For a moment he couldn’t speak. He thought of Annie’s hand in his, of Tyler curled up with a pillow on the living room carpet, of the empty refrigerator.
“She’s been lying in a hospital bed for five days,” he said finally, “and nobody could tell me where she was.”
“Nobody could identify her,” Reyes said gently. “You’re allowed to be furious. You’re also allowed to be relieved. Most people feel both.”
He drove to Chattanooga the next morning after leaving Tyler with his sister. Annie was awake by then and demanding applesauce, which the nurses took as the best sign they could ask for.
Whitney lay in a bed on the fourth floor, thinner than he remembered, an oxygen line under her nose. Her eyes were open. When she saw him, her face crumpled before she spoke.
“Brent.”
“Hey, Whit.”
“The kids.” Her voice scraped like paper. “Please. Are the kids…”
“They’re safe. Annie was very sick. She’s going to be okay.”
Whitney made a sound he’d never heard from her, a small, broken animal noise. She turned her face into the pillow.
He stood at the foot of the bed with his hands in his pockets and waited. He’d rehearsed a dozen speeches in the car, cold ones and furious ones, and now none of them came.
“I didn’t mean to be gone that long,” she said at last. “I swear. I thought one night. Dale said it’d be one night. And then I woke up here.”
“Annie hadn’t eaten in three days. She couldn’t breathe.”
“I know.” Her shoulders shook. “I know. The nurse told me. I know what I did.”
“Tyler called me from your neighbor’s phone. He’s eight years old, Whitney. He made her crackers.”
