He photographed every screen with his phone. Then he called Detective Alma Reyes, the investigator the hospital social worker had told him to expect, and read her the number.
The Tennessee Department of Children’s Services opened its case before noon. A caseworker named Priya Nambiar met him in the pediatric ICU family room with a clipboard and a kindness that didn’t feel rehearsed. She explained that Annie’s condition required a mandatory report and that the children would stay in Brent’s care while the investigation went forward.
“I’m not here to punish you,” she said. “From what I can see, you’re the one who did everything right.”
“I didn’t,” he said. “I should have driven by that house a week ago.”
“You answered the phone,” she said. “That’s the part a lot of people miss.”
Detective Reyes arrived at two. She was a tall woman with a gray braid and a manner that suggested she’d seen worse and would see it again. She spent an hour on the iPad, then told him what she’d found.
Whitney’s phone had last pinged a tower outside Chattanooga on Saturday morning. After that it went dark. Dale Pruitt’s phone had gone dark the same day.
“Is she with him?” Brent asked.
“We don’t know. But I did something the minute I got those messages.” Reyes opened a folder. “I called every hospital within a hundred miles and asked about unidentified women admitted since Saturday. I got a hit at Erlanger in Chattanooga. A woman found unresponsive in a motel parking lot. No ID, no phone. They’ve been calling her Jane Doe.”
Brent’s hands went cold.
“She’s alive,” Reyes said at once. “She was found by a housekeeper, and a motel employee had the presence of mind to give her naloxone before the ambulance arrived. She’s been in the ICU for five days.”
For a moment he couldn’t speak. He thought of Annie’s hand in his, of Tyler curled up with a pillow on the living room carpet, of the empty refrigerator.
“She’s been lying in a hospital bed for five days,” he said finally, “and nobody could tell me where she was.”
“Nobody could identify her,” Reyes said gently. “You’re allowed to be furious. You’re also allowed to be relieved. Most people feel both.”
He drove to Chattanooga the next morning after leaving Tyler with his sister. Annie was awake by then and demanding applesauce, which the nurses took as the best sign they could ask for.
Whitney lay in a bed on the fourth floor, thinner than he remembered, an oxygen line under her nose. Her eyes were open. When she saw him, her face crumpled before she spoke.
“Brent.”
“Hey, Whit.”
“The kids.” Her voice scraped like paper. “Please. Are the kids…”
“They’re safe. Annie was very sick. She’s going to be okay.”
Whitney made a sound he’d never heard from her, a small, broken animal noise. She turned her face into the pillow.
He stood at the foot of the bed with his hands in his pockets and waited. He’d rehearsed a dozen speeches in the car, cold ones and furious ones, and now none of them came.
“I didn’t mean to be gone that long,” she said at last. “I swear. I thought one night. Dale said it’d be one night. And then I woke up here.”
“Annie hadn’t eaten in three days. She couldn’t breathe.”
“I know.” Her shoulders shook. “I know. The nurse told me. I know what I did.”
“Tyler called me from your neighbor’s phone. He’s eight years old, Whitney. He made her crackers.”
She said nothing. There was nothing to say. He sat down in the chair beside the bed, because he found that he was too tired to stand.
“I’m not here to tell you it’s okay,” he said. “It isn’t. There’s a DCS case, and there will be a hearing. I’m going to ask for primary custody, and I think you know why.”
“Yes.”
“But I’m also not going to tell the court you didn’t love them.”
She looked at him then, her eyes red and enormous.
“You love them,” he said. “You also have an illness, and you made a terrible choice because of it. Both of those things are true.”
“I’m so ashamed,” she whispered.
“Good,” he said, without cruelty. “Be ashamed. Then go get better.”
