Dad was missing.
Lili’s footsteps echoed against the tiles in her empty house. It was almost 2:00 a.m. Jem had dropped her here on his way to the hospital, assuming—as she had—that Dad was home. She twisted the hem of her purple polka-dot pajamas between her fingers, worrying her lip as she surveyed the living room.
She’d checked the whole house. Her parents’ bedspread lay undisturbed, Dad’s keys weren’t on the hook by the door, and his favorite shoes were missing.
“Dad?”
No reply.
Something creaked, and Lili started. Phone in hand, she double-checked the locks as she called her father’s cell. The call rang out and dropped to voice mail. “Dad, Oliver’s sick so Jem dropped me home. Where are you? I’m getting worried.” She tried the church phone next as she felt her way down the dark hall. Same result.
She reached Dad’s office, felt through the doorway, and hit the light switch. Yellow light flooded the room, illuminating his massive cherrywood desk and leather chair. The desk matched his bookcase, both new pieces Mom purchased during last year’s redecoration. But the chair, with worn patches rubbed on both armrests and the seat, matched nothing. Lili jumped into it and curled up, the leather cool against her bare legs.
Her eyes wandered the room as her mind traveled to all the places Dad could be. He might have fallen asleep at work—he was prone to stretching out on the carpeted floor to “rest his eyes.” Or maybe he was with a church family at the hospital. Maybe . . .
A familiar plaster finger caught her eye, resting in the ajar bottom drawer of Dad’s desk. She nudged the drawer open.
A hundred webbed cracks ran through the painted plaster cast that sat atop a pile of old Bible-study workbooks. She picked it up and held it inches from her face. It was an enlarged impression of her father’s handprint at double size, painted shades of red. Inside his palm was Mom’s handprint, dotted with a pattern of light-blue shades, at one and a half times its real dimensions. Mom’s hand contained Lili’s real-sized handprint in a swirl of purple.
She’d seen this artwork not just crack, but shatter, the day she’d busted Dad with Miss Kent.
Something red caught her eye in the drawer beneath. She peered down. The lid of a super-glue tube.
“Dad, you fixed it?” She ran her fingers over the artwork.
She placed the art back in the drawer and eased it shut, then returned to Dad’s chair and rested her forehead on his desk.
She could have been wrong, that day in the church when she smoked. Maybe Miss Kent really had been in the bathroom. Maybe Dad had told the truth about his cigarettes.
The super glue, and hours he must have spent using it, didn’t lie. She’d thought Dad’s fling with Miss Kent meant he didn’t care about their family—Lili included—but this . . . Maybe she had been wrong.
Her intestines twisted like a well-wrung cloth. Where was Dad? What if he’d crashed his car or something? She had to tell him she was sorry.
An idea sparked, and she grabbed for Dad’s keyboard. Her fingers flew across the keys until the login screen for Dad’s Find My Phone service came up on the screen. She typed Lilianna into the password box and hit Enter.
The computer searched for his location, and Lili chewed her fingernails and prayed.
An unfamiliar address popped up. The hair on the back of her neck raised. She copied the address, dumped it in the Google search bar, and brought up the Street View image of a house. A rosebush peeked over its fence and white wicker furniture rested on the porch.
Miss Kent’s house.
Lili punched the desk and screamed.
Then she dialed Mom’s number.
* * *
Natalie gunned her Bug to its limits on the way to the hospital. Who cared if John prowled the streets? He could kiss her taillights.
She screeched to a halt in the hospital parking lot and scanned for Jem’s Camry. There. She sprinted across the asphalt.
Jem held Olly, bundled in a blanket, in his right arm as he locked the car with his left.
Natalie screeched to a halt beside them. “Is he alright?” She reached for Olly, and Jem shifted him so they held him together.
The little boy opened his eyes, and a small smile lit his face. He lifted a hand in her direction, but it fell back against the blanket.
Jem tucked his fingers back into the warm flannel. “He got really lethargic after you left, and I googled his symptoms. I need to make sure it’s not something serious.”
“Where’s Lili?” Natalie brushed her finger over Oliver’s smooth cheek. No fever.
“I dropped her at her parents’ on the way over. Steph’s away at the conference in Philadelphia, but Mike should be home. He didn’t answer his phone, but most people don’t at 2:00 a.m. I made sure Lili got into the house before I left.”
Natalie’s skin pinched into goose bumps as a sharp breeze blew from the north. She’d run out the door in yesterday’s jeans, flip-flops, and the first T-shirt she grabbed from a pile of unfolded laundry.
Jem ran his hand over her upper arm. “You don’t have to be here if you don’t want. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have had Lili call you.”
Natalie tightened her grip on the baby. “Don’t be stupid. Of course I should be here.”
He gave her a brief squeeze. “Let’s get inside.”
The antiseptic hospital smell speared Natalie’s senses as they crossed the threshold. Panic clawed at her throat. Every time she smelled that scent, something painful happened. Dad’s diagnosis, his relapse, and that close call they’d had two years ago.
She glanced around the room as Jem spoke with the nurse. Cold, sterile, unsympathetic. Just like the woman Jem was talking to.
The nurse handed him a form and pointed to a chair. “Fill this out and wait over there.”
“Are you serious?” Natalie leaned forward. “He’s only a baby. He’s sick.”
The woman didn’t even glance up. “Tell that to the guy whose friend can’t aim a nail gun.” She nodded toward a patient.
They swung their gazes to a disheveled man hobbling through the heavy doors that separated the emergency department from examination rooms. He held an ice pack to his groin.
Jem paled. “We’ll wait.”
He led Natalie to two plastic chairs and passed Oliver to her. Olly didn’t stir, just lay limp in his blanket.
“I thought the doctor said antibiotics would fix it, and that if he’s still eating and drinking, it would be okay,” she said.
“I know. I told Lili I’m being paranoid.” Jem kept his focus on the paperwork.
“What aren’t you saying?”
He signed the final box and stood. “Google is scary.”
She cuddled the baby against her chest. What if he had some sort of childhood cancer? Possibilities swarmed her mind like fire ants. She curled around the bundle in her lap and tried to pray, but no words came to mind.
You know what you have to do.
Eyes closed and face buried against Olly, she paid no attention to Jem until he brushed her side as he sat down. She unraveled herself and shifted so Olly lay half on her lap and half on Jem’s.
They watched his son, cradled between them.
“Jem, I have to tell you something.”
He shifted, Chicago Bears hoodie warm against her bare arm. “I’m sorry about tonight.”
“No, that’s not—I mean, yes, I’m sorry too. But that’s not what I wanted to say.” She pulled back till she could look him in the eye. “I talked to Sam after you left—”
His left eye twitched.
“—and I ran into your dad. Between the two of them I got reminded of some things. I did some serious thinking. And . . . I . . .” She took a deep breath and shot up a prayer for help. “This is something I need to say out loud: I forgive you.”
He stared at her. “What?”
“I understand what you meant about the difference between forgetting and forgiving, and I forgive you.”
A glassy sheen came over Jem’s eyes before he blinked it away. “Thank you,” he whispered.
She smiled at him for a moment. Saying it didn’t mean it wasn’t hard anymore. It didn’t mean she entertained the thought of a future with Jem. No, she couldn’t get sucked into his vortex again.
But it was a weight off her soul.
He shifted Olly onto her lap, gripped the hem of his hoodie, and pulled it over his head. “Here.” He swapped it for the baby.
She pulled the fleece on, inhaling Jem’s scent as she did so. Still warm from his body, it enveloped her frame.
Jem, wearing his blue shirt from dinner, shifted so she could lean against him and still reach Olly.
She placed her index finger in the baby’s palm and closed her eyes.
When she opened them again, it was to squint up at the cranky nurse.
“They’re ready for you now.”
The nurse led them to an examination room and pointed to two even more uncomfortable plastic chairs. Natalie jigged her foot against the ground as the woman grilled Jem on Olly’s symptoms.
Jem rattled through Olly’s unusual thirstiness, vomiting, and lack of energy. “The doctor gave us antibiotics, but they didn’t do anything.” He paused. “Tonight my father noticed that his breath smells sweet. And when I checked on him at 1:00 a.m., he’d saturated the bed . . . and that smelled sweet too.”
The lines on the nurse’s face deepened. She hefted her body from the chair, ducked beyond the curtain, and returned with a small black machine in one hand, a pen-like object in the other. “Hold out his hand.”
Natalie frowned as Jem did so. “Why?”
The woman held the pen up to Olly’s hand and it clicked. Olly jolted, screamed.
“What are you doing?” Natalie reached for Olly, but Jem grabbed her hand.
The nurse held a thin strip of paper up to the red spot below his thumb, then inserted the paper in the handheld machine. The machine beeped, and the nurse’s eyes widened. “Excuse me. I need to get the doctor.” She swept past the curtain.
Natalie grabbed Olly from Jem’s arms and bounced him against her shoulder. “What was that all about? Why is the sweet smell important? You didn’t tell me that before.”
Jem rubbed a hand over Olly’s back as he settled back down. “When I googled all his symptoms, the computer lit up with a hundred thousand results, pretty much all saying the same thing.”
“What?”
“I think he has—”
The curtain swept aside, and a man with a gray mustache and brown toupee strode in. “Mr. and Mrs. Walters,” he said.
Natalie didn’t correct him.
“I need to run some more tests for confirmation, but you should know . . . we think your son could have diabetes.”