Page 103 of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

Diana cleared her throat and glanced at Detective Nolan. When he failed to be helpful, she moved closer to Sage. “Listen, I know you’ve been through a lot and you just want everything to go back to normal. But, unfortunately, that’s not possible when you become an orphan at sixteen.”

“I’m not an orphan,” she said. “It was my stepfather who was killed, not my real father.”

“I see,” Diana said. She gave Detective Nolan a hard look, then sat on the edge of the chair to write something down, balancing her clipboard on one knee. “Do you know your biological father’s full name?”

“Charles Winters,” Sage said.

“Middle name?”

“Lee.”

“Do you have his phone number?”

Sage shook her head.

“Any idea where he lives?”

She tried to think of an easy, phony answer—he was on a ship off the California coast saving dolphins, or in Uganda on a missionary trip. Nothing came to mind. “No, I haven’t seen or heard from him in years.”

Diana sighed and rested her hand on the top of the clipboard. “Well, unless we can find him by tomorrow, it looks like we’re back at square one.”

“Which is what, exactly?” Detective Nolan said.

“Well, unfortunately, there are no local foster home openings at the moment,” Diana said. “So she’ll have to go to the children’s home for now. As soon as we have a foster care opening, we’ll move her, but I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Teenagers can be hard to place.”

A rush of anxiety lit up Sage’s chest. They wanted to lock her up again. “No,” she said. “I’m not going to a children’s home. I won’t.”

Diana stood, her sympathetic smile still frozen on her face, if slightly weaker. “I understand your apprehension,” she said. “But trust me, our children’s home is nothing like Willowbrook.”

“I don’t care,” Sage said. “I’m not going there. And you can’t make me.” She yanked the IV out of her hand and started getting out of bed. “I need to get to a phone so I can call my friends. One of them will let me stay at their place until I find my father.”

Detective Nolan stepped forward and put a gentle hand on her shoulder to stop her from getting up. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll figure this out, I promise. Just calm down. We can talk about it more tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry,” Diana said. “But there’s not really anything to ‘figure out.’ Unless we can find her father by tomorrow, by law she’s a ward of the state, which meanswedecide where she goes.”

Nolan turned on her. “I said we’ll figure it out,” he said, his voice hard. “Now, if you don’t mind, she needs to rest. You can go now.”

Diana’s smiled wilted beneath his glare. She gripped her clipboard tighter, her knuckles turning white, then gave Sage one last glance and left the room.

CHAPTER 26

Sitting on the edge of the hospital bed the next afternoon, Sage stared at her boots, numb.

The doctor had agreed to sign her release hours ago. She’d taken a hot shower using gobs of soap and shampoo. A nurse had redressed her arms and given her back her clothes—dark stained and wrinkled, but she didn’t care.

Yet no one had come to sign her out. No one had come to take her away. If the doctor hadn’t insisted on her needing a ride and the nurses’ station hadn’t been right outside her room, she would have walked out a long time ago. All she could do now was wait. Wait for someone to show up. Wait for whatever unexpected turn her life would take next.

Detective Nolan said they’d figure out together where she was going, but she hadn’t heard from him since yesterday when he took her statement. She cursed him under her breath. Heneverkept his promises, not about stopping Dr. Baldwin from locking her up or figuring out where she would go. Now that she’d done his work for him and found out Eddie was the killer, he’d probably moved on to his next case.

Then footsteps sounded in the hall, and the door handle turned. Sage looked up, bracing herself. If fake-sympathy-smile Diana entered and tried to put her in a children’s home, she didn’t know what she’d do. Maybe she’d scream and fight and try to run away—but that would have to wait until they were off Willowbrook’s campus. No one was going to lock her up again.

In what seemed like slow motion, the door opened wider. She held her breath. A nurse came in, smiled, then stood to one side and held the door open. When Sage saw who was behind her, she gasped.

Dawn came in first, followed by Heather and Detective Nolan. When the girls saw Sage they slowed, no doubt shocked by her gaunt appearance and bandaged arms.

“It’s okay,” Sage said. “I won’t break.”

Heather and Dawn smiled, teary-eyed, then rushed over and threw their arms around her.

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