Chapter 5: The Visit Across Town
The halls of Nashville General smelled of strong bleach and stale coffee. I found Room 412, pushed the heavy wooden door open, and stopped in the frame.
Delaney was sitting up, staring blankly at the wall. Her left arm was encased in a thick white cast. A violent, purple-yellow bruise painted the entire left side of her face, swelling her eye shut. Her hair was greasy and matted. She looked frail, broken, and much older than thirty-two.
She turned her head slowly. When her good eye registered me, she flinched, shrinking back into the pillows.
I stood at the foot of her bed. I didn’t yell. I didn’t raise my voice. I just looked at her with an absolute, freezing emptiness.
“The kids are alive,” I said. The quietness of my voice seemed to echo louder than a shout.
Delaney closed her eyes, a tear instantly tracking down her unbruised cheek. “I know. The police came. They told me.”
“What did you do, Delaney?”
She couldn’t look at me. She spoke to her hands, her voice a ragged whisper. “I was just so tired, Rowan. I was so overwhelmed. I met a guy. He said we’d just go for a quick drink. I put them to bed. I locked the doors. I thought I’d be back in two hours. Just two hours to feel like a normal person.”
“You left a six-year-old in charge of a toddler with nothing but half a bottle of ketchup in the fridge.”
She let out a suffocated sob, bending forward over her cast. “I know. We argued in the car. He was driving too fast. I hit the dashboard and… everything went dark. I woke up yesterday and… oh god, Rowan, I didn’t know.”
“Micah fed her dry crackers because she was starving, Delaney. She almost died of dehydration. He sat in that silent house for three days, thinking his sister was rotting away, waiting for a mother who never came.”
She clamped her hand over her mouth, wailing now, the sound raw and pathetic.
I felt no pity. Only the cold, mechanical need to protect my blood. “I’ve already filed the emergency injunction,” I told her. “I am taking full, legal, physical custody. You will have no access to them unless a judge forces me to allow it. And I will fight to make sure they never do.”
