It went on for a long time.
The word didn't stop. It changed shape. Sometimes desperate, sometimes just a word she was saying because it was the only word left, sometimes so quiet I had to strain to hear it. I held her through all of it.
I didn't tell her it was okay. I didn't tell her anything. There was nothing to say. Her mother was dead and she was five years old and the word kept coming. I sat in the dark and took it.
An hour in she was still going. Not with the same intensity; the terror had softened into something more like pure exhaustion, a child crying because she couldn't stop rather than because the fear was still acute. But she wouldn't settle. Every time I thought she was going under, she'd surface again. She'd whisper that word again, and we'd be back at it.
I faced the clock. Two fifty-eight.
I looked at Lily, at her face against my chest, at the way she was holding my shirt like if she let go something worse would happen.
I picked up my phone with my free hand.
It was wrong to call at this hour. I knew that. But I was three hours into a dark bedroom with a grieving five year old who wouldn't stop calling for her mother. I was out of road, and there was only one person I could think of who might know what to do.
I typed with one thumb, slowly, trying not to move the arm she was holding.
I need help. Lily's been having a nightmare for hours. She won't settle. She keeps calling for Cassie. I don't know what to do.
I stared at the message. Nearly deleted it.
Sent it.
Thirty seconds. Then:
I'm on my way.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Madison
He opened the door before I'd finished knocking.
He looked like the night had happened to him. Hair a mess, shirt wrinkled from hours of sitting in the same position, the hollowness around the eyes of someone who had been running on adrenaline and was now just running on nothing. He looked at me, and something in his face did a complicated, hopeful thing that he immediately tried to shove back into the dark.
"She just fell asleep," he said, his voice sandpaper. "Ten minutes ago. Like it was nothing." He gave a short, humorless exhale. "I tried calling you back but you were probably already on the road. Sorry for waking you. You didn't have to?—"
"I'm coming in," I said.
He stepped back and let me in.
The house had that specific 4:00 AM quality—too quiet, too still, where every creak of a floorboard sounded like a gunshot. I went to the kitchen, found the kettle, and filled it without asking. Jack sat down at the table, put his elbows on it, and buried his face in his hands. He stayed like that, motionless.
I got two mugs. Found the tea. Waited for the kettle.
"Are you okay?" I said.
"Yeah." He lifted his head, his palms leaving red marks on his forehead. "I'm fine. I just need a minute."
I gave him the look I used on patients who tried to tell me their pain was a three when their vitals said it was an eight.
"I'm fine," he said again.
The kettle reached a screaming boil and clicked off. I poured the water over the tea bags, set a mug in front of him, and sat down across the table with mine. The steam rose between us, a small, white veil.
"You don't look okay," I said.
"I am." He wrapped both hands around the mug, leaning into the heat of it as if he were trying to thaw out. "It's just been a long night. She's settled now, the crisis is over, and?—"