I have a name now, she continued. Analise Ward, 16 years old, a small town on the coast. She looked at him directly. But the people blocking my access to the adoption records are the same people who answer to my cousin Dorian. And a dying single woman has very little legal standing to demand anything.
A married one does, Malik said slowly. A married one with an authorized representative does. Yes, he turned to face her. And if you don't make it, you want me to find her anyway? I want someone who knows what it means to be afraid of losing a child.
She said quietly. I watched you that night. You weren't trying to be a hero. You just couldn't walk past someone who needed help. She paused.
I need that person. He drove home without giving her an answer. Callen was asleep on the couch, still in his school clothes, a drawing tucked under one arm. Malik eased it out carefully. It was a house crayon lopsided.
The way all of Kalen's houses were slightly lopsided because the boy insisted on drawing them freehand in the bottom corner in the same punctuationfree handwriting as the morning note. I want to stay with dad. Malik sat on the edge of the coffee table for a long time. He thought about the paper star trembling on the mobile. He thought about what Sirina had said that someone who knows would means be afraid of losing a child.
He thought about the 90 days the judge had given him and the $12 above minimum wage and the look on Brena's lawyer's face when she said the word workable. Then he thought about a 16-year-old girl named Anelise Ward who had no idea her mother had been looking for her for 16 years. He called Saraphina at 11:47 that night. I'll sign, he said. But we do this right.
No rushing her, no forcing it. A long pause, then agreed. And when it's over, whatever happens, Ken is never collateral damage. Understood. He hung up.
He looked at his son's drawing one more time. Then he folded it and placed it beside the other note, both of them in his shirt pocket, and went to bed. The story broke on a Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, Malik's Fates face was on three different news sites alongside words like opportunist and mystery man. And on one particularly creative outlet divorced a billionaire pipeline.
The photo they used was from his hospital ID badge. The one where he was squinting slightly because the fluorescent light above the camera had been flickering and no one had had fixed it yet. He looked in that photo exactly like what the headlines wanted him to look like. Out of place, Saraphina's coverage was different in tone, but identical in damage. CEO's judgment questioned as illness rumors surface.