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“Does it help?” Max asked. “Being with someone who loves you?”
“As much as anything can.”
He nodded.
Julia let go of him and went to the door, opening it.
Alice stood there, looking impossibly small and frightened. She was twisting her hands together, the way she did when she was confused, and she had her shoes on the wrong feet. The sound she made was a strangled, confused howling. Seeping, bloody scratches lined her cheeks.
George stood behind Alice. His handsome face was pale and seamed with worry lines she hadn’t seen before. “She thinks you let her go because she was bad.”
It hit Julia like a blow to the heart. She dropped to her knees, looked Alice in the eyes. “Oh, honey. You’re a good girl. The best.”
Alice started to cry in that desperate, quiet way of hers. Her whole body shook, but she didn’t make a sound.
“Use your words, Alice.”
The girl shook her head, howled in a keening, desperate wail.
Julia touched her. “Use your words, baby. Please.”
The loss wrenched through Julia again, tore her heart. She couldn’t go through this again. Neither one of them could. She knew that Alice wanted to throw herself at her, wanted a hug but was afraid to move. All the little girl could think was that she was bad, that she would be abandoned again, just like before. And once more she was afraid to talk.
George climbed the creaking porch steps.
Alice darted away from him, pressed her body against the side of the house. Her feet hit the metal dog bowls. The clanging sound rang through the chilly night air, then dissipated, leaving it quiet once more.
George looked at Alice, then at Julia. “I tried to buy her dinner in Olympia. She went . . . crazy. Howling. Growling. She scratched her face. Dr. Correll couldn’t do shit to calm her down.”
“It’s not your fault,” Julia said softly.
“All those years in prison . . . I dreamed she was still alive. . . .”
Julia’s heart went out to him. Slowly, she stood. “I know.”
“I imagined finding her again . . . I thought she’d run into my arms and kiss me and tell me how much she missed me. I never thought . . . never realized she wouldn’t know me.”
“She needs time to remember. . . .”
r /> “No. She’s not my little girl anymore. I guess you were right when you said she never was. When she was a baby, I was never home. . . . She’s Alice now.”
Julia’s breath caught. Hope flickered inside her. A tiny flame of light in the dark. She heard Max come up beside her. “What do you mean?”
George stared down at his daughter. He looked older suddenly, a man lined by hard choices and harder living. “I’m not who she needs,” he said in a voice so quiet Julia almost missed it. “She’s too much for me to handle. Loving her . . . and parenting her are two different things. She belongs here. With you.”
Julia reached for Max’s hand, clinging to it. But she looked at George. “Are you sure?”
“Tell her . . . someday . . . that I loved her the only way I knew how . . . by letting her go. Tell her I’ll be waiting for her. All she has to do is call.”
“You’ll always be her father, George.”
He backed up, went down a step, then another. “They’ll say I abandoned her,” he said softly.
Julia gazed down at him, wishing she could tell him it wasn’t true, but they both knew better than that. The media would judge him harshly for this. “Your daughter will know the truth, George. I swear to you. She’ll always know you love her.”
“I can’t even kiss her good-bye.”
“Someday you’ll be able to kiss her, George. I promise you.”
