The Good Father

And they’d been together ever since.

Unlike the couple whose wedding had been Jeff and Chloe’s first date.

Brett and Ella hadn’t made it together, but as Brett boarded his plane half an hour later, he was determined that Jeff and Chloe would.

There had to be some happy endings.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ELLA HADN’T SLEPT well the past two nights and was fighting irritability when she went into work Friday morning. Chloe’s constant need to have everything shiny clean, because Ella liked it that way, had bothered her that morning. While she appreciated Chloe’s attempt to keep Ella’s life as normal as possible, she also just wished Chloe would relax. She was tired of living with someone who walked on eggshells.

Then she ended up behind a slow driver in the passing lane on her way into work. By the time she got to work, the closest parking lot was full and she had to park in the off-site garage. And then an orderly on the shuttle from the employee parking garage to the hospital’s main campus was on the phone the entire trip, talking twice as loud as he should have been.

And there was a hair in her ponytail that was pulling. She’d redone the thing twice, but still felt a little jab to her scalp when she moved her head.

Standing in the elevator, it occurred to her that Chloe’s walking on eggshells in the apartment might not be as much about living with her as she’d thought, but rather another symptom of being a victim of domestic violence.

Then she was irritated with herself for taking so long to figure that out. And felt even guiltier for the ill thoughts she’d had regarding Chloe’s obsessive cleaning.

The NIC unit’s on-duty child-life specialist was standing in the hall just outside the elevator when Ella got off.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Jacqui said, though Ella was half an hour early for her shift. “Henry’s being discharged this morning. Nora’s taking him home.”

Henry. The baby of the young abuse victim Ella had turned over to Lila.

They’d been expecting the orders to come through for the past two days. “The Lemonade Stand’s ready for him,” she said, switching immediately into work mode. Child services had been up the day before. Without any formal proof against Ted Burbank or Nora, they were releasing the baby solely into his parents’ care.

Lila had police and lawyer members of the High Risk team working to establish proof that would help prevent Ted from having unsupervised access to his son until he got help.

In the meantime, the man wouldn’t know where to find his wife and son, or be able to get to them if he did.

“No,” Jacqui said, twisting her fingers together as she walked beside Ella and, when Ella slid her pass card through the reader, followed her onto the unit. “She’s taking him home, home. She’s in his pod now, packing up the things she had in there for him.”

Stopping in her tracks, Ella stared at the woman whose prime responsibility was advocating for the patients in her care. And secondarily to their families. “What do you mean home, home? She’s going to her home at the Stand, right?”

Jacqui shook her head. “She’s going home. I thought her permanent address on the paperwork was a mistake so I went in to have her correct it, and she’s not going back to the Stand.”

Ella hadn’t gotten a call...

Pulling her cell phone out of the pocket of her scrubs, she glanced at the screen. No missed calls. No voice mail. No text messages.

Lila would have called. The High Risk team would have been notified...

“There must be some mistake,” she said, turning toward Henry’s pod. They had pictures of Nora’s back. The woman had talked to the police and was willing to testify against her husband...

“I thought so, too.”

“Did she say she checked out of the Stand?”

“She didn’t. Check out, that is. She said she just decided on the way in this morning.”

Before seven in the morning? Right after waking up? She’d decided to take her baby out of a safe environment and back to a dangerous home that spontaneously?

“I’ll talk to her,” Ella said.

Thus began a morning that didn’t improve as the day wore on.

* * *