Adam made peppermint tea, tried to get Hannah to watch TV, and suggested a drive, but all she can do is pace in the living room and make silent bargains with God. She’d give up anything. Her house, his sobriety.
Minutes feel like endless, horrific hours. If there is a hell, this is what it feels like. She desperately tries to push aside images of Alicia getting into some stranger’s car. Adam’s phone rings. Hannah stops pacing midstep.
“Yes,” he says. He stands motionless, next to the coffee table.
She places a hand on her chest as she watches him.
“This is Mr. Jenkins.” The left side of his mouth nudges downward. The creases on his brow grow deeper. The room has no air.
Finally, he lets out a long, audible sigh of relief.
“She’s okay,” he says to Hannah.
She hurries to his side, grabs his arm, and listens with him. He brushes his lips on the top of her head, and even in the midst of this crisis, she understands that he is grateful she has allowed this light kiss.
“She’s being taken by ambulance to Newton-Wellesley Hospital,” a man’s voice states.
“We can be there in ten minutes,” Adam says.
Hannah races outside, not bothering to grab her purse. Just as she’s about to get into Adam’s car, she dashes back into the house.
“They found her,” she shouts to Sam and her mother, who are in the den. “We’re going to meet her at the hospital.”
Sam bolts up. “Can I come?”
“No, honey. You stay with Nana. We’ll be home soon.”
In the car, Hannah taps her feet on the floor. They took this exact same route when she was in labor with Alicia. Adam parks and they jog toward the bright red neon emergency room lights.
Hannah barrels through the swinging doors. A nurse in pink scrubs with her hands on her hips stands in Hannah’s path.
“My daughter, Alicia Jenkins. Which room?”
The nurse doesn’t stop Hannah; instead she turns and leads the way to a curtained-off area. Alicia is there. On the bed, eyes open. Alive. Hannah races to her daughter, kisses her forehead, and caresses her hair, as a doctor pats Alicia’s shoulder.
“Everything looks good,” the doctor tells Hannah. “We’re just giving her some fluids. It was a hot night, and she might be dehydrated.”
“When can we take her home?” Hannah asks.
“Soon, I imagine. But there are a couple of routine interviews for a case like this.” The doctor smiles at Alicia. “You seem like a strong girl. Think you can answer a few questions?”
Alicia nods.
The doctor walks to the opening in the curtain. “I’ll be back to check on her again.”
Adam moves closer to the bed. He holds the metal rail.
“I have never, ever been so happy to see anyone,” Hannah says. Her heart is slowing, and she can finally catch her breath. There is no blood, no bruises, no bandages. Alicia’s skin is pale and clammy, but her blue eyes are clear, and Hannah feels as if her sanity has been miraculously restored.
“We were very worried,” Adam says sternly.
Hannah glances at him and shakes her head just enough to show him this isn’t the time to be angry.
“We’re just so glad you’re okay. How are you feeling?” Hannah asks.
“Scared,” she whispers. Her lips are cracked and dry. She probably hasn’t had anything to eat or drink in hours.
Hannah tucks the stiff white sheet around Alicia. “No need to be frightened anymore. Soon you’ll be home, safe and sound.”
“Where were you?” Adam asks.
Hannah looks across the bed. She tilts her head, trying to ask Adam what he’s doing, speaking so harshly. Then she glances at his hands gripping the bedrail. His knuckles are white.
“At the mall,” Alicia whispers.
“How did you get there?” Adam asks.
“I walked,” she murmurs.
“Adam,” Hannah says, “we’ll get to the details later. Let’s just get her home and get a good meal into her.” When she kisses Alicia’s forehead again, she gets a whiff of something that reminds her of sour milk. It’s the way her children smell when they’re sweaty and exhausted.
“You walked from school?” Adam asks.
“Yes.”
“Let’s not do this now,” Hannah says firmly.
“Can we leave?” Alicia asks.
“In a few minutes,” Hannah replies, as a man and a woman enter.
“I’m Officer Ward,” the man says. He’s beefy with strained eyes and cheeks that sit too low on his face. “And this is Miss…”
“Theresa, just call me Theresa. I’m from DCF,” the woman, who is clinging to a legal pad, pipes in. Her voice is high, her features nondescript.
Officer Ward moves forward. It’s too much, Hannah thinks, all these adults hovering.
“We need to ask your daughter a few questions,” Ward tells Adam. “It might be easier if we did this alone.”
“I’m not leaving,” Hannah tells the officer.
“Okay, then.” He takes a notepad from his pocket. “Alicia, can you tell us how you ended up in Cambridge?”
“Cambridge?” Adam asks, startled. “No one told us that’s where she was found.”
“Sir, it would be best if we had no interruptions, if we just heard from your daughter for the moment.”
Alicia bites her lip and looks up at Hannah.
“It’s okay, honey. Just answer the questions honestly, and then we can go home. Tell the policeman how you ended up in Cambridge.”
Alicia shrugs, confused. “I went to the mall. Then I took a bus because I wanted to go home.” Her breathing is rapid as she tries not to cry.
“The person who called this in said you were on a park bench. A man was talking to you. Can you tell us about the man?” Ward asks.
She shakes her head no.
“What kind of man?” Adam asks.
“Sir, I am going to ask again that you not interrupt.”
Adam’s mouth draws into a tight line.
Hannah thinks of how calm he was all afternoon, how she was the one flipping out, and now that she’s grounded and rational, he’s losing it. But he can’t do this in front of Alicia.
“Alicia,” Officer Ward begins, “we don’t think the man did anything wrong, but we just want to make sure you’re okay. Did he say or do anything that felt threatening?”
Alicia looks up at Hannah, puzzled.
“Did he say or do something that didn’t feel okay?” Hannah clarifies.
“He said there were a lot of bad people.” She clutches her mother’s hand.
“Did this man approach you, or did you approach him?” Ward asks.
Hannah wishes they would all leave. They’re only making this harder on Alicia. She’s fragile and overwhelmed at the moment. “Who was sitting on the bench first?” Hannah rephrases. “You or him?”
“Me.”
Adam draws in a breath. Hannah glances at him, trying to tell him to stay calm.
“Did he try to hold your hand or touch you in any other way?” Theresa asks.
Alicia looks up at Hannah again.
“Did the man want to touch you?” Hannah asks.
She shrugs. Tears well in her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“It’s okay,” Hannah comforts. “You don’t have to remember everything right now.”
Officer Ward flips his notebook closed. “Well, I think we have what we need for the moment. I’ll let…” He looks at Theresa. “I’ll let DCF take over from here.”
“I certainly hope you are questioning this man,” Adam says to Ward.
“We will keep you informed.”
“I think—” Adam begins.
“Thank you, Officer,” Hannah interrupts. Adam getting cantankerous isn’t going to get Alicia home any faster.
Ward nods at Hannah, then looks at Alicia. “Good to see you’re okay.” He taps the foot of the bed and walks out.
“Alicia,” Theresa chirps, “I have a few questions for you now.”
“I think it’s been enough,” Hannah says. “Perhaps another day. She needs to rest and eat.”
“I understand. But it’s protocol for runaways.” Her thin hair is slipping out of its ponytail, but her gaze is direct and unfaltering. Commanding even. She softens when she turns back to Alicia. “Can you tell me why you went to the mall?”
“I don’t know,” she mumbles.
“Was there a reason you didn’t want to go home?”
“I think she’s exhausted,” Hannah says. “It’s too much.”
“I know it’s hard,” Theresa says to Alicia. “But can you hang in there for a few more questions?”
Alicia nods.
“Good girl.” She touches Alicia’s hand. “Did you want to go home after school today?”
“No,” Alicia answers.
“Can you remember why?”
“I … I don’t know. Because Daddy is sick and I didn’t want to talk about sex,” she blurts.
“Why would you have to talk about sex?” Theresa asks.
Alicia looks at her mother. “Because that’s what Mommy said, and because Daddy’s a sex addict.”
“Right.” Hannah caresses Alicia’s hair. “Because you overheard some things that were for adults only.”
Theresa clears her throat. “I think it’s best at this point if I speak with Alicia alone.”
“Why?” Adam asks.
“It’s protocol in this type of case,” she says quietly.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Sweat beads on Adam’s forehead.
As much as Hannah doesn’t want to leave Alicia’s side, she can see that the best thing for everyone right now would be to take Adam out of the mix. They have done nothing wrong, and interrupting and commenting on everything Theresa says may only make them look guilty.
Hannah strokes Alicia’s arm. “Daddy and I are going to step out for just a couple of minutes. Answer the questions as best you can. If you can’t remember, just tell her that.” She leans down to kiss her.
Hannah walks to Adam, tugs his hand, and leads him to the waiting room. Two square vinyl armchairs with plum-colored cushions sit in a corner. A round wooden coffee table littered with various magazines stands next to the chairs. Hannah points and Adam obeys her gesture to take a seat.
He shakes his head, then covers his face with his hands. Hannah sits next to him.
“You have to calm down,” she tells him.
“Why? Why would she do that?” he asks. “Walk five miles to the mall?” He drops his hands and stares at her.
She puts a hand on the armrest of his chair. “We’ll figure out all the whys. At the moment we just need to be calm and show her we’re not angry, and that home is a safe place to be.”
“I just don’t understand. She knows better.”
“She didn’t want to go home. That’s all. Don’t read more into this.”
“That’s all? She left the mall and somehow ended up in Cambridge where some man sat on a bench with her. God knows what he did.”
She moves her hand to touch him, but withdraws it. “It doesn’t sound as if he hurt her.”
“We don’t know that. She might be too terrified to say anything. He could have told her something horrible was going to happen if she talked.”
“Adam, she’ll tell the truth.”
He shakes his head. “Children don’t in these situations. They get scared. An adult makes a threat. Says he’ll hurt her family. She doesn’t know what’s true or not.” He looks at Hannah, his eyes searching for answers she’s not sure she has.
“Is that what happened to you?” she asks. “Is that what your uncle made you believe? That someone in your family would get hurt?” She’s never pressed him for the details about his uncle, and now, as she looks into his eyes that she thought she knew so well, she notices gray specks—fault lines.
He stands and takes a few steps, then turns back and glances at Hannah. “It’s just that … It’s so easy to snap. Someone tells you something. You don’t know what to believe. And it’s gone. Your former self. You’re never the same, not really. And…”
She pats the plum-colored back of the chair. “Come sit.”
He doesn’t. He stares at the dark window and seems surprised to see his reflection. “It doesn’t take a lot. Not really. Children are sensitive. They blame themselves, then their thoughts get confused, nothing is right anymore, but you don’t even realize it. You think it’s normal to obsess about sex. Normal to lie and tell the guy at the counter you’re buying the porn for your dad. Your mind becomes a demented maze. There’s no getting out.”
“Adam, it’s okay. She’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. Come, sit. Please.”
He acquiesces, then knocks the wooden armrest with his knuckles. “It’s about a power imbalance.”
“Adam, stop. We’re not going to let anyone take away Alicia’s power.”
“I’m not. I would never…” He looks at Hannah. “I would never hurt my children.”
“I know.”
His shoulders round. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know.” And right now, she does know. The tall, sturdy man, her anchor, the man she wanted to believe would keep her and her children safe, is just a child himself.
“Every day that you don’t leave me, I thank God.” The rims of his eyes are pink.
“It’s okay,” she says quietly. “We don’t have to talk about us right now.” Again she reaches toward him, but again only touches the arm of the chair.
“I don’t have a right to say how I feel. But—”
“Of course you have the right. All people have the right to talk about how they feel.” She believes what she says, even though she knows that there were many times when she didn’t want to listen to him, didn’t want to hear all the reasons he chose to have sex with male prostitutes.
“I was so scared today. So unbelievably scared. And it made me realize how scared I am all the time.” He pauses. “I’m not asking for forgiveness…”
“I know.” She looks at a Good Housekeeping magazine on the table and wonders what secrets the perfect-looking wife on the cover keeps.
“When I drive home from work, I get so anxious, thinking that this will be the night you finally tell me you just can’t take it anymore. Sometimes I imagine you’ll have all my stuff on the front lawn in big green garbage bags.”
She wants him to stop talking, to stop telling her how frightened he is. It’s not that she doesn’t care, it’s that it occurs to her that they are both terrified, both unanchored. They have melting points, breaking points. They have the ability to come undone.
“It will be okay.” She’s the one doling out the platitude this time, only it doesn’t feel trite. She means it, and it occurs to her that Adam might be equally sincere when he tries to soothe her.
Theresa finds them.
“Everything seems to be all right, but I will need to follow up with a couple of home visits,” she tells them, glancing from one to the other.
“Can we go back in?” Hannah asks as she and Adam stand.
“Yes. But I would like to say something, if you don’t mind.” Theresa’s small mouth curves downward.
Hannah does mind. “Go ahead.”
“I don’t think it’s wise to talk to children about sex until they’re ready.”
“We know.” Hannah glares at Theresa. “We also know—”
Adam gently pulls Hannah away before she says something she might regret. He is transformed back into the man she needs him to be.
This time, when they walk into the room that smells as if it’s been doused in bleach, Adam greets Alicia with a kiss on the cheek.
“We’re going to have the biggest, baddest sundaes ever,” he tells her.
She smiles. “Can we go home now?”
“As soon as the doctor says it’s okay,” Hannah says.
“I’m sorry,” Alicia whispers.
“We’re sorry too,” Hannah tells her as she figures out how to lower the rail. She climbs onto the bed and gathers Alicia into her arms.