Chương 3
After the bandage was secured, the physician assistant recommended loose sandals or an open-backed shoe until the skin healed. She gave them printed instructions about cleaning the wound and signs of infection. She also asked Hannah whether she felt safe going home.
“Yes,” Hannah said quickly.
“With your mom and stepdad?”
Hannah looked at Andrew. “He’s my dad.”
The physician assistant nodded as though there were nothing complicated in that answer. “Okay.”
In the parking lot, Andrew buckled Hannah into the back seat. Jenna stood beside the open door with the broken flag still in her purse. The heat from the asphalt rose around her ankles.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Hannah leaned her head against the seat. “For what?”
Jenna could not say, For believing adults who had already shown me who they were. That would make Hannah responsible for understanding something Jenna had avoided for years.
“For not finding you sooner.”
“I knew you would.”
The trust in the sentence was unbearable.
Andrew closed the door gently and walked around the car. He stopped before reaching the driver’s side.
“You almost said no to the report.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Not here.”
“Where, then?”
Hannah could see them through the window. Jenna watched her pick at the edge of the new bandage.
“At home,” she said.
Andrew nodded once, got into the car, and drove.
They passed families walking toward the evening fireworks. Children carried blankets and glow sticks. A man balanced a cooler on one shoulder. At a red light, a convertible filled with teenagers rolled alongside them, music loud enough to shake the door panels. Hannah slept through it within ten minutes.
Andrew drove with both hands on the wheel.
Jenna checked her phone. Twenty-three messages waited in the family group chat.
The first was from Brenda: I cannot believe Andrew spoke to me that way in public.
Then Sabrina: Mom was trying to manage THREE kids while you two took your time buying food.
Dennis had written nothing.
An aunt in Ohio asked what happened. Another relative sent a question mark. Brenda replied before Jenna could decide whether to answer.
Hannah refused to keep up, so Mom told her to wait in the family seating area, which was perfectly safe. Jenna found her. She has a blister. Andrew made it ugly.
Jenna read the message twice.
Then another appeared from Sabrina.
Nobody “abandoned” anybody. Please stop using that word.
Jenna had not used that word in the chat.
She took a screenshot.
Andrew glanced toward the phone. “What are they saying?”
“Nothing useful.”
“Read it.”
“Not while you’re driving.”
He turned into their neighborhood without answering.
At home, Hannah wanted macaroni and cheese from the blue box, not the homemade kind Jenna usually made. Andrew prepared it while Jenna helped Hannah change into soft pajamas. The pale-blue dress had a gray mark across the back where she had sat on the pavement. Jenna soaked it in the bathroom sink because doing something with her hands felt necessary.
Hannah watched from the closed toilet lid.
“Is Grandma mad at me?”
Jenna turned off the faucet.
“No.”
“She looked mad.”
“She was worried about herself.”
The sentence came out before Jenna could soften it.
Hannah considered this. “Because Dad was mad?”
“Yes.”
“Is Aunt Sabrina mad?”
“I think so.”
“At me?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
Jenna sat on the edge of the tub. “I’m sure none of this was your fault.”
Hannah looked down at her bandage. “I could have walked faster.”
“No.”
“I do walk slow.”
“Sometimes.”
“Carter said I ruined the picture.”
Jenna felt a pulse begin in her temple. “When did he say that?”
“Before. When Grandma said we had to hurry.”
“Did he say it mean?”
Hannah shrugged. “He wanted to be on the float.”
That answer sounded like Hannah. She rarely made villains out of children, even when adults did it for her.
“Carter didn’t understand what was happening,” Jenna said.
“Do I have to see Grandma at the fireworks?”
“No.”
“What about next Sunday?”
Every Sunday in July, Brenda hosted dinner. The routine had survived weather, illness, Jenna’s pregnancy loss two years earlier, Andrew’s busiest quarter at work, and nearly every argument the family pretended not to have. Brenda moved dinner by an hour when necessary, but she never canceled it. Attendance was treated as character.
“You don’t have to go anywhere you don’t feel safe,” Jenna said.
Hannah’s eyes lifted. “Will you go?”
“No.”
The answer surprised them both.
In the kitchen, Andrew stirred powdered cheese into the pot with too much force. A little sauce splashed onto the stove. He wiped it immediately.
Hannah ate at the table with her injured foot resting on a chair. She talked about the urgent care candy bowl and whether it was wrong to take two pieces when the sign did not say one per person. Neither adult corrected her when she picked out the noodles she considered too soft.
After dinner, Andrew carried her upstairs. Jenna followed with the printed instructions and a cup of water. Hannah asked Andrew to stay until she fell asleep. He lay on top of the blanket, fully dressed, one hand resting near her shoulder without touching it.
Jenna stood in the doorway.
The lamp projected small stars onto the ceiling. Hannah had chosen it when she was six and still called Andrew by his first name. The first time she called him Dad had been accidental. She had shouted it from the playground after falling from a climbing wall. Andrew had run so fast he left Jenna’s purse on a bench.
He never mentioned the word afterward. He let Hannah decide whether it belonged to him.
Downstairs, Jenna opened a bottle of sparkling water and forgot to drink it. Fireworks began somewhere beyond the houses, small test bursts that rattled the windows.
Andrew came into the kitchen twenty minutes later.
“She’s out.”
Jenna nodded.
May you like
He leaned against the counter. “Why did you almost say no?”
“Because Officer Malik was standing there, and Hannah was hurt, and your mother was fifteen yards away, and I knew that once we made a report, everybody would say we were trying to get her arrested.”
