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the Bankton PD who confirmed my claim to be an officer with the department, also told them you had a disease that caused your bones to break easily, but that DCF wouldn’t release Willow until they had confirmation from a medical professional. So I’d prayed half the night—although I have to admit I give less credit for our release to Jesus than I do to your mother. Charlotte watched enough Law & Order to know that once her rights had been read to her she was allowed a phone call—and to my surprise, she didn’t use it to contact you. Instead, she called Piper Reece, her best friend.
    I like Piper, honestly, I do. God knows I love her for whatever connections she used to cold-call Mark Rosenblad at three a.m. on a weekend and get him to phone the hospital where you were being treated. I even owe Piper for my marriage—she and Rob are the ones who introduced me to Charlotte. But all this being said, sometimes Piper is…just a little
too much. She’s smart and opinionated and frustratingly right most of the time. Most of the fights I’ve had with your mother have had their roots in something Piper got her thinking about. The thing is, where Piper can carry off that brashness and confidence, on Charlotte, it seems a little off—like a kid playing dress-up in her mom’s closet. Your mother is quieter, more of a mystery; her strengths sneak up on you instead of smacking you front and center. If Piper’s the one you notice when you walk into a room, with her boy-cut blond hair and forever legs and her wide smile, Charlotte’s the one you find yourself thinking about long after you’ve left. But then again, that in-your-face fierceness that makes Piper so exhausting sometimes is also what got me out of the lockup in Lake Buena Vista. I suppose this means, in the grand cosmic tally, I have something else to thank her for.
    Suddenly a door opened, and I could see Charlotte—dazed, pale, her brown curls tumbling out of her ponytail elastic. She was blistering the officer escorting her: “If Amelia isn’t back here before I count to ten, I swear I’ll—”
    God, I love your mother. She and I think exactly alike, when it counts.
    Then she noticed me and broke off. “Sean!” she cried, and ran into my arms.
    I wish you could know what it feels like to find the missing piece of you, the thing that makes you stronger. Charlotte’s that, for me. She’s tiny, only five-two, but underneath her serpentine curves—the ones she’s always stressing out about because she’s not a size four like Piper—are muscles that would surprise you, developed from years of hauling flour when she was a pastry chef and—later—you and your equipment.
    “You all right, baby?” I murmured against her hair. She smelled like apples and suntan lotion. She’d made us all put it on before we even left the Orlando airport. To be safe, she’d said.
    She didn’t answer, just nodded against my chest.
    There was a cry from the doorway, and we both looked up in time to see Amelia barreling toward us. “I forgot,” she sobbed. “Mom, I forgot to take the doctor’s note. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
    “It’s not anyone’s fault.” I knelt down and brushed her tears away with my thumbs. “Let’s get out of here.”
    The desk sergeant had offered to drive us to the hospital in a cruiser, but I asked him to call us a cab instead; I wanted them to stew in their own poor judgment instead of trying to make it up to us. As the taxi
pulled up in front of the police department entrance, we three moved as a unit out the front door. I let Charlotte and Amelia slide into the cab before getting in myself. “To the hospital,” I told the driver, and I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the padded seat.
    “Thank God,” your mother said. “Thank God that’s over.”
    I didn’t even open my eyes. “It’s not over,” I said. “Someone is going to pay.”
    Charlotte
    Suffice it to say that the trip home wasn’t a pleasant