Chương 5
Mara rubbed her forehead.
“You negotiate with this hospital system.”
“Not St. Matthew’s directly.”
“That is not better.”
“I wanted to know if the records still exist.”
“You wanted to get ahead of it.”
Daniel’s expression hardened.
“I wanted information.”
“You always call it information when you’re trying to control the room.”
Claire watched her husband.
He did not deny it.
Noah finished half his sandwich.
“Can we find Eli first?”
Mara looked at him.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“We start with what he actually told you.”
“He told us almost nothing.”
“That’s still something.”
Claire listed it.
His name was Eli. His mother had died last winter. He carried the bracelet because she told him not to lose it. He was wary of police. He had a scraped knee from climbing a fence. He appeared to be without a responsible adult.
Mara asked, “Did he have a backpack?”
“No.”
“Phone?”
“Not that I saw.”
“Food?”
“No.”
“Blanket?”
“No.”
“Anything else?”
Claire pictured him beneath the street lamp.
“His hoodie pocket sagged on one side.”
“Could be possessions.”
“Or nothing.”
“Did he smell?”
Claire stared at her.
“What?”
“It matters.”
“I don’t know.”
Noah said, “Like laundry.”
Everyone looked at him.
“What kind?” Mara asked.
Noah thought.
“Cheap laundry. Like the towels at summer camp.”
Claire almost corrected the description and stopped.
Mara nodded.
“That suggests he may have access to a shelter, church, drop-in center, laundromat, something.”
Daniel said, “Or he washed his hoodie.”
“That too.”
Mara took out her phone.
“I know a youth outreach director who works downtown.”
Claire said, “Can you call her without making this official?”
“Depends what you mean by official. If Eli is eight and genuinely unsheltered, there are mandatory reporting issues.”
Claire’s stomach tightened.
“He’ll run.”
“Maybe.”
“He was afraid we’d call the police.”
“Lots of homeless kids are.”
“He’s eight.”
Mara’s face softened slightly.
“I know.”
Noah folded his napkin.
“Maybe he isn’t homeless.”
They looked at him.
“He looked homeless,” Noah said. “But people can look like stuff and not be it.”
Mara smiled faintly.
“Correct.”
Claire touched his hair.
He ducked away because he hated when she fixed it in public.
That ordinary irritation almost broke her.
By six that evening, they had learned two things.
There was a church three blocks east that ran a meal program.
And an eight-year-old boy named Eli Mercer had been staying intermittently with a woman named Jo Alvarez in a transitional family residence six blocks south.
Mara’s outreach contact did not give them an address at first.
She called the residence herself.
Twenty minutes later, Jo called Claire.
Her voice was suspicious before Claire finished saying hello.
“You the woman bothering Eli?”
Claire looked at Mara.
“I spoke with him this afternoon.”
“He says you tried to take his bracelet.”
“I reached for it. I shouldn’t have.”
A pause.
“You rich?”
Claire glanced at her trench coat.
“Yes.”
“Figures.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means people with money usually start with ‘I can help’ and finish with paperwork.”
Claire sat down in the bakery chair again.
“What do you need from me?”
“Nothing.”
“I mean to make this less frightening for him.”
Another pause.
“Stop making it about you.”
Claire felt heat rise in her face.
Mara mouthed, She’s right.
Claire ignored her.
“May I speak with Eli?”
“No.”
“All right.”
That answer seemed to change something.
Jo said, “Why do you care about the bracelet?”
“It has my family name on it.”
“He told me.”
“The date is my son’s birth date.”
Silence.
Jo’s voice was different when she returned.
“You got a son?”
“Yes.”
“How old?”
“Eight.”
Another silence.
Then, “Don’t come here tonight.”
Claire leaned forward.
“Why?”
“Because he’s scared. Because he thinks you’re going to take the bracelet. Because he thinks if you know what it means, you might take him too.”
Claire closed her eyes.
“I won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know I’m not going to take a child.”
“I didn’t say kidnap him.”
Claire had no answer.
Jo continued, “People decide what happens to kids all the time and call it helping.”
Mara nodded.
Claire wished everyone would stop being right.
“What can I do?”
“Come tomorrow. Ten in the morning. Just you.”
Daniel reacted immediately.
Claire held up a hand.
“Why just me?”
“Because he asked for you.”
Claire looked at Noah.
Her son tried not to show how much that hurt.
“Okay.”
“Ten.”
The call ended.
Noah stared at his sandwich wrapper.
“He asked for you.”
Claire sat beside him.
“I heard.”
“He didn’t ask for me.”
“No.”
“Even though I talked to him first.”
“I know.”
Noah shrugged, another imitation of adulthood that did not fit his face.
“It’s fine.”
“It doesn’t look fine.”
“I said it is.”
Claire almost pressed.
Instead she let him have the lie.
That night, Noah slept in Claire and Daniel’s bed for the first time in almost four years.
Nobody discussed it.
He appeared in the doorway at 1:12 a.m. carrying his pillow.
Claire lifted the blanket.
Daniel moved toward the edge.
Noah climbed between them and turned his back on his father.
Daniel stared at the ceiling.
Claire could feel the space between their bodies, less than two feet and somehow enormous.
After Noah’s breathing settled, Daniel whispered, “I should have told you.”
Claire did not answer.
“I was thirty-two. You nearly died. He was in neonatal observation. The administrator said there was no second surviving infant. I asked twice.”
“You asked twice.”
“Yes.”
“And that satisfied you.”
“No.”
“Then what satisfied you?”
“Time.”
Claire looked at him.
Daniel kept his voice low.
“Days passed. Then weeks. Nothing happened. Nobody called. There was no second baby on any bill, discharge paper, insurance claim, pediatric record. The OB said the second sac had been nonviable.”
“So you decided the hospital was right.”
“I decided I wanted them to be right.”
That was harder to hate.
May you like
Claire looked at Noah’s hair on the pillow.
“Did you ever check again?”
