Chapter 23: The Same Door

We reached the dormitory at dusk, in a deputy's truck, with the desert gone orange behind us.

The caseworker's phone call had opened the gate.

Hannah sat beside me on the bench seat and held my hand the whole way, and I let her.

I had not stood on this hallway floor since the day I put on Russ's slippers.

It was the same corridor, with the same flickering light and the same row of identical doors.

Every one of them was open a crack.

Staff in field jackets stood in their doorways with coffee mugs.

They had heard a child was missing, and now they watched us come down the hall.

The deputy stopped at the last door.

It was the one I knew.

I lifted my fist and I did not have to knock.

The door opened from the inside.

Sam stood there in his blue coat with one dinosaur sock slipping down.

He looked up at me.

He looked at Hannah, and at the deputy, and at the long hallway of watching strangers.

"I know this man," Sam said, loudly, to all of them.

Then he put his left hand in mine and held on.

I knelt, though my stomach hated it, and put my forehead against his.

"Are you hurt?" I said.

"No."

"Did she hurt you?"

"No. She cried a lot." He whispered it. "She said we were going to start again where it's safe. I told her you'd come."

"How?"

"On the train. You came on the train before."

"I took a plane this time," I said, and my voice shook.

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