For several seconds after Harlan Voss asked who had found his daughter, nobody moved.
The garage had gone strangely quiet.
Three engines idled behind him, exhaust curling pale through the frozen air.
Men in dark coats stood at a respectful distance, but no one looked relaxed.
All of them were watching Harlan.
Harlan was watching me.
“I did,” I repeated.
His eyes dropped to Belle.
Whatever people said about Harlan Voss—and people in Detroit said plenty—the expression that crossed his face when he knelt beside his little girl belonged to an ordinary frightened father.
“Hey, Bell.”
Belle’s eyes opened.
“Dad?”
The single word seemed to take something out of him.
“I’m here.”
He brushed the hair away from her forehead.
A gray-haired woman carrying a medical bag hurried forward with two others.
Harlan moved immediately so they could work.
I started backing away.
Someone had come for Belle.
Professionals had her now.
My hands were beginning to shake from the cold, and suddenly I remembered that my apartment was forty minutes away on foot, my coat was wrapped around a six-year-old, and I had an eviction notice folded beside three dollar bills in my purse.
I took two steps.
“Rue.”
I stopped.
Harlan was still crouched beside Belle.
His attention should have been entirely on her, yet somehow he had noticed.
“You said you wouldn’t leave her.”
“She has you now.”
“She asked for you.”
I looked down.
Belle’s fingers were sticking out from underneath my coat.
They were reaching toward me.
That was how I ended up riding to Henry Ford Hospital in the third SUV while one of Harlan’s doctors monitored Belle in the vehicle ahead.
It was also how I discovered that even a man who could apparently summon a private medical team into a parking garage in less than five minutes could not make a hospital move faster once his daughter was behind a set of double doors.
Harlan paced.
Not dramatically.
Not impatiently.
He walked exactly fourteen steps from one wall to another, turned, and walked fourteen back.
Again.
Again.
Again.
I sat in a plastic chair across from him wearing a blanket a nurse had found for me.
My waitress shoes squeaked every time I shifted my feet.
At twelve-thirty in the morning, a woman came hurrying through the waiting-room doors.
She was about Harlan’s age, maybe a little younger, with a long camel coat thrown over blue pajamas and her dark hair twisted into a careless knot.
“Harlan.”
He turned.
“Mara.”
She went straight to him.
“What happened?”
“Belle got separated from you.”
Mara closed her eyes.
“I know.”
He didn’t raise his voice.
That somehow made the sadness in her face worse.
“I thought she went downstairs with Theo,” Mara said.
“Theo thought she was with me.
I checked the rehearsal room, then the lobby, then—”
“We’ll talk about it later.”
“I am so sorry.”
“I know.”
Mara looked past him and noticed me.
Her eyes moved over the waitress uniform, the hospital blanket, and my bare arms.
