His Healing Touch novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Draft

The building manager had known me for six years, and he still checked the lease twice.

"Both names are on it, Ms. Tennant," he said at last, handing it back. "You're allowed in. I'll just need to call Dr. Whitlow."

"Please do," I said.

Stewart stood a step behind me in the lobby in a plain dark coat, quiet and formidable.

I'd asked him to come only to carry boxes.

He'd said, "I'm coming to stand in the room."

The apartment smelled like someone else's perfume.

It was faint and sweet, a note I didn't wear, floating over the coffee and the dry-cleaning plastic.

I stood in the doorway of the bedroom I'd shared with Bradley for eight years and looked at a pale blue silk robe hanging on the back of the door.

It wasn't mine.

"Hallie," Stewart said quietly.

"I'm fine. Give me ten minutes."

I packed my diploma first, then my mother's patchwork quilt, then the three occupational therapy textbooks Bradley had called "dead weight."

The last box was my license certificate, still in its frame, in the bottom drawer of the desk in the study.

I pulled the drawer open, and under the frame lay a folded stack of paper clipped with a silver clip.

The top page was a letterhead I knew by heart.

Harborview Pediatric Neurology. Neurodevelopmental Evaluation.

Patient: Acheson, Frederick, age 7.

I sat down on the study floor.

"Stewart," I said. "Come here."

He crouched beside me and read it over my shoulder.

I watched his lips go white.

It was a full report, twelve pages.

It described Freddie's presentation, his sensory profile, his "failure to form reciprocal attachment," and his "chronic environmental neglect."

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