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Lex Foster, as a rule, did not ask for help. Not that the concept escaped her. If anything, she was acutely aware at all times how much she could use a bit of assistance. No, her reluctance was born of a deadly mixture of spite, pride, and fear—desperate to prove she could float above it all but never sure if anyone would come to her aid if she called.
She fumbled with her phone, barely able to see through a film of tears, and with shaky hands dialed the first number she thought of, the one she was told to use “whenever you need me.”
It rang.
And rang.
And rang.
And went to voicemail.
Not even a real voicemail, she thought bitterly, just a perky robotic voice informing her that “the person you are trying to reach has a voicemail box that has not been set up yet.” She shoved down the urge to chuck her phone against the pavement just for the satisfaction of seeing it shatter and slumped against a nearby traffic barrier, a chill running down her spine as she pressed her back into the cold concrete. The wind whipped around her, blowing unkempt hair into her face that she didn’t bother to brush aside.
Hannah was gone.
Lex walked in from work. Footsteps. Shouting. A beer bottle shattered against the wall, just inches away from her head. Her mom, in a drunken haze, screaming “You’d better find that damn brat if you know what’s good for you.”
She found Hannah’s room frozen in time. Not a single thing out of place, not a speck of dust unaccounted for. Even her ukulele was still sitting on her bedside table. She would never have left without it.
Her hands hadn’t stopped shaking. Sure, the odds of something as catastrophic as last winter was outlandish at best, but the idea that this was just a mundane kidnapping didn’t ease her worries either.
She finally brushed the hair out of her eyes, pulled it all over one shoulder, and picked up her phone. Nothing. Not even a simple “sorry I missed your call.” Lex pretended for a second that she was pissed, even scowled at the screen, but nothing she did had any bite. Mr. Houston—he tried to get her to call him Tom, but it never stuck—had too much on his plate to drop everything for a random phone call. He’d gone back to teaching this semester anyway, he probably had a class. And besides, he had no way of knowing how urgent this was, no way of knowing Hannah was…
She felt sick even thinking it.
Lex thought about calling the police, reporting Hannah missing, but what would that achieve? She spent too many long years skirting CPS and social workers, desperately trying to keep Hannah safe, begging them to let her stay. The second the government got involved, they’d be separated, especially now that she was an adult and Hannah was still a child.
So the government was against her, and she had one too many run-ins with the cops to feel comfortable calling anyway. An emergency where she couldn’t call emergency services. What luck.
Then it hit her.
Strange disappearances, she can’t call the police, why didn’t it occur to her sooner? She barely registered the idea before her hands started moving, dialing a number she barely remembered so quickly it was a miracle she didn’t mistype it.
She pressed the call button, letting out a shaky breath.
It rang.
And rang.
And rang.
John MacNamara, as a rule, hated meetings. He would go to great lengths to avoid them, and for every unavoidable meeting, he’d seemingly conjure an excuse out of thin air to not attend. He simply saw no point—nothing was ever discussed, only said and mindlessly repeated. On occasion, someone would throw in a mindless platitude to make it sound like something of substance was being said. It never was.
So of course, when his phone vibrated in his pocket a moment before the start of a meeting that he frankly hadn’t even gone over the agenda for, he quickly excused himself. He wasn’t one to bother with caller ID, and he didn’t recognize the number, but he flipped open his phone anyway. If they had the number, it had to be important.
He didn’t even manage a greeting before a voice cut him off, muffled by static.
“Hannah is gone.”
At first, the words barely registered. Trying to hear over the din of the meeting starting in the room behind him and through the static on the line made distinguishing words near impossible. The line fell silent, save for the static he finally realized was the sound of heavy wind.
“Lex?”
He phrased it as a question, but it was the one thing of which he was certain: he was on the phone with Lex Foster, and she was talking about her sister.
“She’s gone. I… I checked her room when I got home and it’s all there and nothing is messy or broken but she didn’t take her ukulele and she doesn’t go anywhere without it and you told me to call if anything happened and—”
“Lex.” He cut off her rambling. “Tell me again from the beginning. Slowly .”
“I came home from work. And… my mom… she was yelling at me to find Hannah, so I went into her room and nothing was moved or anything, but she wasn’t there, and she…” Lex trailed off, pausing for a moment. “She tells me when she leaves. And she never leaves without her ukulele. It was still there. Everything was still there.”
“Okay.” Nothing about that was okay. “Where are you?”
“I’m…” She trailed off again, and the sound of crunching leaves broke through the static. “I’m at the corner of Elm and Aspen. By the old corner store.”
“Perfect. Stay right there.”
Lex wasn’t sure how far away John was, she didn’t even know if he was on his way, but she was told to stay put. And she did. With Hannah’s safety on the line, she would do just about anything. Hannah came before any spite or pride or fear. So she stayed put.
Maybe she lost track of time, or maybe it was a shorter drive than expected, but not long after she resigned herself to a lengthy wait, she heard the unmistakable sound of tires on asphalt and looked up to see a sleek black car slow to a stop in front of her. Lex wondered for a moment if she should open the passenger door, but before she could act on her thought, the engine shuddered to a stop. The driver’s door opened and shut, and a head of curly blond hair peeked over the top of the car.
Panicked, she wiped away lingering tears and pulled her hair back into some semblance of neatness. She hated crying in front of people, but she hated people knowing she was crying just as much.
John came around the other side, offering Lex a hand, and she let him pull her up. Still a bit shaky and off-balance, she stumbled and instinctively reached out to steady herself. She immediately recoiled when she realized she’d grabbed onto John’s shoulder, but if he noticed or cared, he didn’t mention it.
“I’ll drive you back to your home. You can show me what’s wrong.” It wasn’t a request. At least it didn’t sound like one. And Lex wasn’t one to take orders.
When he opened the passenger side door for her, she got in without complaint.
They drove in silence, Lex fiddling with the hem of her jacket. She needed something to do with her hands. On instinct, she reached for a cigarette and found her pocket empty. Shit. Instead, she grabbed her phone and sent a quick text to Mr. Houston.
[got everything sorted out, don’t worry]
She lingered for a moment to see if he started typing. When he didn’t, she put her phone away. Not a useful distraction anymore.
The drive didn’t take long. Of course it didn’t, she’d only gone as far as she could walk, and even in her blind rage she couldn’t have walked far. Still, she’d trade the world for just a few extra moments to compose herself before they stepped out of the car.
Her mom’s rusted old Ford wasn’t in front of the trailer, which she decided was for the best. She took the lead, letting John follow her through the propped open door, and winced when broken glass crunched under her shoes. The beer bottle. What a great first impression.
She brushed the shame aside. Not helping.
She pulled back the curtain separating Hannah’s room from the rest of the trailer. Pristine. Well, as pristine as a kid’s bedroom could be. Ever routine-oriented, Hannah even made the bed that morning, but her freshly-washed laundry still sat on the end, mostly folded but not yet put away, like she got snatched up mid-task.
“Is there anything out of place now that wasn’t when you last checked?”
John’s voice snapped Lex out of her thoughts. He’d already started walking around the room, taking longer than Lex thought possible considering how small it was. Every corner, every wall, every seemingly inconsequential thing got checked and rechecked and rechecked again. He followed a process, something methodical that Lex couldn’t put into words but that soothed her nonetheless.
“No, this is how it looked when I came home.”
“And it always looks this clean?” He didn’t sound skeptical, just curious.
“Hannah is just… like that. She's not really a normal kid. I mean, I guess you knew that, but…” She trailed off, searching for a way to word her thoughts. “She’s always been really particular about stuff. She makes her bed like five times to make sure it’s perfect. Always folds her clothes in the same order. Does stuff at the same time every day, down to the minute. Stuff like that. Not that it’s a bad thing!” she corrected. “Just that… no other kid her age does that.”
“I understand.” John traced a hand along the wall by Hannah’s tiny window, searching for something Lex couldn’t figure out. “I was much the same way growing up.”
Lex’s phone rang. Shit, she forgot to put it on silent. Would it be rude to take a phone call now? Maybe it was Mr. Houston—she said not to worry, but he would worry anyway. Maybe she should check.
She pulled it out of her pocket and squinted at the number. It didn’t look familiar—and clearly wasn’t in her contact list—but before she could consider, her hand had already pressed the answer button.
She never answered phone calls from unknown numbers. In hindsight, perhaps the universe had decided to bless her with a split second of clairvoyance.
“Hello?”
The voice on the other end of the line spoke quickly. Lex couldn’t manage to pick out anything, couldn’t grasp onto a single word, until—
“…Hannah…”
Hannah. They had Hannah, or they knew where she was, or—
She didn’t mean to hang up the phone. In fact, she didn’t even notice she did until she felt someone gently pull it away from her. John. He stood in front of her, turned off her phone, and handed it back with a similar expression to one that might be used when approaching a possibly violent animal.
Lex thought briefly that if she got one more piece of bad news, it might not be an inaccurate comparison.
“I’d be happy to drive you to the hospital.”
The hospital. That’s who called. Hannah was in the hospital.
Lex blinked back tears and managed an incredibly hoarse “Please.”
Another silent car ride was Lex’s definition of torture. Luckily, John was prepared.
“I’ll admit, I caught very little of the conversation. Did they let you know the situation?” He kept his eyes on the road, so Lex couldn’t see his expression, but he kept his voice exceedingly gentle. She felt like a young child being comforted by a parent, the thought of which usually made her sick.
She despised how little she despised it.
“They said she’d be alright.” For all she knew, they did. Of course, she didn’t understand a word they said, but she clung to the hope. Hannah would be alright. John seemed content with her answer, and the silence returned.
An eternity passed—or maybe only a few short minutes, Lex couldn’t be sure—before they pulled into the parking lot at St. Damien’s. She managed to get out of the car without immediately sprinting for the doors of the hospital, even managed to calmly and almost politely inform the lady at the desk that she was here for Hannah Foster. A short nurse with even shorter hair escorted her down a series of winding hallways, John following just behind them both. It only barely occurred to Lex that he probably shouldn’t be allowed to do that—after all, didn’t they only allow family?
They didn’t go to a hospital room—“Mrs. Foster is still with Hannah, we’ve temporarily restricted her to one visitor at a time”—but instead a small office. Lex sat on one side of a cluttered desk in a chair that was somehow too big and too small, barely noticing as John sat down next to her.
The door closed, then opened, then closed again, and a red-headed nurse sat across from them.
“Hello Lex, how are you?”
“Where is my sister?”
Unphased by her bluntness, Becky passed Lex a stapled packet of medical information. She skimmed it. Nothing new or unusual except near the end, where someone had added a copy of an x-ray with something circled.
“A fracture. Your mother says your sister fell on her bike and landed wrong, though I—” She cleared her throat. “You’re aware that I have my suspicions.”
“Always.” A fractured wrist, god, Lex almost felt guilty for being so relieved. It could be worse, so much worse. A fractured wrist. She let out a slow breath. “When can I see her?”
“Unfortunately Hannah has been restricted to a single visitor at a time. We feel with her state it’s for the best. Your mother has informed us that she will be leaving as soon as any paperwork is sorted, I’d be happy to bring you back after she’s left.” She typed a few things on her computer, the keyboard clicking loudly in the silence. “Your mother has also indicated you as a secondary guardian if you would like to take Hannah home once she’s released.” She gathered a few papers from her desk and stood up. “I’ll come back to get you as soon as possible.”
She left, taking care to shut the door gently.
“A fractured wrist. Just a fractured wrist. God…” She let out a nervous laugh, almost forgetting there was someone else in the room.
“I’m glad. The recovery should be easy on her. She’s a strong kid.”
Lex jumped, her head snapping to the left. John. John was still sitting next to her. Right. She nodded. “I just wish she called me, or… I don’t know.” She looked down at her feet. “Maybe her phone broke when it happened. I don’t know.”
They sat in silence for a moment. When Lex looked up, she locked eyes with John almost immediately. He looked… not nervous, that wasn’t the right word. He looked serious. Incredibly serious. That made Lex nervous.
“What?” she prompted. There had to be something he wanted to say.
“I heard you had aspirations of raising Hannah yourself. I find that admirable.”
How did he know that? They’d taken so much care to not tell anyone. California was just a pipe dream now, of course it was, but there were other options, other places. If John knew, wouldn’t he try to stop them? Every adult had so far.
“If you need,” he continued, clearly not noticing what Lex thought was obvious panic, “I am open to housing you both for as long as you need.”
What?
“I can’t imagine it would be easy to keep her safe in the situation you’re both in now. I have some connections if you need help legally. You’re welcome to stay until you can get back on your feet.”
He wasn’t supposed to be helping. That’s not how this worked. The second someone even thought Lex had plans of running away and taking Hannah with her they immediately doubled down, tried to guilt her into staying. He shouldn’t be offering a house. He shouldn’t be offering help at all. And he certainly shouldn’t be this… genuine.
“I think we’ll be alright.” Her voice came out colder than she meant it to. “But uh… Thanks, really,” she added softly.
“Understood.” He stood up. John wasn’t much taller than her, but at that moment he towered over her. “I’ll wait outside for you. And Lex?” He waited for her to look at him. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
She locked eyes with him. They were strikingly blue. It felt like he was staring straight into her soul.
“Got it. Thanks.”
Without John to distract her, Lex ended up staring at the clock until Becky came back for her. About an hour passed—much longer than their mom usually bothered staying—before she led Lex in silence to a room just a few doors down. Becky stepped to the side and let Lex walk in first.
She knew what to expect. This wasn’t the first time one of them had ended up in a hospital room, and Lex had long resigned herself to the fact that it wouldn’t be the last. But seeing Hannah in a hospital bed, paper gown wrinkled and braids unraveling, looking so… small … it never got easier.
Thankfully someone had the forethought to leave a chair at the side of the bed. If they hadn’t, Lex‘s legs might not have supported her long enough to walk over. She sat down, using the edge of the bed to steady herself, careful not to put too much weight on her hand to avoid jostling the bed. Hannah looked over at her, not scared or nervous or upset, but the bags under her eyes were darker than Lex remembered. Maybe the bright lights and crisp white walls of the hospital made them stand out. Hannah was far too young to look so tired.
“Still feeling alright?” Becky asked from behind Lex.
“I’m fine.” She sounded exhausted.
Becky scribbled something down on a clipboard and stepped toward the door. “I’ll leave you two alone then, call for me if you need anything.” She stepped into the hall, the bustling sounds of the hospital breaking the silence for just a moment before the door closed behind her.
“Hannah… what happened?”
She didn’t respond. Fair enough. Lex didn’t want to push, but what if it was something she could’ve stopped? She had to know. She had to.
“Becky said you fell.”
Hannah shook her head. For a second she looked ready to say something, but she let the silence linger instead.
“Hannah, did…” Lex swallowed. “Did someone hurt you?”
Hannah’s eyes darted back and forth like she expected someone to jump out, to catch her telling the truth, to take her away. Lex put a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s just me, Hannah. No one else.”
She nodded. When she finally spoke, it was a near whisper. Lex clung to every word.
“Mom was drinking. And she pushed me. I fell on it funny and it broke.” She said it all at once, hushed and harried and barely comprehensible.
When Lex didn’t respond right away, she added a timid “Sorry.”
“No, Hannah, it’s… Don’t say ‘sorry,’ it’s not your fault. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault either.” She pushed herself up with her good hand. “I don’t want to go back.”
Shit.
Lex wasn’t ready for this part yet. She thought she had at least an hour left of quiet pondering and making sure Hannah was actually okay before she had to face reality. She didn’t have an answer yet, she needed time—
No, that was a lie. She did have an answer. It was staring her in the face—or it would be, if he hadn’t gone outside to wait for her.
“You don’t have to.” She spoke without thinking, but it didn’t really matter, did it? Lex had the answer, now she just needed to stop being so damn prideful and accept it.
“Really?” Hannah whispered. “I mean, I thought you might, but…”
“Really. I promise.”
Lex heard a knock at the door and Becky’s voice, muffled, asking to come back in. She nodded, then remembered Becky couldn’t see her through the door and stood up to let her in.
“Alright Hannah, you’re all set for now. We’ve decided to keep you overnight, just to be safe. Your mom said it’s alright. And then Lex can take you home first thing tomorrow morning, okay? Here, I grabbed this for you.” She handed Hannah a juice box. Grape. Her favorite since she was a little kid. It wasn’t the right brand, but Hannah didn’t mention it. “Just don’t tell my head nurse.”
“Thank you, Miss Becky.” She didn’t open the straw. Odds are she had no intention of drinking it, wrong brand and all that. Lex hated grape juice, but she considered offering to drink it once Becky was gone so Hannah wouldn’t feel bad.
“Lex, can I talk to you in the hall for just a second?”
She nodded and followed Becky out, a pit forming in her stomach as the door shut behind them. Now that she knew Hannah was safe, she had the mental capacity to worry about other things. Namely…
“This is about the bill, isn’t it? Look, I know I don’t have the money to pay for an overnight stay but if you just give me a month, maybe two, I can—”
“That’s not what this is about, Lex. In fact, Hannah’s bill has already been covered.”
“I don’t understand.” Her mom had no money, and just the splint alone probably cost more than Lex could make in a month.
“The donor requested to remain anonymous. But that’s not what this is about. Lex, I need you to be honest with me. How did this happen?”
“Mom already told you, she fell off her bike.”
Beck sighed. “Lex, we both know that isn’t true. Listen, I’m not going to intervene, that’s not good for you and it’s not good for Hannah. But I want the truth.”
Lex thought for a moment, then finally said, “You won’t be surprised.” It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Becky shook her head.
“Lex, you can’t stay there.”
“I know.”
“Lex, I mean it. I know you don’t want to get CPS involved, but—”
“No, really. I mean it. I know. I found somewhere for us to stay once she gets out. It’s fine.”
“Lex, I—”
“It’s fine.”
“Well…” Becky trailed off, not convinced. “If you need anything else, you know where I am.”
For a moment, Lex considered being an asshole, just to get a reaction. She had so much excess energy and nowhere to let it out. But she decided against it. That wasn’t fair.
“I do. Thanks.”
Finally satisfied, Becky nodded and darted around the corner, probably to deal with some important nursing business, and Lex pulled out her phone and started dialing a number that was quickly becoming second nature. It barely rang before someone answered.
“Lex, is everything alright?”
“I changed my mind,” she spit out before she had time to reconsider. John didn’t respond right away. God, she thought, maybe she should actually try greeting him when she called.
“How much longer?”
“Overnight. To be safe.”
“Do you want me to stay?”
Lex would be fine alone. She’d done it how many times before? It’s not like she was the one in the hospital, she could handle it just fine.
“Stay. Please.” Her voice came out raspy, threatening to break. “Or come back, or… whatever. If it’s not too much trouble, I mean.” She stammered over her words and, for what felt like the thousandth time, wiped away the start of tears.
“I never left. If you want me to stay, I will.”
“Thanks.” She paused. “I’m gonna check on Hannah again.”
“I’ll be here if you need me.”
“Thanks. I… thanks.” She didn’t have any other words. How do you thank someone for saving your life? And twice, no less? She hung up and opened the door to Hannah’s room.
“You’ve been crying.” Never one to pull punches, Hannah crossed her arms—as well as she could with the splint on, anyway—and added, “Why?”
“Nothing,” Lex lied. She knew Hannah could tell, but it didn’t matter. The whole story could wait. “Just… Happy. That you’re okay. And that we don’t have to go back.”
Hannah stared for a moment, then, when she finally realized she wasn’t getting the full story any time soon, uncrossed her arms.
“Me too.”
John didn’t expect Lex to take him up on his offer. Multiple times she came down the hall and sat with him in the waiting room, usually to give the nurses space to work or to give Hannah time to rest, and every time he thought she would back out.
He passed her a cup of coffee, wincing as he watched her add at least three packets each of the sugar and creamer he had to dig out from the back of a cabinet. She’d just gotten off the phone with someone who called on the ride home.
“Thank you again,” Lex said, taking a sip of the coffee.
“You don’t need to thank me. I care about you both, it was the right thing to do.”
“That’s the one thing I don’t get. Why?” She took another sip, mulling over her words. “I guess… I mean you saved my life, cool, whatever, but that’s your job. You probably do it all the time. So why me? Why us? And don’t try that ‘you’re special’ bullshit because you didn’t seem to give a shit after everything was over.” She looked at him pointedly.
“Is it so unbelievable that there are people in this world that care about you simply because you’re someone worth caring about?”
“Yes.” She didn’t hesitate. John frowned.
“Well, it’s true. That people care about you.” He paused. “You were on the phone for a while. That person must care about you.”
“Yeah, he does, I guess. But he's so busy…” She sighed. “I know he says he doesn’t mind, but it gets to you, y’know? It’s like… enough people decide you’re not worth the effort and suddenly it’s like… does anyone think you are? Or are they just doing it because they think they have to?”
“But you’re here.”
“Yeah.” John couldn’t tell if she meant that to be positive. He decided to assume she did.
“Is Hannah doing alright?”
“Oh yeah, she’s over the moon. I wish… I wish I got her out of there sooner. God, I was so stupid.” She took another sip of coffee, then pushed it away. “California my ass,” she muttered.
“On the contrary, I think you were incredibly selfless.”
“Yeah?” She paused. “Hannah trusts you, you know. A lot. And she doesn’t, usually. Trust people, that is.”
John nodded.
“I don’t think she’d like me very much if I made her leave,” she added.
“And you?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You are.”
“Well then, I think you’re stuck with us.”
John smiled. “That was the plan.”