"Find work. Get the guardianship sorted." He glanced toward the ceiling, his focus shifting to the room upstairs. "Figure out the rest as it comes."
"She's lucky to have you here," I said.
Something tightened in his jaw. "Yeah," he said, the word flat and final. He was shutting down again, compressing the weight of his situation into that short, blunt exchange.
I looked at him—reallylooked at him. He looked like a man who had spent a decade bracing for impact and had finally hit the ground.
"Last time I saw her, she said maybe four words the whole visit," he said. He was looking at his hands now, not the mug. "A year ago. She hid behind Cassie's leg the second I walked in."
A year ago Lily would have been four. Now she was upstairs in a house he’d been in for three days, and he was the only thing standing between her and the system.
He turned his mug, the ceramic scraping quietly against the table.
"You came to see her," he said. It wasn't a question. "Before I got here. The social worker mentioned it. Deb."
It wasn't an accusation. It was just a fact he was placing on the table, the way a mechanic might lay out a part he couldn't identify.
"I knew Cassie," I said. My voice sounded too loud in the quiet kitchen. "I saw the name on the chart and I... I just wanted to make sure someone was with her."
He nodded slowly. He didn't ask why I hadn't stayed. He didn't ask why I’d waited for him to show up before I came back. He just accepted the data.
"Thank you," he said. "For that too."
The rain tapped at the window. Somewhere outside a car passed and was gone. I wrapped both hands around the mug and looked past him into the living room, at the coloring book on the coffee table. I thought about Lily's fingers closing around mine in the dark and the fact that my name was still in a notebook in this kitchen, and I didn't say any of what was sitting in my chest.
"She's going to be okay," I said. "Tonight. Keep an eye on the temperature, but she should come down by morning."
"Okay."
"Call the pediatrician first thing. Get her seen."
"I will."
I pushed back from the table.
"Maddie." His voice was quiet.
I looked at him. He was still sitting there, framed by the yellow light of the kitchen, looking like he’d been carved out of the same heavy wood as the chair. He seemed to think better of whatever it was he wanted to say. He just shook his head once, barely.
"Drive safe," he said.
I picked up my coat and went.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jack
The pediatrician, Dr. Okafor, was a small woman in her fifties.
She had the unhurried air of someone who had seen ten thousand worried adults bring in ten thousand unwell children and had long since stopped being alarmed by any of it. She moved through the vitals with a practiced, rhythmic efficiency: checking Lily's temperature, her throat, her ears. She asked a few questions that Lily answered in a voice that was already more like her own than the thin, papery thing it had been yesterday. When she was done, Okafor looked at me over the top of Lily’s head with an expression that said, quite clearly:You could have stayed home.
"Viral," she said, straightening up. "Running its course. Fever's down, which is what we want to see." She looked at Lily. "You feeling better, kiddo?"
Lily nodded. She was perched on the edge of the examination table, the butcher paper crinkling under her as she swung her legs. The rabbit was back in her lap. She’d managed half a piece of toast this morning, which felt like a win.
"Another few days at home," Dr. Okafor said to me, already scribbling on a chart. "Then she should be fine for school. I'dsay Monday." She capped her pen and looked at me. "Any questions?"
I had about forty. I asked two of them, the ones that had been sitting at the front of my head since last night. She answered them in the same unhurried way, like questions were expected and not a sign of incompetence, and I was more grateful for that than I knew how to say.