The room suddenly felt colder even though the heater hummed steadily near the window. “What sentence,” I asked as dread climbed through my chest.
“She keeps writing, ‘Grandpa hurt me,’ and the police and child services are already on their way.”
I was pulling on my jeans while pressing the phone between my shoulder and ear because motion felt like the only way to fight the distance between Seattle and Boston. “Please stay with her until someone from my family arrives,” I said as my hands trembled while I grabbed my jacket.
I called my wife first, but the call went straight to voicemail twice in a row. When the third call failed I dialed her father, Dr. Victor Langford, a retired surgeon whose reputation filled charity galas and hospital wings across Massachusetts.
He answered immediately with a calm voice that irritated me the moment I heard it. “Thomas Bennett, it is rather late for a friendly chat,” he said.
“Where is my daughter,” I demanded as the words came out harsher than I intended. “She walked two kilometers barefoot to her school at two in the morning and the principal says she has bruises.”