A Gift of Time (Tassamara) by Sarah Wynde Read Free Book Online Page A

skepticism was plain.
    Natalya had to smile. “Really. He was a little boy then, of course.”
    The girl’s head tipped back, away from Natalya. She looked toward the door where Colin had disappeared and then back at Natalya.
    “I might get mad at him sometimes, but he’s a good guy. You don’t need to be afraid of him. Or of me,” Natalya said, still trying to reassure her.
    The wariness remained, but the look of fear was gone. For a moment, Natalya debated questioning her—asking again for her name and the story of how she’d come to be lost in the forest—but she suspected from the girl’s silence, the tension in her shoulders and the closed-off way she was holding her arms tight to her sides that she’d be no more helpful than she’d been earlier.
    From the other room, she could hear the rumble of Colin’s voice, but not what he was saying until he appeared in the doorway, phone in hand. “No luck, I’m afraid.”
    “Nothing?”
    “No reports of a missing child. There’s a ranger out looking for accident sites, but even knowing where she wound up, there’s a lot of ground to cover. We’ll get a real search started at first light.” Colin glanced at his watch.
    “What now?” Natalya asked.
    “The DCF call.” He grimaced. “I’ll start with the hotline. It’s probably going to take a while, though. Working my way through a state bureaucracy on Christmas Day won’t be easy.”
    “You might be surprised,” Natalya answered. “Our local agency is very well-run.”
    She didn’t say any more, but her mother had supported Florida’s shift to private, community-based foster care. When Natalya moved back to Tassamara, she’d taken over her mother’s former seat on the board of directors at the local agency, so she knew—and admired—the people who ran the non-profit. They had hard jobs, but they did them well.
    “I’ll find out.” Colin turned away, punching the number into his phone without hesitation.
    Natalya looked back at the girl. “Let’s get you cleaned up and put some band-aids on those blisters,” she suggested.
    The girl didn’t argue, so Natalya stood. She held out a hand but the girl ignored it as she scrambled to her feet. Without comment, Natalya led the way to the exam room.
    The blisters were bad and must have hurt, but Natalya saw no signs of infection. Natalya sprayed them with a topical numbing agent before cleaning them but even so, the girl was wincing, feet twitching away from Natalya’s fingers, before she was done. She still didn’t make a sound.
    “Sorry about that.” Natalya dropped the used antiseptic wipes into the trash can. She pulled open the cupboard door and looked at the bandage options. A basic adhesive would be fine, but she wished she had a fun choice, instead of the plain brown. Zane’s zombie planning apparently hadn’t taken into account the need to cheer people up. “All of our band-aids are the boring kind, I’m afraid. I wish we had fun ones for you.”
    She turned back to the girl and paused. Something had drawn a smile from her, a faint one, curling around her lips like a wisp of sunshine on a grey day. Natalya smiled back at her as she sat down and began applying the bandages.
    “No. That’s not acceptable.” Colin stepped into the exam room and dropped his phone to his side. “How old do you think she is?”
    Natalya raised a questioning eyebrow, before looking back at the girl. If she ran a scan, she could probably pinpoint her age within a year from the growth plates on her bones, but without more information, she’d be guessing. Still, children were sometimes predictable with how they behaved when their ages were mentioned. Deliberately, she guessed low. “Five, I’d say.”
    The girl’s eyes widened and her lower lip slid out.
    “No?” Natalya asked. “Six? Seven?”
    At the last number, the girl’s chin jerked down in a tiny nod.
    “She’s seven years old,” Colin said into the phone. “An emergency shelter with