At the front desk, a nurse filling out the intake form glanced toward the waiting room. And the gentleman out there, he just drove us. The nurse wrote something down. Accompanying adult. Hadley was too tired to correct it.
For 3 hours, Jude Tolbert sat in a plastic chair under a television playing A Christmas Story with the sound off. He watched the doors. At a quarter to 1, May was breathing easy, asleep and pink-cheeked. A nurse brought out a loaner car seat. Jude spent four minutes buckling it in wrong before Hadley quietly reached past him and fixed it.
They drove in silence. The heater hummed. May slept. Finally, at a red light on Broadway, Hadley asked the question that had been sitting in her chest all night. Are you going to report me?
The light stayed red. Jude looked straight ahead. I don’t know yet.
It wasn’t the answer she wanted, but it was honest, and somehow that frightened her more than a lie would have.
The duplex in Fountain City was dark. One front window was sealed with plastic sheeting, taped at the edges against the draft. The headlights caught it. Jude saw it. He didn’t say a word about it.
“Thank you,” Hadley said at the door. “For tonight.”
He nodded once. Then he drove away.
At 3:00 in the morning, Jude unlocked his office and turned on the desk lamp. The walnut box sat on the shelf where she’d left it. The note was still propped against it, neat and square. He read it twice. I broke this. My daughter pulled it down. Then he folded the note carefully, the way you fold something you mean to keep, and placed it inside the music box. He closed the cracked lid as gently as it would go. He sat there until the sky over the old city turned gray.
At 7:12 on Christmas morning, Hadley’s phone buzzed on the nightstand. It was Gil Varner. Your pulled off Tolbert effective immediately. Building security sent me the footage. Call me. Hadley sat on the edge of the bed and read it again. May was asleep beside her, breathing slow and easy. I don’t know yet, he had said. Apparently by morning he did.
