Chapter 4
The hallway still smelled like dust and fresh-cut wood.
I sat on the floor with my legs tucked under my dress and my hands balled in the fabric. The vent cover lay against the wainscoting where Mark had dropped it. Emily knelt next to me. She hadn't let go since he'd pulled me out. Sarah stood in the doorway to the kitchen with her arms crossed tight over her blouse, like she was holding herself together.
Mark crouched by the hole. He stared into it. Then he reached for the vent like he was going to put it back.
Sarah's voice stopped him. "Don't."
He looked up at her. His hands stayed on the white metal.
"Don't put it back," she said again. Her voice was low and shaky but clear. "She's not going back in there, Mark. Not for a minute. Not while we figure this out."
Mark let the vent clang against the floor. "Sarah, listen to me. We need to think this through."
"I am thinking it through," she said. She came closer and didn't look at the hole at all. She looked at me. "Honey, when's the last time you had a bath?"
I didn't know how to answer. I shrugged. My dress was stiff at the hem.
Emily answered for me. "She wipes her face with a napkin. I brought her wipes."
Sarah knelt down. She didn't touch me right away. She held her hand out, palm up, a few inches from my knee. "Mia, I'm Sarah. Can we get you cleaned up? And get some real food in you? And then we have to call your doctor."
Mark stood up fast. "We are not calling a pediatrician at ten thirty on a Saturday and starting a paper trail without knowing what we're doing."
Sarah looked up at him. "She's been in a wall for eleven days. She needs to be seen. That's not a paper trail, that's a child."
He ran a hand through his hair. He paced to the end of the hall and back. The floor creaked under his dress shoes. "If we take her to urgent care, they have to report. You know they have to report. It becomes a CPS file. It becomes a call from the school. It becomes—" He stopped and glanced at Emily. "It becomes something my name is on at the firm. The partnership vote is in three weeks."
The quiet after that felt heavy.
Sarah stood up slowly. "So what are you saying we should do?"
Mark kept his voice low, like that made it more reasonable. "My ex's mother — Diane — she took her before. She can take her again. Just until we have a plan. It's family. No report. No file. No one has to know we didn't—" He swallowed. "That we didn't handle this right."
Emily's fingers tightened around mine.
"No," Emily said. It was loud in the hallway.
Mark looked at her, surprised.
"No," she said again, and her voice cracked. She pulled my hand into her lap and held it with both of hers. "She can't go back there. She was scared in the dark. You said you'd help her."
"Emily," Mark said, softer now. "Buddy, I know. But Grandma Diane has her room and her stuff—"
"She doesn't want to go back there," Emily said. She wasn't yelling anymore. She was crying, but she didn't let go. "Don't make her go."
Sarah moved between us and Mark. She wasn't touching him. "She's right. We're not sending her back to be hidden somewhere else. That's the same thing in a different house."
Mark stared at Sarah like he didn't recognize her. "So you want me to just torch my career? You want a social worker in our kitchen?"
"I want her clean and fed and looked at by a doctor," Sarah said. "I want her out of that hole. We can fight about the rest after that. But she is not sleeping in that cavity tonight. And she is not going on a drive back to Diane's like a package we're returning."
He didn't answer. He looked at the open hole, at the broken drywall, at me.
Sarah turned back to me and her face softened. "Can we go to the kitchen, sweetheart? Let's wash your hands and face at least."
I nodded. Emily helped me stand. My legs felt wobbly, like pins and needles. Emily kept hold of my hand the whole way down the hall. She walked right next to me, shoulder to shoulder, so I wouldn't be alone in front.
The kitchen was bright and warm. Sarah pulled a step stool to the sink and turned the water on. She tested it with her wrist. "Not too hot, okay?"
She handed me a soft washcloth. I washed my hands first. The water turned gray. She didn't say anything about it, just handed me a fresh cloth for my face. She was gentle around my cheek where the wood had scraped me. Emily stood beside me the entire time, still holding my left hand even when I needed both hands, so I had to switch the cloth back and forth.
Sarah poured me a glass of milk and heated a can of chicken noodle soup on the stove. She broke up the noodles with a spoon so they were small. She set the bowl on the table with a spoon and didn't push me to eat fast.
I ate slow. The soup was salty and hot. My hands shook a little. Emily sat in the chair next to mine and watched me. Every few seconds she squeezed my hand.
Mark stood in the doorway to the hall. He held his phone. He hadn't dialed. He looked at me eating at his kitchen table, at Sarah standing behind me with her hand lightly on the back of my chair, at Emily holding on like I might disappear if she let go.
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"We're not calling Diane," Sarah said quietly, without looking at him. "And we're calling the pediatrician's after-hours line. Today."
Mark slipped his phone into his pocket. He didn't agree out loud. He didn't argue again either. He just stood there, and the house stayed divided right down the middle of that kitchen floor — me and Emily and Sarah on one side of the table, him alone in the doorway, and the open hole waiting behind him in the hall.
