Straight to voicemail.
He called again.
Voicemail.
Again.
Nothing.
By the time he reached the parking garage beneath his building, his pulse was hammering so hard that his hands shook on the steering wheel. Delaney had told him earlier that week that she was taking the kids to stay at a friend’s lake cabin where service was unreliable, and because they were in the middle of one of their carefully negotiated custody weeks, and because their co-parenting had been tense but manageable for months, he had believed her. Now, as he tore out of downtown traffic and headed toward her rental house in East Nashville, all he could hear was Micah’s thin voice saying they had no food left.
He called Delaney one more time and got the same dead end.
“Come on,” he muttered at the windshield, gripping the wheel so tightly his knuckles blanched. “Come on, Delaney. Pick up.”
She never did.
A House Gone Quiet
He made the drive in less than thirty minutes, blowing through one yellow light and pulling up so fast at the curb that his tires bumped hard against it. The front porch looked wrong before he even got out of the car. No toys. No music from inside. No sign of anyone moving.
He ran to the front door and pounded with both fists.
“Micah, it’s Dad. Open the door.”
There was no answer.
When he tried the knob, the door swung inward.
The silence in the house was so complete that it made his stomach drop. Then he saw Micah sitting on the living room floor with a throw pillow clutched to his chest, his blond hair matted on one side, his cheeks dirty, and his little body carrying that unmistakable, frightening stillness children take on when they have moved past crying and into pure waiting.
Micah looked up and whispered, “I thought maybe you weren’t coming.”
Rowan crossed the room in two strides and dropped to his knees. “I’m here. Where’s your sister?”
Micah pointed toward the couch.
Elsie lay curled beneath a blanket, her face pale and flushed at the same time, her lips dry, her breathing shallow and uneven. Rowan touched her forehead and felt a rush of heat so fierce it made his own chest tighten. He lifted her immediately, and her head fell against his shoulder with too little resistance.
“We’re leaving right now,” he said, forcing calm into his voice for Micah’s sake. “Shoes on. No questions. Stay with me.”
Micah stood so fast he almost stumbled. “Is she sleeping?”
Rowan swallowed. “She’s sick, buddy. We’re going to get help.”
In the kitchen he caught sight of the evidence he would later replay in his mind in cruel detail: an empty cereal box on the counter, a sink full of dishes, one half bottle of ketchup in the refrigerator, no milk, no fruit, no leftovers, nothing a six-year-old could have used to feed himself or his little sister. A child-sized cup sat beside the sink with dried juice stuck to the bottom.
He did not let himself think any further. He carried Elsie out, ushered Micah into the back seat, and drove toward Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital with his hazard lights flashing, one hand on the wheel and the other reaching back every few seconds as if nearness alone could keep both of his children anchored to him.
From the back seat Micah asked, in a voice so small Rowan almost missed it, “Is Mom mad?”
Rowan kept his eyes on the road. “No. Your mom isn’t mad at you. Right now I need you to listen to me, okay? I’ve got you. I’ve got both of you.”
Micah was quiet for a second.
Then he said, “I tried to make Elsie crackers, but she wouldn’t eat.”
Rowan’s throat burned. “You did the right thing by calling me.”
The Bright Lights Of The ER
The emergency room doors slid open, and within seconds a nurse met him with a gurney.
“How old is she?”
“Three,” Rowan answered. “High fever, barely responsive, she hasn’t been eating, and I think they’ve been alone too long.”
The nurse’s expression sharpened at once, but her voice stayed steady. “We’re taking her back now.”
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