Chapter 24: The Poster

The poster was still on the donation box in the Pemberton Pavilion's family waiting room on Tuesday morning.

Nobody had dared take it down.

I came in at seven, before rounds, in my white coat, and stood in front of it.

"Bring Annie-Rose Home," it said. "Missing since her seventh birthday."

Under the words was the drawing of a woman who looked a little like me.

Someone in a studio had imagined my face for twenty-seven years and gotten the chin right.

"You don't have to do it alone," Wylie said behind me.

I hadn't heard him come in.

He had a paper cup of coffee in each hand and his tie on crooked.

"I know," I said. "I wanted to do the first part alone."

"Do you want me to leave?"

"No. Stay by the door."

He set the cups on a table and stayed.

I peeled the first piece of tape from the top corner.

It came away slowly, brittle and yellow, and the paper curled.

The second piece was easier.

The third and fourth went together, and the poster slid down the face of the box into my hands.

It weighed nothing.

I looked at it for a while.

Then I turned it over.

The back was blank, and soft with age.

"I thought it would feel like something," I said.

"What does it feel like?"

"Like paper."

He smiled, and it hurt to see how glad he was.

The door opened again.

Lacey came in, slowly, on the walker, with Chester at her elbow and a nurse behind them both.

She had her hair brushed, and she was wearing her own clothes for the first time in two months.

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