Her lower lip trembled.
“Rowan. He’s Rowan. I’ve been taking care of him since he got here.”
The way she said it, like it had always been her job, like she had never been asked if she wanted it, made Nolan’s stomach twist.
“Maisie,” he said gently, “where is your mom?”
Her eyes dropped to her hands, and her fingers worried at each other like knots.
“She can’t know I left,” Maisie said. “She gets confused. Sometimes she forgets things, and sometimes she forgets me, and if she gets scared she hides, and then there’s a man who brings food sometimes, and he said I’m not supposed to talk about him, because it’s a secret.”
Nolan felt a chill crawl up his spine.
“What man?” he asked, careful, slow.
But the ambulance was already pulling into the emergency bay, doors thrown open, and Rowan was rushed inside under bright hospital lights that made Maisie squint like someone who hadn’t been under clean fluorescent glow in a long time.
Bright Lights And Quiet Questions
The pediatric emergency unit at Cedar Hollow Regional Medical Center hummed with urgency, nurses moving fast, monitors chiming, and a doctor with kind eyes and hair pinned back in a neat twist stepped forward as the team wheeled Rowan through swinging doors.
