Part 4
Nora Carter stopped with her arms still held out.
Her husband touched her elbow, and she lowered them. He set the little jacket on a chair instead of trying to put it around his daughter. The nurse stayed by the door while Fiona moved beside Maisie without blocking her view.
Daniel kept Scout near the bench. The girl’s hand came back to the dog, but her eyes remained on her mother.
“It’s me, baby,” Nora said.
Maisie nodded, but her hand stayed in Scout’s fur.
Nora took hold of the chair her husband had found and sat down. It was a few feet away from Maisie. She pulled at one cardigan sleeve, trying to cover her shaking fingers.
“Can I sit here?”
Maisie nodded again.
Ben remained behind the chair for a moment. Then he crouched beside it, making himself smaller too.
“We brought your green jacket,” he said. “I couldn’t find the purple one.”
“It’s behind the laundry basket.”
He made a sound that almost became a laugh. “That’s why.”
Daniel looked down at Scout and gave them a moment. Maisie had drawn her shoes up onto the bench. The right one still wouldn’t stay on.
Nora saw it too.
“Would you like those off?”
Maisie shook her head. “I have to have shoes.”
“All right. You can keep them on.”
No one told her why she didn’t have to. Daniel heard the rain gutter dripping behind the bench and Scout’s nails click as the dog shifted his paws. Ben moved the jacket from the chair to his lap.
“They said you weren’t coming,” Maisie told her mother.
Nora’s mouth opened. She looked briefly at Fiona, then back at her child.
“I’ve been trying to find you every day. Your dad too.”
“She said you went away.”
“I’m here.”
Maisie rubbed a patch of fur behind Scout’s ear. Daniel felt the dog lean against his leg, relaxed after the long day, accepting the uneven strokes.
“I went with him,” the girl said.
Ben bowed his head. Nora’s hand moved away from her sleeve, then stopped halfway toward the bench.
“He told you something that wasn’t true,” she said.
“I should’ve waited.”
“He was the grown-up. He knew what he was doing.”
Maisie pressed her face against her knees. Her mother let her hand fall back into her lap. Daniel could see the effort it cost her to sit three feet away from a child she hadn’t held in eleven days.
Ben began to speak, stopped, then tried again.
“We want you home, Maisie. That’s what we want.”
The girl lifted her face. “Even if I said Rosie?”
Nora covered her mouth. For a second Daniel thought she would rise and cross the space between them despite everything. Instead, she pulled her chair a little closer and stopped when Maisie’s shoulders tightened.
“You can tell me what you had to say later,” Nora said. “Or you can sleep first.”
Maisie studied her.
“Can Dad stay too?”
“I’m staying,” Ben said at once.
He put the jacket down again. Maisie watched him settle beside her mother’s chair.
Nora turned one hand palm up on her knee. She didn’t reach with it. After a little while, Maisie put her own hand over it, barely touching.
Her mother waited.
Maisie’s fingertips tapped against Nora’s palm. Five times, quickly, then stopped. Nora curled her hand around the small fingers and pressed each one in turn, slowly enough that the girl could follow.
At the third finger, Maisie’s face crumpled.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
Nora moved onto the bench only when the girl pulled her hand. She sat beside her daughter and let Maisie lean into her before putting an arm around her shoulders. Ben came to the other side and rested his hand on the girl’s back.
For several seconds Maisie stayed rigid between them. Then she lifted her face toward her mother’s neck and began crying with her mouth open, the sounds rough and unhidden.
Daniel gathered Scout’s leash. The dog rose, and Maisie reached down at once.
“Don’t go.”
“We’ll stay a little longer,” he said.
He sat at the far end of the bench, close enough for Scout to lie beneath Maisie’s dangling hand. Fiona told the family that the doctor would see Maisie again and her parents could stay with her.
Maisie listened from inside her mother’s arms, then turned toward Daniel.
“Will I have to tell it again?”
“Not to me,” he said. “People will need to ask you questions later, but your parents can help.”
“You wrote Owen.”
“I did.”
“Can you show Mom?”
Daniel took out his notebook and opened it to the page. Nora read the name twice. Her thumb rested beside the O.
“There’s a boy,” Maisie told her. “He hurt his foot. We couldn’t leave him.”
“They found him,” Nora said.
“Scout did.”
Daniel left her words alone. He could still see the dog’s nose at the cupboard door, the child moving in the dark, Beth holding the injured foot while Owen climbed toward the fur.
Ben wiped his face with the heel of one hand. “We’d like to thank you,” he said to Daniel.
“You can help her get some rest.”
He meant it as a practical answer, but it came out too briskly. Ben nodded anyway. Daniel softened his voice and added, “I’m glad I was there.”
“So am I,” Nora said.
A hospital aide came to the doorway with sandwiches. Maisie chose one and unwrapped it in her lap, checking the bread before she took a small bite. Nora waited until her daughter was eating before accepting a sandwich herself.
Fiona’s update from Keene was brief: the other children were receiving care, and detectives were contacting their families and investigating who had been waiting for Maisie.
Maisie dropped a crumb. Scout looked at it, then at Daniel.
“Not yours,” Daniel told him.
The dog rested his chin on one front paw with an audible sigh.
Maisie swallowed her bite. “He doesn’t like that rule.”
“He keeps hoping I’ll forget it.”
Ben laughed once, quietly. Maisie looked at him, then smiled with only one side of her mouth. Her mother tightened her arm around her and loosened it immediately when the girl shifted.
Daniel checked Scout’s collar and smoothed the fur caught beneath it. The day was settling into his knees and shoulders. He wanted to take the dog home, feed him, and sit without listening to a radio, but he stayed while Maisie ate the middle of her sandwich and left the crusts stacked on the wrapper.
The nurse returned to take them inside. Maisie looked at the door and held her mother’s hand tighter.
“Owen’s here?”
“In the hospital,” Fiona said. “I can check with the people helping him and tell him you’re here too.”
Maisie thought about that. “Tell him I didn’t get on.”
“I will.”
She slid off the bench. One shoe came off and stayed beneath it, and for a moment she froze, looking at the bare sock as though she’d lost something she wasn’t allowed to lose.
Ben crouched and picked up the shoe. “Let’s carry these,” he said.
Maisie glanced at her mother. Nora nodded, and the girl stepped out of the other shoe herself.
Before she went inside, she came back to Scout. Daniel kept him sitting while she put both arms around his shoulders, her face turned to the side, and loosened them when he shifted. His tail swept over the wet paving stones.
“Bye, Scout,” she whispered into his coat.
She straightened, pulling a tuft of loose fur from her sleeve. Nora held out her hand. Maisie took it and walked through the doorway in her new socks, her father following with the empty shoes.