Chapter 7

The deputy came Saturday at eleven-forty in the morning, and I was under the sink at the Kellers' and Cori was home.

By the time I got there, there were two county vehicles on Quarry: a sheriff's cruiser and a code enforcement pickup with a light bar on the cab. Deputy Karen Prine I've known since high school. The code officer was a younger man named Hal Merkley who I'd never seen before and who was standing in the gravel alley with a clipboard getting rained on.

Doreen Unger from two doors down had called it in. She'd seen lights in the cold storage three nights running and a child in the office window, and Doreen is seventy-eight and follows the rules and doesn't like mysteries.

Merkley had already been through the loading dock with Ruth. He'd written down the extension cord - a code violation, unpermitted electrical, cord across a commercial property line - the cot, the heater, the water bucket, the fact that the building is posted unsafe and has been red-tagged for demolition for three years. Pryce from the county was going to get a call Monday morning.

Bryn was in the back seat of the cruiser with a wool blanket from the trunk and the door open and her feet on the running board, eating a granola bar the deputy had in her glove box. She wasn't in trouble. That's just where you put a kid in the rain while the grown-ups argue.

I parked and walked up. Cori was on the sidewalk in front of the house with Josie on her hip, no coat either of them, and the duffel bag was still sitting inside the front door where I'd seen it the night before.

"Mr. Hollis." Deputy Prine had her notebook out. "We're trying to sort out who this child belongs to. Mrs. Hollis says she's her granddaughter and she's got temporary care of her, but Mrs. Hollis is in a condemned building, so we've got a problem beyond my pay grade here. Do you know this child?"

The rain was coming down. Josie was watching me over her mother's shoulder with her hand in Cori's hair. Cori was watching me with her brows down flat.

Ruth was standing in the gravel with her canvas coat over her shoulders and no expression at all, and I understood that this was the twenty-four hours. She'd said six o'clock. It was eleven-forty and the Lord had handed her a deputy.

I thought about the van seat, and the thermos under it. I thought about February. I thought about the third bedroom and the twin bed and six years of Little League and every hand that's shaken mine at that feed store since 2010.

"No," I said. "I've never seen her."

Deputy Prine wrote it down.

Hal Merkley the code officer wrote something down too.

From the cruiser, Bryn Hollis looked at me across thirty feet of wet gravel, and she did not look hurt or surprised, which was worse. She just looked at me like she'd been told this would happen.

Then Josie, on her mother's hip, waved.

And Bryn waved back with the hand that wasn't holding the granola bar.

Cori turned her head and looked at me, and it was not the look she'd had Tuesday night, or Wednesday, or any night in twelve years. It was the look of a woman who has just read the last page of a book she was enjoying.