His eyes were closed, his tiny face flushed from crying or cold or both. One fist rested against his cheek. A knitted cap sat crooked on his head, and his mouth made weak little movements as if he were searching for something he had already grown too tired to ask for.
Evan’s breath caught.
“Marla,” he said, without looking back. “EMS. Now.”
Marla was already moving.
“On it.”
The girl stared at Evan with desperate concentration.
“He’s not bad,” she said quickly. “He was crying but I bounced him like Mama does. I didn’t drop him. I promise I didn’t.”
“I know you didn’t,” Evan said. “You did very good.”
Her eyes filled again, but she did not blink.
“He got quiet.”
That sentence hit harder than if she had screamed.
Evan lifted the baby carefully from the bag, supporting his head with one hand and wrapping the blanket tighter with the other. The infant gave a faint, breathy cry. It was thin, but it was there.
The girl’s face crumpled with relief.
“He made a sound,” she whispered.
“Yes,” Evan said. “He made a sound.”
Marla came around the desk with a station blanket and a small bottle of water. Her face, usually sharp and practical, had softened into something grandmotherly and fierce.
“What’s your name, honey?” she asked.
The little girl looked between them as if choosing whether truth was safe.
“Nora,” she said.
“Nora what?”
“Nora Whitaker.”
Evan knew the name.
Not personally, not well. Briar Glen was small, and names floated through town like leaves in a creek. Whitaker meant a rental house off Sycamore Road, a mother who sometimes came into Parker’s Market with two children, and a man Evan had seen twice at gas station calls—Russell Cade.
Russell was the kind of man people described as polite when what they really meant was controlled.
Evan adjusted the blanket around the baby.
“And your brother?”
“Milo,” Nora whispered. “He’s five weeks old. Mama says he’s little but he’s stubborn.”
“Where is your mama now?”
Nora looked down.
For the first time, she seemed less like a brave child and more like a very tired little girl standing on bare feet in a police station long after bedtime.
“She wouldn’t wake up right,” she said.
Marla closed her eyes for half a second.
Evan kept his voice steady.
“What does that mean, Nora?”
“She was on the kitchen floor. She told me to go if she got sleepy again. She said if I couldn’t make the phone work, I had to take Milo and come here.”
“Where do you live?”
Nora swallowed.
“The blue house with the porch swing. On Sycamore. By the mailbox with the bird painted on it.”
Evan turned slightly.
“Marla, send Collins and Reed to the Whitaker rental on Sycamore. Possible medical emergency. Adult female down. Children removed from residence by sibling. Have EMS split if needed.”
Marla repeated the information into the radio with the clear, clipped voice of someone who knew panic wasted time.
Nora watched every movement.
“Are they going to be mad?” she asked.
“No,” Evan said. “They’re going to help your mom.”
She looked at the baby in his arms.
“Russell said nobody helps women who make trouble.”
Evan’s jaw tightened, but his voice did not change.
“Russell is wrong.”
Nora’s eyes lifted to his.
It was the first moment she looked seven.
Just seven.
Marla guided her toward the chair beside the desk. Nora hesitated until Evan carried Milo with them, then sat stiffly on the edge, her dirty feet not quite touching the floor.
Marla wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.
“You walked here barefoot?” she asked gently.
Nora nodded.
“I had shoes, but the laces were loud on the stairs.”
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