"Seven."
There was a pause, and behind the pause came a thin, faint sound that could only have been the cry of a newborn baby, but it was so faint that it seemed to travel through the fabric, the distance, and the tiredness.
“Whose baby is it, darling?” the operator asked, keeping her tone gentle as her other hand already moved toward the send button.
Juni answered as if the truth were obvious and heavy at the same time.
“Mine,” she said, and then hurried on, panicked by her own honesty, “I mean, he’s my brother, but I take care of him, and he’s getting lighter every day, and he doesn’t want to drink, and I don’t know what else to do.”
The call went out within seconds, because even in a small town, even on a quiet street, a phrase like that spread faster than any siren.
A door that wouldn't open
Officer Owen Kincaid was two blocks away when the radio came on, and he was the kind of man who didn't scare easily after twenty years on the job, yet something in the dispatcher's terse urgency tightened his chest, because it was one thing to respond to a car accident or a bar fight, but it was another thing entirely to respond to a child trying to sound brave while asking strangers to save someone they loved.
He turned into Alder Lane and saw the house before he even saw the number, for the place had a tired look, like old wood, with paint peeling in patches and a front step sagging slightly toward the ground, and yet everything outside was quiet enough to arouse suspicion.
Owen walked up the steps, knocked loudly, waited, then knocked again and called.
“Police Department. Open the door.”
For a moment only the faint sound of a child could be heard, then a tiny voice floated through the woods, trembling as if it were about to break.
“I can’t,” said the girl, “I can’t leave him.”
Owen tried again, because he had learned that sometimes fear made people freeze, and that freezing sometimes felt like a challenge.
“Juni, this is Agent Kincaid. I’m here to help you. Open up.”
“I can’t let this go,” she said, and that was the part that made him realize that this wasn’t a difficult child, but a child clinging to the only lifeline she believed existed.
Training took over, because that's what you did when your heart wanted to do something reckless, so he stepped back, braced himself, and pushed the door with his shoulder until the old lock gave way with a dull crash.
The living room light
The air inside smelled of stale heat, dish soap, and something that might have been diluted powdered milk, and the living room was dim except for a small lamp that glowed in the corner like a tired moon, and there, on a worn carpet that had flattened into paths from years of footsteps, sat a little girl with disheveled dark hair and an oversized T-shirt that hung off one shoulder, her knees drawn up as if she were trying to make herself smaller, as if shrinking might make the problem easier to manage.
In her arms was a baby.
Owen had held newborns before, many, and knew what four months usually meant in terms of body weight and cheek roundness, yet this baby's face seemed too narrow, his limbs too thin, his skin so pale you could see the faint blue of his veins, and when he cried it wasn't the loud protest of a well-fed infant, but a frail, strained sound that made Owen's throat tighten.
The little girl was crying too, not loudly, but in the constant, exhausted way of someone who has cried for a long time and exhausted her energy before losing her fear, and she kept pressing a damp cloth to the child's lips as if she could bring him back to life with patience alone.
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