Chapter 9: The Green Door

On Friday morning the charge nurse walked us to the hospital doors herself.

She carried my daughter's discharge folder in one hand and a white envelope in the other.

"A woman left this at the desk for you," she said. "I didn't open it."

I put it in my coat pocket.

Colter had bought the car seat the night before, and I had written it on the tab.

A hundred and twenty-nine dollars.

I buckled my daughter in while the nurse held the door.

Two rows over, a black SUV sat with its engine running.

The window slid down.

"Annabel," Sheldon said.

I straightened up.

He looked the way he always looked, with his hair neat and his tie knotted and his face perfectly calm.

"Get in my car," he said. "We'll go home and talk."

"No."

"You have nowhere to go."

"She's in a car seat that cost a hundred and twenty-nine dollars," I said. "Somebody wrote it down."

He didn't understand, and I didn't explain.

"You'll be back by Sunday," he said.

Colter held the passenger door for me.

I got in beside my daughter, and he drove us out of the lot with Sheldon's engine still idling behind us.

It was three and a half hours to Denver.

My daughter slept through every curve of the mountain road.

I watched the road in the side mirror for most of the trip, waiting for a black SUV that never appeared.

First Step was a brick house with a green door and no sign.

It stood on a quiet street where the trees were just turning yellow.

Inside, it smelled of toast.

A girl of about eight peered at us from the top of the stairs and ducked back behind the railing.

"That's the welcome committee," Colter said.

A woman in a gray sweatshirt came out of the kitchen with a dish towel over her shoulder.

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