Rowan glanced at Micah, accepted Delaney’s incoming call, and demanded to know her location.
For several seconds, that was all he could manage.
His six-year-old son stood beside him in the hospital entrance with both hands wrapped around a juice box, while somewhere beyond the swinging doors, Rowan’s little girl was being treated after arriving burning with fever, dehydrated, and frighteningly weak.
Delaney had ignored every call he had made.
Now she was calling him.
And Rowan wanted one answer.
Where was she?
Only minutes earlier, the idea that his children could have been left alone for days would have seemed impossible.
That morning, Rowan Mercer had been sitting in a conference room in Nashville, trying to keep his attention on a tense corporate meeting while figures changed across a projector screen.
His phone buzzed against the table.
Unknown number.
He nearly dismissed it.
The meeting had already run long, people were waiting for his response, and nothing about the call suggested an emergency.
Then he answered.
Static crackled through the speaker.
There was a rustling sound, then uneven breathing so faint Rowan pulled the phone closer to his ear.
A small voice finally whispered, “Dad?”
Rowan recognized Micah immediately.
His chair scraped backward.
“Micah? Why are you calling from a strange number? What’s wrong?”
The boy tried to hold himself together.
He almost succeeded.
“Dad… Elsie won’t wake up. She’s burning hot. Mom isn’t here, and we don’t have any food left.”
Everything in Rowan’s world narrowed to that sentence.
The projector kept glowing.
Someone near the far end of the table stopped talking.
A few coworkers turned toward him, but Rowan barely registered them.
He grabbed his keys.
He ran.
Inside the elevator, he called Delaney.
No answer.
He called again.
Still nothing.
Delaney was Rowan’s ex-wife, and this was her custody week.
She had told him she planned to take Micah and Elsie to a remote lake cabin, warning that cell service might be spotty.
Their co-parenting relationship had not always been easy, but recently things had appeared stable enough that Rowan had no immediate reason to question the trip.
He had believed her.
He had believed the children were with her.
He had believed they were safe.
Now Micah was using someone else’s phone, and Elsie apparently could not wake up.
Rowan headed toward Delaney’s East Nashville rental with both hands tight on the steering wheel.
Traffic felt unbearable.
Every red light seemed personal.
Every second stretched.
He tried calling Micah’s number again, but the details he already knew were bad enough: their mother was gone, the food was gone, and his daughter was too sick to respond normally.
When Rowan reached the rental, the outside of the house gave him another jolt.
No bikes.
No television flickering behind the curtains.
No sign of ordinary family life.
He stopped hard, jumped from the car, and ran toward the porch.
“Micah!” he shouted, pounding on the door. “It’s Dad! Open up!”
Nothing happened.
Then Rowan tried the handle.
Unlocked.
He rushed inside.
The air was heavy and stale, the kind of shut-in air that immediately told him the house had not been moving through a normal day.
He saw Micah first.
The little boy was sitting on the living room floor with a throw pillow clutched against his chest.
His blond hair was matted.
Dried tear tracks marked his pale cheeks.
What frightened Rowan most was that Micah was no longer crying.
He looked exhausted past the point of tears.
“I thought you weren’t coming,” Micah said.
Rowan dropped to his knees and pulled him close.
“I’m here. I’ve got you. Where’s your sister?”
Micah lifted one shaking hand and pointed toward the couch.
Elsie lay under a thin blanket.
She did not move when Rowan approached.
Her face was flushed a deep, unhealthy red, her lips were cracked, and her breathing came in shallow efforts that made Rowan’s chest tighten.
