PART 2: THE PERSON SHE CALLED
“Bentley,” I said, keeping my voice steady, “you don’t have to explain the juice. We’re going to my kitchen.”
He tightened his grip on Maddie’s sleeve.
“Both of you,” I added.
His eyes moved past me toward the open door.
“Are there police outside?”
“No, honey. Just my porch.”
Maddie stepped toward me, but Bentley didn’t move.
“If Mama comes home and we’re gone—”
“We’ll leave her a note.”
He considered that with the seriousness of a man being asked to sign away his house.
Then he went to the kitchen table.
There was a pencil beside a stack of unopened mail. He picked it up and turned over an envelope.
MAMA WE ARE NEXT DOOR. I TOOK MADDIE. SHE IS OKAY.
He stared at the last sentence before putting the pencil down.
I looked away long enough to let him keep that much dignity.
While he fetched Maddie’s stuffed rabbit, I saw what he had been living on.
My saltine sleeves were folded neatly beside the sink. There was an empty applesauce container, half a bag of dry cereal, and a saucepan sitting beneath a faucet that would give him nothing.
On the refrigerator, held up by a magnet shaped like a strawberry, was a sheet of notebook paper.
MADDIE BREAKFAST.
MADDIE POTTY.
BOOK.
WAIT FOR MAMA.
The same four things had been written over and over, each day separated by a crooked pencil line.
There were nine lines.
“Miss Arlene?”
I turned.
Bentley stood behind me with a grocery bag containing diapers, a little pair of socks, and the rabbit.
He had packed so quickly it frightened me.
How many times had that child imagined somebody coming to take them away?
“Bring her coat,” I said. “You won’t need to carry everything.”
He brought the bag anyway.
In my kitchen, Maddie sat in Ray’s old chair and held a cup of water in both hands.
I gave her small sips while I called for medical help.
Bentley heard me say their address and went white.
“You promised.”
I set the phone down on speaker where he could see it.
“I promised you were both coming to my kitchen. I’m not going to lie to you, sweetheart. Maddie needs someone to check her, and so do you.”
“They’ll take her.”
“I’m going to tell them everything you did to keep her safe. And I’m staying here while we talk.”
His chin began to tremble.
It was the first thing about him that had looked ten years old.
The dispatcher asked questions. I answered what I knew and admitted what I didn’t.
When she asked how long their mother had been gone, Bentley whispered, “Since Tuesday.”
“Which Tuesday, honey?”
He looked toward the calendar beside my stove.
Then he pointed.
I had to press my hand flat against the counter.
All those mornings.
All those times I had filled his bottle and gone back to my coffee.
“Did you speak to her?” I asked.
He nodded.
“The first night. A lady let her use a phone.”
“What did your mama say?”
“That her car got hurt. She said somebody was coming.”
He picked at a loose thread on his sleeve.
“I waited by the window.”
The ambulance arrived without its siren.
One of the paramedics, a woman with gray threaded through her ponytail, crouched beside Maddie instead of standing over her.
She asked about the rabbit first.
Maddie told her his name was Pancake.
Only then did the woman take her little hand.
Bentley watched every movement.
When they said Maddie needed to go to the hospital, he stood so suddenly his chair struck the wall.
“She doesn’t go by herself.”
The paramedic looked at him.
“We can bring you too.”
“And Miss Arlene.”
She glanced at me.
“I’m coming,” I said.
I took my purse, my coat, and the ring of keys with the red tag.
Then I went back for Bentley’s note.
I taped it inside the glass of their front door and added my cell phone number underneath.
Before we left, I called Doug.
He answered with a sigh.
“Ma, I’m in the middle of—”
“Amber’s children have been alone. Maddie is going to the hospital.”
Silence.
Not confusion. Not a startled question.
Just silence.
“Doug?”
“What do you mean, alone?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“Where’s Amber?”
“That is what I’m trying to find out.”
He exhaled hard.
“Don’t start telling people things before you know the whole situation.”
I watched Bentley climb into the ambulance with his grocery bag tucked under one arm.
“What situation would make this acceptable?”
“Did you call anybody?”
“The ambulance is here.”
“Jesus, Ma.”
It wasn’t concern in his voice.
It was anger.
I hung up before he could say another word.
At the hospital, Maddie fell asleep beneath a warmed blanket while a nurse checked her.
Bentley sat close enough that one of his sneakers touched the wheel of her bed.
A nurse brought him a sandwich.
He asked if there was another one for later.
She said yes.
Only then did he open it.
I stepped into the doorway with my phone and called the hospital’s main number, even though I was already inside the building. I didn’t know who else to ask.
I gave Amber’s full name.
The operator transferred me twice.
Finally, a woman said, “May I ask your relationship to Ms. Collins?”
“I’m her neighbor. Her children are here with me.”
The woman’s voice changed.
“Please stay on the line.”
A few minutes later, a hospital social worker named Elena came down to the emergency department.
She didn’t begin with paperwork.
She looked through the doorway at Bentley, who was holding half his sandwich against a napkin while Maddie slept.
“Those are Amber’s children?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve been caring for them?”
“No.”
The word hurt coming out.
“I found them today.”
Elena’s expression went still.
I told her about the water bottle. The crackers. The school bus.
I told her about the cold apartment and the empty cup.
I told her who had ordered the water shut off.
My son’s name sounded strange in that room.
She wrote it down.
“Amber was brought in after a serious car accident,” she said carefully. “She needed surgery. There were complications, and for several days she couldn’t communicate with us.”
“Is she awake now?”
“Yes. She’s been asking about the children.”
“Then why hasn’t anyone—”
I stopped because Elena was already looking at the notes in her hand.
“Mrs. Mercer,” she said, “we were told they were with a trusted adult.”
Something cold moved through my chest.
“Who told you that?”
“Let me confirm what happened before I give you an answer.”
She left me standing in the doorway.
Behind me, Bentley whispered, “Is Mama here?”
I turned.
He had stopped eating.
“Yes, sweetheart.”
“Here in this hospital?”
“Yes.”
He looked at Maddie, then back at me.
For the first time since I opened their door, I saw hope reach his face.
“I told her,” he said. “I kept telling her Mama didn’t leave.”
I sat beside him.
“You were right.”
He nodded once, fiercely, as though somebody had finally marked the correct answer on a test he had been failing for nine days.
Elena returned twenty minutes later.
She said Amber’s nurse could arrange a short visit after the children’s medical assessments were finished.
Then she asked to speak to me outside.
I followed her into the hall.
“Amber was able to give us one local contact shortly after she arrived,” she said. “Someone she believed could reach the children and you.”
My fingers tightened around my purse strap.
“Who?”
“Your son. Douglas Mercer.”
For a moment, the hallway seemed to narrow.
Elena continued gently.
“Our notes say he was contacted the morning after the accident.”
“What did he say?”
“He said the children were safe with his mother.”
I stared at her.
“He said they were with me?”
“Yes.”
A cart rattled past us. Somewhere down the corridor, someone laughed.
I remember both sounds because I couldn’t understand how the world was carrying on.
“Did anyone speak to me?”
“The follow-up number he provided wasn’t answered. Messages were left.”
“My phone hasn’t—”
“I understand,” Elena said. “We’re checking the number.”
I looked through the doorway.
Bentley had tucked the blanket around Maddie’s feet.
My son had known.
While I filled a plastic bottle at my sink and wondered whether Amber was careless, he had known exactly where she was.
While he told me those people would live free as long as I let them, he had told someone else I was feeding her children.
“Mrs. Mercer?”
I realized Elena had asked me something.
“I’m sorry.”
“Is there anyone you’d like us to call to sit with you?”
“No.”
My voice surprised me.
“I want to see Amber.”
It took another hour.
Maddie stayed under observation with a nurse nearby while Elena walked Bentley and me upstairs for a brief visit.
Outside Amber’s room, Bentley stopped.
There were machines inside. Tubes. A bandage near his mother’s hairline.
I felt his hand find mine.
“She looks different,” he whispered.
“She’s been hurt.”
“Can she hear me?”
“Yes.”
Amber turned her head when we entered.
For a second, she only stared.
Then she tried to sit up.
“Bentley.”
The sound that came out of him was small and broken.
He crossed the room so quickly I thought he might pull the tubing loose, but at the bed he stopped himself.
Even then, he was careful.
Amber reached for him with her uninjured hand.
He bent into her shoulder.
“I fed her,” he said.
Amber’s eyes closed.
“I know, baby.”
“I used the last diaper yesterday, but I put a towel down. I didn’t let her touch the stove.”
Her eyes opened again.
She looked at me over his head.
I watched her understand that something was terribly wrong.
“What?”
Bentley began to cry.
Not loudly. He seemed to be trying to swallow each sob before it escaped.
“I didn’t go to school. I’m sorry. I couldn’t leave her.”
Amber looked toward Elena.
“He wasn’t with Arlene?”
Elena pulled a chair close to the bed.
“We need to talk about the arrangements you believed had been made.”
“I called Doug,” Amber said.
“I know.”
“He said he’d get them.”
Her breathing quickened.
“He said he’d tell Arlene. He said I should worry about getting better.”
I moved beside the bed.
“They’re with me now.”
“Both?”
“Both.”
“Where’s Maddie?”
“Downstairs with a nurse. She’s being cared for.”
Amber covered her mouth.
Bentley lifted his head immediately.
“Don’t cry, Mama. I did the list.”
That was what finally broke me.
Not the machines or the bandages.
The list.
That child thought there might have been one more thing he should have done.
I held his shoulders while his mother kissed his hair.
When he had settled enough to sit beside her, Elena stepped out to arrange Maddie’s visit.
Amber caught my wrist.
“Arlene. There’s something else.”
“Rest first.”
“No. Please.”
Her grip was weak, but her eyes were clear.
“The rent.”
“Don’t you worry about rent.”
“I paid it.”
I stood very still.
“What?”
“On the third. Cash. Doug came after my shift.”
“Amber, are you certain?”
“He said the office payment system wasn’t working. I took it out at the grocery store.”
There was no office payment system.
Doug collected checks or accepted bank transfers. That was all we had ever used.
“He gave me a receipt,” she whispered. “It’s in the kitchen drawer, under the takeout menus.”
My phone began vibrating inside my purse.
Doug.
I silenced it.
Amber looked at the purse, then back at me.
“Did he say I didn’t pay?”
Before I could answer, a message appeared.
MA, WHERE ARE THE SPARE KEYS?
A second followed.
I NEED TO GET INTO THE RIGHT SIDE BEFORE YOU COME HOME.
I looked down at Ray’s red tag resting in my palm.
Then a third message lit the screen.
DON’T TOUCH ANY OF HER PAPERWORK. I’LL HANDLE IT.
For forty-five years, I had known what to call the person sending those messages.
My son.
Standing beside Amber’s hospital bed, I realized I no longer knew what else he was.
END OF PART 2…
