do. He tightened them around the steering wheel until the light changed.
Ruth met him outside the pediatric examination area. Boone stayed with an officer near the hospital’s covered entrance while Daniel went in.
A man stood beside the room’s doorway, one hand braced against the wall. A woman sat in a chair inside with her coat still on. Neither looked up until Ruth said Daniel’s name. The man stepped forward.
“Scott Ward.”
Daniel shook his hand. “Daniel Hale.”
Scott’s grip was hard and brief. He tried to speak again, but only nodded toward the room.
Tessa was sitting on the examination table with the fox in her lap. Her shoes were still on. Andrea Ward sat several feet away, her hands tucked beneath her thighs as though she had put them there to keep herself from reaching.
The resemblance was immediate. Tessa had her mother’s narrow chin and the same small crease between her eyebrows. Daniel stopped just inside the doorway.
“Hey.”
“Where’s Boone?”
“Outside. They found a place where you can see him before you leave.”
Tessa looked past him. “Where’s June?”
“With Eli. They’re getting checked by doctors too.”
“Did she come out?”
“Yes.”
“Did you pull her?”
“No. She came out when she was ready.”
Tessa pressed her lips together. “The other ones?”
“Nora, Mason, and Ben. All five.”
She looked at his shirt, at the dust on his trousers, at the pale smear of foam stuck to one sleeve. “Did Eli have his ruler?”
“He did.”
“He said he could poke Cal’s hand with it.”
“He doesn’t need to do that now.”
Tessa’s fingers loosened around the fox. For several seconds nobody spoke. Somewhere farther down the hallway, a cart rolled over a threshold with a hard clatter. Tessa startled and pulled her feet up onto the table.
Andrea moved halfway out of her chair, then stopped.
“It’s a cart,” Ruth said. “You can look through the door if you want.”
Tessa shook her head. Daniel pulled a chair away from the wall.
“Can I sit?”
She nodded. Andrea looked at him. Her face was swollen around the eyes, and a strand of hair had caught beneath her coat collar. She appeared to be waiting for instructions about the one thing she had been doing for nine years.
Daniel sat beside the door. Tessa looked at her mother.
“I told him where they were.”
Andrea nodded. “I’m glad.”
“I said their names.”
“That’s okay.”
“Paula said I wasn’t supposed to.”
Scott’s hand closed around the doorframe. Ruth touched his arm, and he let go. Andrea leaned forward slightly.
“You can tell us things.”
Tessa looked down. “She said if I talked, Cal would take somebody away.”
“Paula’s been arrested,” Daniel said. “She isn’t coming into this room.”
Andrea’s eyes filled again. Daniel watched Tessa track the tears. The girl’s shoulders rose, and she began twisting the fox’s repaired ear. Andrea wiped her face with the heel of her hand.
“I’m crying because I missed you,” she said. “You’re not in trouble.”
“I went with her.”
“I know.”
“I thought—”
Her voice stopped. Andrea waited.
“I thought you knew.”
Her mother took a breath that seemed to catch painfully beneath her ribs. “I know, baby.”
Tessa looked toward Scott. “Are you mad?”
He crouched beside the doorway rather than coming closer. “At the people who took you.”
The girl stared at him.
“I’ve been mad at traffic lights,” he said. “And my phone when it wouldn’t ring. And everybody who told me to go get some sleep.”
Andrea gave a brief, wet laugh. Tessa didn’t smile. She studied her father’s face until he lowered his eyes and wiped them with his sleeve.
“You have your work shirt on,” she said.
Scott looked down at it. There was a dark mark near the cuff and a torn seam at one shoulder.
“I came straight from the shop.”
“You said you were getting rid of that one.”
“I forgot.”
Tessa put one foot over the edge of the table. Andrea’s hands came out from beneath her thighs, but she kept them in her lap.
“Can I come sit beside you?”
The girl hesitated, then nodded. Her mother moved slowly. She sat on the edge of the table, leaving a few inches between them. Tessa leaned into that space before Andrea had finished settling.
Her mother wrapped one arm around her, carefully at first. Then Tessa dropped the fox and turned, pressing her whole face against the collar of Andrea’s coat. Scott came to the other side of the table. He put his hand on the back of Tessa’s head and left it there while his daughter held on to her mother.
Daniel stood and moved into the hallway. Ruth followed a moment later. They waited beside the door without speaking, listening to Andrea answer the same small question twice.
“Yes. We’re taking you home.”
There were still examinations to finish and conversations the family would have to have. The children found at the warehouse would need more than an afternoon’s kindness. Daniel gave Ruth the information Brooks had asked him to pass along, then went outside to Boone. The dog greeted him by pushing his nose firmly into the reward pouch.
“You’ve had yours.”
Boone checked the other pocket. Daniel sat on the low wall beneath the covered entrance. He unclipped the dog’s harness and rubbed the place where the strap had pressed against his chest.
After a while, Tessa came through the doors with her parents. Ruth walked beside them carrying the papers Andrea had been given. The girl paused at the sound of a vehicle pulling away from the curb.
Scott stopped with her. He didn’t take her arm or tell her to hurry. When the noise had passed, she walked toward Boone.
Daniel asked the dog to lie down, and Tessa knelt beside him with her parents close by. She touched his ear the way June had, then rested her hand on the broad part of his shoulder.
“Did he find the door?”
“Yes.”
“Did he go in first?”
“He showed me where to look.”
She considered that. “I was trying to make him look at me.”
“At the station?”
Tessa nodded. “We had a dog before. When I moved my fingers, she always came over because she thought I had something.”
Daniel looked at the small hand resting in Boone’s fur. “Boone thought something like that.”
“I didn’t have anything.”
“He came anyway.”
Tessa leaned closer, speaking near the dog’s ear. “You got two for June?”
“He did.”
“Good.”
Daniel took out his keys to open the vehicle. The old brass tag clicked against the ring, and Tessa looked at it.
“Why do you have his name?”
“It was on his first collar. I kept it.”
“Is it a badge?”
“Just his name.”
She reached toward it, then stopped. Daniel slipped the tag off the ring and looked at Andrea. Her mother gave a small nod. He placed it in Tessa’s palm.
The girl closed her fingers around it and held her fist against Boone’s shoulder. Her parents waited while she stroked him once more, from the top of his head to the loose fur at his neck. Then she stood.
“Can we come see him sometime?”
“We can work that out,” Daniel said.
Tessa turned toward her parents. Andrea offered her hand and waited.
The girl opened her fist and tucked Boone’s tag into her jacket pocket. With the fox under her other arm, she took her mother’s hand. At the curb, Scott opened the car door. Tessa looked inside, then back at Boone.
The dog was watching Daniel’s pocket again. She let out a small laugh and climbed in.