Getting Miles to the police station involved three false starts for Mom. Circa waited in the front seat of the car, and Miles sat in the back with his head leaned against the window. During Mom’s third trip back into the house to get something she’d claimed to have forgotten, Circa finally spoke up.

“Just so you know, she might not be able to do this,” she said to Miles. But then Mom came out for the last time. Without a word, but with a lot of drawn-out breathing and hands clamped tight on the wheel, she drove them straight into town.

The station had two white glass globes that said POLICE, one on either side of the front steps. The building sat directly across the street from the Maple Grove Residence, and Circa felt pulled over there like a magnet as she and Mom and Miles walked up to the big station doors.

“Can I just go to Maple Grove for a minute while you guys are here?” she whispered to Mom, who instantly shot her a look that said no way.

“Not by yourself,” Mom said.

Well, then who in the world with? thought Circa. She glanced back over her shoulder across the road and saw scrawny Stanley, the teenage custodian, over in the iris garden sneaking a smoke. Stanley immediately locked eyes with Circa and blew her a big, exaggerated kiss. Much as Circa longed to go and visit the non-Stanley parts of Maple Grove, Mom had not been entirely unreasonable in her ruling. Dad had never let Circa go alone either, for the same smoochy reason.

The inside of the police station was nothing like what Circa had expected. She had imagined a swarming mob of criminals in various stages of fingerprinting and mug-shot making. A crowd of scowling people that, upon Miles’s entry, would part in the middle to reveal a tearful little couple on a bench who waited hopefully for their boy, whatever his real name might be, to come back to them. But there were no criminals being booked. And worse yet, there were no tearful parents. Just a stumbling man wailing some kind of patriotic song and a whole bunch of people jabbering away on phones. Circa tried to make out what they were saying, but the conversations all merged into one big crazy story about looting, flooding, and fights in surrounding areas.

Mom stepped forward and explained their problem to a man called Sergeant Simms, who was wedged into a metal desk that squeezed him on all sides like it was more suited for a Sergeant Simms Jr. Circa and Miles stood behind quietly as Mom sat in a chair and went round and round with the cop about the police department not having a Found Person Report per se, just a Lost Person Report. How he figured they would have to classify this as a “Code 32.” Most all of his unhelpful sentences came with finger quote marks and a per se tacked onto the end. Miles leaned slightly closer to Circa during the Mom-and-cop back-and-forth.

“Wonder what a Code Thirty-two is?” he said.

“I bet it just means special case,” Circa said.

“Maybe it stands for ‘Can I please just get me a honeybun and start this fail of a day over?’” whispered Miles. It was the first thing she’d heard come out of his mouth that wasn’t tragic. He looked at Circa with the most subtle grin she’d ever seen on someone. And there was that Dad crinkle between his eyebrows again.

“Young man,” called the desk sergeant. “Yes, you, could you please step around here and answer a few questions for me?”

Mom stood so that Miles could have her chair. Mom shrugged at Circa as if to say she’d tried her best to handle things right. Sergeant Simms began by taking a picture of Miles’s face with a cell phone. Then, after asking Miles twenty questions that had little to no answers, the cop removed his cap and wiped the sweat from his bald head.

“Here’s the deal,” he said. “We’re going to have to turn this over to Child Protective Services.”

“Okay,” said Mom, nodding.

“Only problem is, they are just as deep in the weeds, per se, as we are,” said the sergeant. “And frankly, ma’am, I believe this boy needs medical attention, and soon.”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “I thought as much too.”

“I strongly advise you to make the emergency room your next stop,” he said.

Mom looked like she’d been splashed in the face.

“Next stop?” she said, wringing her hands. “But I thought you all would help him.”

“Ma’am—” the sergeant began.

“Can’t you find his family?” she said. “Someone’s bound to be looking for him, right?”

“Ma’am,” he began again. “All we can do right now is send out an electronic notification that this kid has shown up in Wingate. Beyond that, what would you have me do with him? I’m sure not gonna lock the poor guy up with Uncle Sam over there.”

Across the room, the stumbling man was saluting every person who walked past. Mom had wrapped her purse strap so tight around her fingers, the tips were purple.

“Where I’m going with this,” said the sergeant, “is that I imagine if you get this boy to the hospital and have him treated…by the time he’s released, you probably will have heard back from Child Services.”

Sergeant Simms shoved Miles’s info into a big yellow envelope. “Plain and simple, ma’am, the boy needs a doctor, and now,” he said. “Now beyond that, due to the recent storm damage stretching the district’s resources so thin, per se, I’m going to rely on your compassion and goodwill until we find out who he belongs with.”

Circa made it a point to look for Miles’s crinkle every time the man threw out another per se, but the crinkling mood seemed to have left him as fast as it had come on.

“Who knows?” said the policeman. “Maybe the hospital will admit the boy, and his mama will show up just in time to pay the bill and whisk him away.”

“Yes, who knows,” said Mom. She turned to leave with Circa and Miles following behind.

“Just please let us hear something soon,” Mom said, without even a look behind her. Circa wondered if she was speaking to the sergeant or to God.

A perfectly good tuba. A perfectly good chair. One could only hope that the perfectly good musician didn’t meet the same fate.