Chapter 4
The ambulance took Nora first.
Ellie screamed when they carried her out.
“She’ll be alone!”
Officer Hale knelt beside her.
“You helped save her. Now doctors need to help her body.”
Ellie looked at me.
“Can we go too?”
I looked at Vivian.
Police had seated her on the porch.
She was not handcuffed yet.
But she was surrounded.
“Yes,” I said. “We’re going.”
Vivian lifted her head.
“Daniel.”
I stopped.
Her face was wet.
Her voice broke.
“If you leave with them, everything is over.”
I looked at the woman I had slept beside for seven years.
The woman who packed Ellie’s lunches.
The woman who kissed my cheek before work.
The woman who knew a starving child was behind our wall.
“It already is.”
At the hospital, doctors examined Nora.
Malnutrition.
Dehydration.
Old bruises.
Healing scratches.
No immediate life-threatening injuries.
They kept saying that like it was comfort.
It was not.
Ellie sat in my lap in the waiting room.
“Is Nora my sister?”
I froze.
“Why would you ask that?”
“She said her daddy forgot her.”
I swallowed.
“Lots of children have daddies, peanut.”
Ellie leaned close.
“She knew your name.”
My body went still.
“What?”
“She asked if Daniel was home. Before I told her your name.”
I could not breathe.
“When?”
“The second day.”
I set Ellie gently beside me.
“What exactly did she say?”
Ellie rubbed her eyes.
“She said, ‘Does Daniel still live here?’ I said yes. Then she cried.”
The hallway stretched too long around me.
Vivian had said she was Nora’s guardian.
Nora knew my name.
A child had been hidden in my house.
I called my lawyer.
Then I called my older sister, Mara.
She answered sleepily.
“What happened?”
“I need you at St. Agnes Hospital.”
“Ellie?”
“She’s safe.”
“Then who?”
I looked toward the room where Nora was being treated.
“I don’t know yet.”
Mara arrived in thirty minutes.
The moment she saw Nora through the small window in the door, her face changed.
She grabbed my arm so hard it hurt.
“Daniel.”
“What?”
May you like
Her eyes filled.
“That child looks like Dad.”
