Saving Meghan(59)

“So, a big family reunion, is that it?”

Nash seemed unmoved. “Please, if you’ll follow me,” she said with a wave of her hand.

Nash led them down a hallway painted sky blue—a color chosen perhaps because the children kept here were not permitted access outside—to Charlotte’s Web.

Becky paused at the door to exhale her anxiety. She turned to face Carl, biting her lower lip. “We’re here for Meghan,” Becky said. “Whatever we’re going through, we have to put it aside. We have to be united for her.”

Carl said nothing. He opened the door.

Becky stared into a big open space with comfy chairs scattered throughout, a television, artwork on the walls, and that distinct hospital smell clinging to the air.

When Meghan saw her parents, she sprang up from a green armchair and came running, though at a far slower pace than she could have done if healthy. Becky quickened her strides, and soon she and her daughter were locked together. Meghan broke into tears, clutching her mother, sobbing. Becky was crying as well, caressing the back of Meghan’s head, while Carl wrapped his arms around mother and daughter as though sheltering them underneath a cape. When they finally broke apart, Becky and Meghan were dabbing away tears with their fingers.

Carl gave his daughter a close inspection the way he might a rental car, checking her over for dents or dings. “You look well,” he said.

You look well? Is that all he can think to say?

Becky sent him an irritated glance as she took hold of Meghan’s hand. In fact, their daughter did not look well at all. She was too thin. Her gorgeous blond hair lay flat against her head, dull, without luster. She wore gray sweatpants and a blue top that Becky had sent from home. Her sleeves were rolled up, and Becky could see bruising on her arms—along with marks that looked like needle punctures. Had they been drugging her?

“Sweetie, I can’t tell you how good it is to set my eyes on you,” Becky said, wondering when the tightness in her throat might ease.

It was then Becky noticed her audience, seated nearby at a round table, coffee mugs set out in front of them like it was a teachers’ lounge: Levine, Mendoza, and Annabel Hope—three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

“Can we have some privacy, please?” Becky asked in a curt, albeit pleading, tone of voice.

Mendoza approached. She was a stout woman with dark hair and dim brown eyes. Her manner was detached—not discourteous; not congenial. “We’ll stay out of your way,” she said, “but I have to remain in the room.”

Meghan looked confused. “Why? Aren’t I going home?”

“Baby … let’s sit and talk,” Becky said, taking hold of her daughter’s too-thin arm, feeling the bone in her grasp.

Becky led Meghan to a table on the opposite side of the room, as far from the hawks as she could get. The only thing missing to make it a scene out of a prison visitor’s lounge, thought Becky, was a glass partition.

Just as they were getting settled in their seats, Dr. Nash came into the room. Becky got up to meet her before Meghan could see what Nash held in her hand—she wanted to be the one to give Meghan the soup, not Nash. Taking the thermos from Nash with a perfunctory thank you, Becky returned to the table where her daughter and husband sat.

“Look, sweetheart, I made chicken soup for you,” Becky said, grinning through the tears as she unscrewed the lid. “Your favorite.”

Meghan took the thermos, seeming pleased with the familiar smell wafting upward, and said again, “I’m going home today, right?”

Becky and Carl looked at each other like two people worried about drawing the short straw.

“Right?” Meghan repeated, more a statement than a question.

“Sweetheart—”

“No! No!” Meghan vigorously shook her head from side to side. “I’m leaving. I’m getting out of here today. Today!” She pointed at the air, putting an invisible exclamation mark on her decree.

“We had a hearing with the judge about your case, and she’s decided to give it some more time to investigate what to do next.”

“More time to investigate what?” Meghan said. She got up from her chair and drew worried glances from the observers, who held their ground.

“Some of their concerns,” Becky answered slowly, searching for the right words.

“What concerns?” Meghan’s sweet face crumpled. Tears flowed down her face.

“Please sit, baby,” Becky said as she coaxed her daughter back into her chair. “They want to make sure that you’re … that you’re—”

“They want to make sure that when you come home with us, you’ll be safe,” Carl said with a whiff of disdain.

Meghan looked utterly confused. “That’s—that’s ridiculous,” she stammered. “Of course I’ll be safe. It’s home.”

“The judge isn’t so sure,” Carl said.

“What judge?” Meghan said, her voice rising with anger. “Who do they think is going to hurt me? Mom? You?”

Meghan’s eyes flared when she looked at her dad, and Becky picked up something unexpected in her daughter’s face, her voice. What was that? Was there something between him and Meghan she didn’t know? Some secret between father and daughter? She had noticed the distance, but shelved those concerns to focus on more pressing issues.