Chương 1
“You left her here alone?”
Andrew’s voice cut through the marching drums without rising into a shout. That made it worse. He stood between the folding chairs and the parade barricade, one arm rigid at his side and the other pointing at his mother. Behind him, flags snapped above brick storefronts, children waved plastic pinwheels, and a brass band advanced somewhere beyond the crowd. At his feet, Hannah curled against Jenna in her pale-blue dress, one bare heel raw and bleeding beside a broken American flag. Brenda opened her mouth, but for a moment nothing came out. Sabrina rolled her eyes as though Andrew had objected to a restaurant reservation.
Jenna kept one arm around Hannah and held her phone upright in the other hand. The screen was still lit from the call she had made to Andrew thirty seconds earlier. She had intended to say only that she had found Hannah. Then she had seen the child’s shoes abandoned under a chair, the torn skin on her heel, and the way Hannah flinched when Brenda came near.
“Andrew,” Brenda said at last, lifting one hand. “Don’t make a scene.”
The words were almost lost beneath a burst of applause from the far side of Main Street.
Hannah tightened her fingers around Jenna’s arm.
“Grandma said I was too slow,” she whispered.
Jenna felt the sentence more than she heard it. Hannah’s breath came in short, careful pulls against her shoulder. Her long hair had stuck to the dampness beneath her eyes. A smear of dust marked one knee. She had removed both patriotic sneakers and placed them side by side beneath the chair, neat even while frightened, because Hannah always lined up her shoes.
Brenda glanced at the spectators who had begun watching from behind the barricade.
“She was told to stay put,” she said.
Sabrina looked down at her phone. “She was being dramatic.”
Andrew’s hand lowered. His expression did not change, but the small muscle beside his jaw moved once.
Dennis stood behind Brenda in his light-blue polo, his arms folded. His sunglasses hid his eyes. Carter and Brooklyn were beside him with parade toys in their hands, both unusually still. Brooklyn’s red-white-and-blue wand drooped toward the pavement.
Two strangers near the lawn chairs watched Hannah with open concern. One of them, a middle-aged woman wearing a visor, had been the person who helped Jenna find the ice wrapped in napkins now melting beside the picnic basket. The other man kept looking from Brenda to the child as if trying to decide whether he should intervene.
Andrew crouched slowly.
Hannah tried to straighten. “I can walk now.”
“You never have to prove that,” he said.
He slid one arm behind her back and the other beneath her knees, careful not to touch her injured heel. Hannah went stiff for half a second before folding into him. Andrew stood with her against his chest. The broken flag remained on the pavement, one wooden piece separated from the other.
Brenda stepped forward. “I was coming back.”
Andrew did not look at her.
Sabrina gave a short, irritated laugh. “You’re overreacting.”
“No,” Andrew said. “We’re done.”
He carried Hannah away through the gap between the chairs. Jenna picked up the sneakers, the broken flag, and her purse, then followed close enough that Hannah could reach for her. Behind them, Brenda called Andrew’s name once. He kept walking.
The parade continued because parades did. A drumline passed beneath the flags. A vendor lifted the lid from a metal cart, releasing the smell of onions and hot oil. People shifted their folding chairs to make room for Andrew, Jenna, and the child between them. Some stared. Others looked away with the strained courtesy people used when they had witnessed something private in public.
At the corner of Main and Walnut, an officer in a bright traffic vest saw Hannah in Andrew’s arms and raised a hand.
“Everything okay?”
“No,” Jenna said.
Andrew stopped. The officer looked at Hannah’s bare foot, then at Jenna’s face.
“Do you need medical?”
“I think urgent care,” Jenna said. “She’s been alone. We don’t know how long.”
“I wasn’t alone the whole time,” Hannah murmured.
Andrew looked down at her. “Who was with you?”
Hannah pressed her mouth against his shirt.
The officer’s expression changed by a degree. “Let’s step over here.”
They moved behind a row of temporary barriers near a pharmacy window. The music became less immediate there, though the low thud of drums still came through the glass. Jenna set the sneakers on the ground. The left one had a dark stain inside the heel. She had not noticed that before.
The officer introduced himself as Officer Malik. He spoke gently to Hannah and asked whether she knew where she was, who she had come with, and whether anyone had hurt her. Hannah answered the easy questions. She knew her full name. She knew Jenna’s phone number, though she reversed two digits before correcting herself. She said no one had hit her.
When he asked how she had come to be sitting between the chairs, she looked at Jenna.
“You can tell him,” Jenna said.
“I slowed everybody down.”
“That isn’t what he asked.”
Hannah rubbed the side of her thumb over Andrew’s shirt button. “Grandma said I should stay there until I could stop making everything about me.”
The officer glanced toward Main Street, where Brenda and the others were no longer visible from the corner.
Jenna’s grip tightened around the broken flag. The splintered wood pressed into her palm.
“How long?” Officer Malik asked.
Hannah’s shoulders lifted.
“She doesn’t know,” Andrew said.
May you like
The officer nodded. “Do you know when you last saw her?”
Jenna opened her mouth, then had to work backward through the afternoon. They had arrived shortly after noon. Sabrina had insisted on the family photo at twelve forty-five because Carter’s baseball team float was scheduled near one. At one ten, Brenda had offered to take the children toward the front viewing area while Jenna waited at the food cart with Andrew. At one thirty-eight, Jenna had sent Brenda a message asking whether Hannah wanted lemonade. Brenda had replied, She’s fine. At one fifty-two, Sabrina posted a photo in the family group chat of Carter and Brooklyn near the reviewing stand. Hannah was not in it.
