Page 68 of Weight of Guilt

“I’ll call you. Text me your number so I’ll have it. Whatever there is, good or bad or nothing, I’ll let you know tonight.” He meant the words. “It’s most likely nothing.”

Wren followed him as far as the automatic doors and stopped there. “Nash.”

He turned.

“Thank you.” She had her arms crossed against the cold coming through. “For today. All of it.”

He nodded, something about her words causing a lump to form in his throat. “I’ll be in touch.”

Then he crossed the lot at a jog.

Chapter

Thirty-Four

The doctor was a small woman in her fifties with reading glasses on a beaded chain.

Her gaze stopped on Nora and lit with recognition. “Nora Loveless. I didn’t know you were here.”

Nora had worked at this hospital, so the two must know each other, Wren mused.

“Dr. Hardin.” Nora rose and stepped closer. “Christian is my brother.”

Something moved across the woman’s face. “I saw the last name and wondered.”

“Is he okay?” Marlowe asked, rising to her feet also.

Dr. Hardin looked at the clipboard, then at the three of them, and she frowned. “Sit down. All of you.”

They did as she asked.

“He needed nine stitches. It was a clean laceration, with no tendon involvement, and he’s going to have full use of that hand.” She pulled her glasses down. “He got lucky. People put their fists through glass all the time, and it goes worse than this.”

“And his head?” Nora asked. “Did you check it? I told them at the front desk that he was having memory issues.”

“CT’s clean. No bleed, no fracture, no acute injury. I’ve got no imaging explanation for the memory gaps. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one. It means it’s not on my scan.”

Marlowe’s shoulders slumped.

Dr. Hardin turned the clipboard face down on her knee. “I know some of the situation, and there was something that surprised me.”

Wren’s stomach tightened. “What’s that?”

“He’s not malnourished,” she announced.

“What do you mean?” Nora rushed.

“I mean, he’s thin, yes. And he’s dehydrated, so we have him on an IV, and he’s got the vitamin D of a man who doesn’t get outside much.” She said the words evenly. “But his weight is normal for his height. His teeth have been cared for. I found one old fracture in his left forearm that healed clean and straight. Clean and straight means somebody set it.”

“Somebody took him to a doctor.” Nora squinted in confusion.

“I didn’t say that. I said somebody set it. That could be a doctor or it could be a person who knew how.” Dr. Hardin shrugged. “What I can tell you is that whatever happened to that young man, he wasn’t starved or beaten.”

Wren’s mouth went dry.

She’d formed a story in her mind over the past two days. She’d been forming it, if she was honest, for ten years—a picture of a dark room, a rusty chain, a boy going hungry.

She’d hated the image, but she’d carried it anyway. She’d never once considered the other possibility.