His anger was no longer useful if it frightened the children, so he kept his voice level and his movements slow.
Drew remained away for imaging.
Peter checked the time, then immediately forgot what it said.
His phone felt heavy in his pocket.
There were people he could call, but he did not yet know what to tell them beyond the truth he had already given police.
Aaron was dead.
His children had reached Peter’s porch in a condition Peter could barely accept.
Everything after that would have to wait for facts.
The word mattered to him now.
Facts.
Not excuses.
Not assumptions.
Not what he hoped had happened because hoping was easier.
What could actually be established.
When the doctor finally appeared in the waiting room, Peter knew something was wrong before the man spoke.
The doctor carried Drew’s chart close against his body.
His face was composed in the careful way professionals sometimes looked when they had difficult information and were choosing each word before saying it.
Peter stood.
For one second he expected the obvious explanation.
Drew had fallen while escaping.
Maybe he had injured his leg on the stairs.
Maybe he had landed badly somewhere along those seven blocks.
Maybe the terrible thing Peter had witnessed that morning was terrible enough without there being another layer underneath it.
The doctor stopped in front of him.
“Mr. Calder?”
“Yes.”
Peter could hear how rough his own voice sounded.
The doctor glanced once at the chart and then back at Peter.
“The X-ray tells us this did not happen today.”
Peter stared at him.
The sentence seemed simple, but his mind resisted it.
Drew had arrived that morning dragging the injured leg.
Peter had naturally assumed the injury belonged to the escape itself.
But if it had not happened that day, then Drew had been living with it before he ever started crawling toward Peter’s house.
Before he covered seven blocks of pavement.
Before Lily clung to his shirt.
Before he reached the porch and whispered that Reena had locked them downstairs again.
Peter felt the entire shape of the morning change around him.
The question was no longer only what happened in that basement that day.
It was how long Drew had been hurt before anyone outside that house knew.
Peter thought of every call Reena had rejected.
Every time she had said the children were sleeping.
Every time she had said they were sick.
Every time she had told him seeing Peter would remind them too much of Aaron.
Then he thought about Aaron himself.
His brother had died believing Reena would give his children the stability she promised.
Peter had believed it too.
Until a six-year-old boy with a broken leg dragged himself and his hungry little sister seven blocks to prove that whatever had been happening behind that closed door was something else entirely.
The doctor lowered his voice.
“It shows—”