● CHAPTER 6: The Park Office
The park office smelled of dust, paper, and rain-soaked work boots.
It sat behind the maintenance shed, a narrow brick building most visitors never noticed. Tom brought Lily inside, gave her a bottle of water from the refrigerator, and pulled the blinds until the bright plaza became thin bars of sunlight on the floor. Outside, Helena’s voice remained calm enough to frighten everyone who knew her.
Lily sat in the wooden chair by the desk and held the brass lock in both hands.
“You’re safe in here,” Tom said.
She nodded, but did not look convinced.
Tom wanted to ask a dozen questions. Where had she slept? Where was Maren now? How many people had told this child she was a liar? Instead he knelt at a respectful distance and said, “Your mom was brave to send you.”
Lily’s lower lip shook. “She said brave is what you do when scared isn’t useful anymore.”
Tom turned away for a second because something in his chest had tightened.
On the office wall hung old photographs of Whitaker Park: ribbon cuttings, holiday lights, volunteers planting trees. In one faded photo, Maren Whitaker stood in muddy sneakers beside a younger Tom, both holding shovels under the same sycamore tree near the fountain.
Lily noticed it.
“That’s Mom,” she whispered.
Tom looked at the photo. “Yes. She helped plant those trees.”
“She told me about a man named Tom who let her feed the ducks even when the sign said not to.”
Tom laughed once, badly. “I may have looked the other way.”
Lily’s face softened for the first time.
Then the office phone rang.
Tom answered. A woman on the other end spoke quickly, voice shaking. She said she was Nurse Pamela from East Haven Recovery Center. She had found the number in the emergency note Maren kept under her pillow. Maren had collapsed the night before. She was alive, but weak. She had woken up asking one question over and over.
Did Lily find the fountain?
Tom gripped the phone.
Outside, through the blinds, Ruth was speaking into her phone with her back turned. Neil stood by the curb, watching the office door.
“Can Maren speak?” Tom asked.
A pause.
“For a minute,” the nurse said. “Maybe less.”
Tom put the call on speaker and crouched beside Lily.
There was static. Then breathing.
“Lily?” a voice whispered.
The child dropped the water bottle.
“Mom?”
The sound that came from the phone was almost a sob. “You found it?”
“I found her,” Lily cried. “I found Helena.”
Tom pressed his fist against his mouth.
Maren’s voice cracked. “Tell her I never stopped coming back in my head.”
The office door rattled.
Lily gasped.
Tom stood.
The handle turned again, harder. Someone outside had a key or was pretending to.
Tom moved in front of the door. “Back away.”
Neil’s voice came through the wood. “This is a family matter.”
Tom looked at Lily, then at the brass lock, then at the old photograph of Maren planting trees.
May you like
“No,” he said. “This is a police matter now.”
Outside, sirens began to rise.
