Patrick didn’t see them at first. Archie held him on his lap, wrapped in a blanket, the boy’s head against Archie’s shoulder, his arms hooked around Archie’s neck. Archie could smell his hair, the sweat of his scalp, the mulch of river muck. “Your family’s here,” Archie whispered.

He felt Patrick lift his head, and heard the boy’s mother make a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cry.

“Mama?” Patrick said.

The boy’s arms pulled away from Archie’s neck and the blanket fell aside as Patrick Lifton dove from Archie’s lap into his mother’s arms. There was no hesitation. No moment of confusion or fear. His parents embraced him.

“You’re safe,” Diana Lifton said. She kept repeating it.

Archie got up and walked slowly away, leaving the Liftons to their reunion. The generators were still on and the park below blinked with bright colored lights. The dark cloud cover above had finally split, revealing a slice of stars in the night sky.

“I could hear you wheezing from all the way over there,” Anne said, motioning to where she’d been standing several yards away, on the telephone.

“Calling home?” Archie asked, nodding at the phone in her hand.

“One of my boys totaled the minivan,” Anne said.

“You have a minivan?”

Anne smiled. “Used to.”

“Your boy okay?” Archie asked.

“Until my husband gets done with him,” Anne said.

Archie’s gaze fell on Patrick Lifton. His parents were still on either side of him and were helping to get him back into the ambulance. When he was secure, they got in behind him.

“Will he ever be okay?” Archie asked Anne.

The ambulance doors closed. A patrol unit got in place to escort it. And then the two vehicles pulled away into the rain. “Better than most of us,” Anne said.

Chapter 64

CHAPTER

64

Susan had been moved upstairs to a hospital room with a view of the parking garage. The blinds were open and flat winter morning light filled the room.

There was a rose-colored plastic chair in her room, an old-fashioned real live landline, and a bedside table with a plastic cup and a water pitcher that matched the chair. A picture of Mount Hood hung on the wall. She wondered if people who had views of Mount Hood had pictures of parking garages hanging on their walls.

She counted to ten and then picked up the phone and dialed the number she had written on a hospital pad in front of her. She followed the prompts, entered the credit card information, and was connected to the cruise ship her mother was on.

When the ship’s operator picked up, Susan asked to speak to Bliss Mountain, stressing that it was important, just in case her mother was in the middle of sun salutations when they found her and refused to come to the phone.