Max said, “I’ll get an orderly to crawl under the bed and get her—”
“Just leave it on the table,” Peanut said. “She might be odd, but she’s a kid. They do things in their own way and their own time. Hell, you can’t make a two-year-old eat and they’re tiny.”
Ellie smiled at her friend. “Any other advice?”
“No more strangers. She knows you, so you should take the food in. Talk to her in a soothing voice, but don’t stay. Maybe she wants to be alone to eat.”
“Thanks.” Taking the tray, Ellie went into the brightly painted room. The metal door clicked shut behind her. “Hey, little one. It’s me again. I hope you don’t hold that whole net thing against me.” She moved cautiously forward and set the tray on one of the tables. At the movement, the keys on her belt jingled; she clamped her hand over them. “I thought you might be hungry.”
Under the bed, the girl made a growling sound. It made the hairs on the back of Ellie’s neck stand up. She tried to think of just the right thing to say, but nothing came to her, so she backed out of the room and closed the door behind her. The lock clicked loudly into place.
In the hall again, Ellie stood by Max at the window. “Will she eat it?”
He opened the girl’s chart and got out his pen. “I guess we’ll find out.”
In silence, they stood there, looking through the glass at the room that appeared empty.
Several minutes later a tiny hand came out from underneath the bed.
Peanut gasped. “Lookee there.”
More time passed.
Finally, a dark head appeared. Slowly, the child crawled out from her hiding place on all fours. When she looked up at the glass and saw them standing there, her nostrils flared.
Then she dashed to the table, where she froze again and bent low over the food, sniffing it suspiciously. She threw the whipped cream to the floor, then ate the pancakes and the eggs. She didn’t seem to know what to make of the waffles and syrup. Ignoring both, she grabbed the strawberries and took them back to her hiding place under the bed. The whole incident took less than a minute.
“And I thought my kids had bad table manners,” Peanut said. “She eats like a wild animal.”
“We need a specialist,” Max said quietly.
“I’ve contacted the authorities,” Ellie answered. “The state, the FBI, and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They all need an identity or a crime to get in the action. I don’t know how to find out her identity if she won’t talk.”
“Not that kind of specialist. She needs a psychiatrist.”
Peanut drew in a sharp breath. “I can’t believe we didn’t think of it. She’d be perfect.”
Max frowned. “Who?”
Ellie looked at Peanut. “She’d never do it. Her clients pay two hundred an hour.”
“That was before. She can’t have many patients left.”
“God knows she’s qualified for this,” Ellie said.
“Who in the hell are you two talking about?” Max asked.
Ellie finally looked at him. “My sister is Julia Cates.”
“The shrink who—”
“Yeah. That one.” She turned to Peanut. “Let’s go. I’ll call her from the office.”
In the past twelve hours Julia had begun at least a dozen projects. She’d tried organizing her closet, rearranging her furniture, scrubbing her refrigerator, and deep cleaning her bathrooms. She’d also gone to the nursery to buy autumn plants and to Home Depot for deck stain and paint stripper. It was a good time to do all of the projects she’d been putting off for … ten years.
The problem was her hands.
She was fine when she started a project; more than fine. She was optimistic. Unfortunately, her optimism was as thin as an eggshell. All it took was a thought (it’s time for Joe’s appointment, or—worse yet—Amber’s) and her hands would start to shake; she’d feel herself go cold. No temperature setting was high enough to keep her warm. Late last night, in the deepest hour of darkness, when the traffic behind her condo had dwindled to a drone as faded as a single mosquito’s flight and the mighty Pacific Ocean out front had whooshed steadily toward the golden sand, she’d even tried to write a book.
Why not?
Every pseudofamous person went that route these days. And she wanted to tell her side of the story; maybe she even needed to. She’d slipped out of her comfortable queen-sized bed and dressed in fleece sweats and Ugg boots, then gone out onto her small deck. From her place on the sixth floor, the midnight blue ocean lay before her, always in motion. Moonlight cut the sea in half, tangled in the foamy surf.
Hours she’d sat there, her booted feet propped on the deck rail, her yellow pad in her lap, her pen in her hand. By midnight she was surrounded by balled-up yellow wads of paper. All any of them said were: I’m sorry.
Somewhere around four o’clock she fell into a fitful, nightmare-ridden sleep.