Chapter 2
"Dad."
It came out so thin I almost didn't recognize it as his voice. Noah was curled on his side with his knees pulled up, his T-shirt damp with sweat, one sneaker missing, and his pants stained where he had been sick. Emily made a sound I had never heard from her before and started down the stairs so fast I thought she would fall.
I reached him first. His hands were icy. His hair was wet at the temples. He clung to my neck with a weak little grip and said, "I told Aunt Sarah to call you. She shut the door."
Sarah stood at the top of the stairs with blue frosting still smeared across her fingers. "I didn't know it was that bad," she kept saying. "He was exaggerating, Michael. Kids do that."
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At the ER intake desk, the nurse slid a hospital intake form toward me and asked for the timeline: time dropped off, time found, number of unanswered calls, whether any adult had taken away his phone. I watched Emily pull up my call log with shaking hands. 2:06. 2:19. 2:44. 3:31. 4:07.
That was the new thing Sarah had not counted on.
