Page 71 of Never Alone
"You okay?"
He looked at me. Looked at the door at the back of the lobby. Looked at me again.
"Cole."
"Yeah."
"I'm not going home with him, right?"
I looked at him.
Noah had never said anything about his father. Not the night the apartment burned. Not when Tessa told him about the hearing. Not in any of the careful weeks since. He'd been a quiet,hesitant kid about a lot of things, and his father had been the quietest of them all. The question had cost him something to ask.
"No, bud. You're coming home with me."
He nodded once. "Okay."
Behind us, a door opened, and Nicholas walked through.
"Lieutenant Weston."
He held out his hand. I took it. His grip was firm, dry, and held a half-second longer than it needed to. He let go. I put my hand back in my pocket.
He crouched. "Hey, buddy."
He went down to Noah's level the way you went down to a child's level. Slow. Practiced. "I missed you."
He put his hand on Noah's shoulder.
Noah flinched. It was small—a tightening, a half-step's worth of stillness in his body that no one would have caught who had not spent the last month watching him learn what it felt like not to flinch.
I caught it.
For half a second, something happened to Nicholas's face. The pleasant got cold. The corners of his eyes set. The look of a man recalculating. Then it was gone. The pleasant came back. He squeezed Noah's shoulder once, gently, and stood up.
"Thank you for bringing him, Lieutenant."
The monitor stood up from her desk and came around to take Noah back to the visit room. Noah looked back at me once. I gave him the nod I had practiced giving him on the drive over. He nodded back. Walked through the door behind the monitor.
Nicholas didn't follow. He stayed in the lobby with me. Turned. Hands in his pockets, mirroring mine.
"How's she doing?"
"She's well."
"I worry about her."
I didn't answer.
He tilted his head—the way a man did when he was about to give a piece of advice. "Natalie has always been impulsive, Lieutenant. You'll have seen that by now. She makes a decision, and the decision is made."
He used her real name like it was his.
I didn't move.
"She's younger than she presents. In ways that take time to see. She doesn't always know what's good for her."
He let it sit.
