“He’s going somewhere safe too,” Ethan said, though he had no authority to promise that.
The shepherd turned its head after the ambulance doors closed, pulling once against the lead as if asking to follow.
Ethan had to give a full statement at the station that evening after his sister, Nora, came to pick up Ellie and a police photographer finished documenting the site. The leaf pile had become a crime scene in the technical sense, though Morales kept reminding him not to jump to conclusions about what crime, if any, had occurred. People in crisis made desperate decisions. Babies could be hidden, abandoned, or temporarily placed somewhere unsafe for a dozen reasons, not all of them malicious.
The note, if there was one, had not yet been found. No diaper bag. No identifying paperwork. The hospital blanket suggested recent birth, possibly same day.
Ethan listened and nodded and signed forms.
When he finally got home close to eight-thirty, the house felt wrong in the specific way ordinary houses do after extraordinary afternoons. Ellie was in borrowed pajamas from Nora’s emergency stash, sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of warm milk untouched in front of her. She had washed the tears off her face, but she still looked stunned, as if the shape of the world had shifted somewhere behind her eyes.
Nora stood at the sink pretending not to hover.
At thirty-eight, she was Ethan’s older sister by temperament even more than by age—competent, direct, and incapable of watching someone she loved suffer in a vague or passive way. She turned when he came in and took one look at his face before softening. “I made soup,” she said. “You should eat something.”
He kissed her cheek automatically and sat down beside Ellie.