Chapter 6
Eli wouldn’t come through the front door.
He stopped at the edge of the library courtyard, one hand closed around the strap of his worn backpack, his shoulders angled toward the sidewalk as if he needed a clear route away. The afternoon traffic moved beyond the iron fence in slow bursts. A bus sighed at the curb. Somewhere behind us, a librarian pushed a cart over cracked concrete.
I kept my distance.
“I’m not asking you to go home with me,” I said. “You can choose where we talk.”
Eli watched me without answering. His face still carried faint streaks of dirt despite the sink and paper towels I’d found for him. He looked younger when he was tired, but the caution in his eyes belonged to someone older.
Gabriel stood several feet away near a stone planter. He had a tablet tucked under one arm and both hands visible. He never moved toward Eli without warning him first. That mattered. I’d noticed it in the clinic, in the park, and now.
“There’s a sandwich,” I said. “And fruit. You can eat here, or we can go to the church parking lot. It’s public. You can leave whenever you want.”
“Not your house.”
“No.”
“Not anywhere you tell me to go.”
I swallowed the irritation that rose before I could stop it. Fear made every offer sound like a trap. “You decide the place.”
His gaze shifted to Gabriel.
“Church lot,” Eli said.
Gabriel nodded. “We’ll stay outside. I’ll call a youth outreach worker while we’re there, but I won’t give them your location unless you agree.”
Eli’s fingers loosened slightly on the backpack strap.
That was the first decision he made freely, and I treated it like something fragile.
We drove separately. Gabriel took his dark sedan, and I followed in mine, leaving enough space between us that Eli wouldn’t feel boxed in. The church sat two blocks away, its parking lot mostly empty except for a white van and a row of shade trees. I parked where Eli could see the street.
He chose a spot beside the low brick wall.
I set the food on the hood of my car and stepped back. He approached only after I turned away, opened the sandwich, and took two quick bites. He ate carefully after that, not because he wasn’t hungry, but because he didn’t want anyone to see how hungry he was.
Gabriel sat on the wall across from him.
“I need to ask about the bottle,” he said. “I’m going to ask once, and you can correct me or stop me. I won’t fill in anything you don’t say.”
Eli looked at me.
“You can stop this,” I told him. “I mean it.”
He nodded, chewing.
Gabriel opened the tablet but didn’t start typing yet. “Tell me what you saw Elena holding.”
Eli wiped his mouth with the napkin. “Small bottle. Clear.”
“Clear glass or clear plastic?”
“I don’t know. It looked clear.”
“What did it look like?”
“Short. About this tall.” He held two fingers a little apart. “White cap. Maybe white. It had something dark on the side.”
“A label?”
“Not sure. A mark. Blue, maybe.”
Gabriel waited.
Eli glanced toward the church doors, then back at us. “She kept it in the kitchen. Not in a cabinet.”
“Where?”
“Back shelf. Behind the blender stuff.”
My chest tightened. The blender. The smoothie. The ordinary counter where Lila’s breakfast had been prepared every morning while I answered calls and believed the people inside my home were protecting her.
Gabriel’s voice stayed even. “Did you see what was inside the bottle?”
“No.”
“Did you see Elena put anything from it into Lila’s smoothie?”
Eli’s eyes dropped to the pavement. “I saw her take the cap off. She poured something. I didn’t see what.”
“Did you hear her say what it was?”
“No.”
“Then we’ll record exactly that,” Gabriel said. “You saw a small clear bottle. You saw Elena remove the cap and pour something into the smoothie. You don’t know what the substance was.”
Eli looked up sharply. “You believe me?”
“I believe you’re describing what you remember. Those aren’t the same as proving what was in the bottle, but your account matters.”
Gabriel finally began typing. He read each sentence back before moving on. When Eli corrected the word “shelf” to “back ledge,” Gabriel changed it. When Eli said he couldn’t remember whether the bottle had a blue mark or a blue label, Gabriel wrote that uncertainty down too.
No one had ever made uncertainty sound like protection.
A woman in a navy jacket pulled into the lot and parked near the church office. Gabriel rose but didn’t approach until he introduced her from a distance.
“This is Ms. Harris,” he said. “She works with a youth outreach program. She can explain options. You don’t have to leave with her.”
Eli watched the woman gather a folder from her passenger seat. She didn’t smile too broadly or reach for him. She simply waited.
I realized then what I’d been trying to do since Piedmont Park: build a private wall around every danger. Keep Lila away from Elena. Keep Eli away from Darren. Keep the evidence close to me. But a wall built by one frightened man was still a hiding place, and hiding places could become another kind of trap.
“I can pay for a room,” I said quietly. “But I’m not going to put you somewhere without people who know how to keep you safe. Ms. Harris can help find that. Gabriel and I can stay involved.”
Eli’s expression tightened. “You’ll come back?”
“Yes.”
“Even if I don’t tell more?”
“Yes.”
He looked at Gabriel.
“I’ll come back too,” Gabriel said. “And I’ll keep your statement separate from the case until the proper adults decide how to use it. You’re not disposable because you don’t have a house.”
For several seconds, only the church flag moved above us.
Then Eli folded the napkin around the last piece of sandwich and tucked it into his backpack.
“I’ll talk to her,” he said.
Ms. Harris approached slowly. Eli met her halfway, stopping where the sunlight ended beneath the trees. Before he went, he turned toward me.
“The bottle’s still there,” he said. “Last time I saw it.”
I nodded. “We’ll recover it lawfully.”
He frowned at the unfamiliar word.
“It means nobody touches it just because they’re scared,” I explained. “It means we make sure the right people handle it.”
Eli considered that, then followed Ms. Harris toward the church office.
Gabriel stood beside me, shoulder nearly touching mine but not quite.
“We’ll need a warrant or consent,” he said. “And someone independent to document the recovery.”
“I know.”
“You may not get another chance if Elena finds it first.”
May you like
I looked across the lot at Eli, who had paused to check that we were still there.
“Then we do it correctly,” I said. “And we do it now.”
