pink blotch appeared on the map, and black text appeared on the paper, which I couldn’t read between my unwillingness to lift my head from where I sulked on the ground and the shimmering barrier dividing me from my husband. “Stop laughing, start reading.”
It took him several minutes, but he sat up, picked up the paper, and read it. “Well, according to this, he’s alive, there’s a name, there’s a phone number, and an address in Delaware.” Quinn referenced the map. “And the pink splotch on the map is over Delaware.”
“Can I nap now?”
“Sure, Bailey. You can nap now. What do you want to do about this?”
“Del-a-ware on way home. We go in-ves-ti-gate before home. Then we go home, and no more vay-cay-shun. Only home, where sleep for month.”
“It’s not quite on the way home, but I guess it’s close enough. Alas, we don’t have a month to sleep, my beautiful.”
“Well, that is sad.”
“I’m sure you’ll be okay.”
While life was often not fair, it wasn’t always cruel, and not all disappearances ended with grief or sorrow.
Before we headed home, we went to the address in Delaware, which proved to be a state-run mental institution, and the name was that of the doctor in charge of Commissioner Dowry’s uncle, who was known as John Doe to them, for they’d never been able to find any leads on the man’s family due to his Alzheimer’s.
They hadn’t known he hadn’t been diagnosed prior—and they hadn’t known he’d been a sudden onset victim listed as a missing person in a different state.
As the state couldn’t pay for an angel to reverse the damage without familial request, Dowry’s uncle lived a quiet life in a wing dedicated to dementia patients.
In the paperwork we were permitted to review due to our badges and that the Dowry case was our jurisdiction, we learned Dowry’s uncle would need months to be able to recover—assuming he received the right care. The hospital had laid out a treatment plan, including everything they thought was needed to let him live happily outside of their walls. He had a good record, calm disposition, and was considered to be an ideal long-term patient who caused no trouble beyond needing to use a script to remind him why he was there and distract him when he wanted to remember his past.
At sixty-three and otherwise healthier than an ox, he’d be a long time dying, living in a fog without memory or identity.
It took us two hours at the hospital, a trip back to our precinct, more forms than I liked, and another few hours at the hospital to begin the mandatory treatments required to let him go home. The effort exhausted me, and I wondered how Quinn handled his day-to-day work, as it somehow seemed routine to him.
Instead of asking, I watched and tried to learn—and wondered how much would have changed if I’d known about the man.
According to the angel who came to begin the treatment, he would be ready to meet his family and resume life sometime near Easter.
The drive to our house went by in silence while I tried to make sense of my magic, how easy it had been to solve such an old case, and what would have changed if only I’d known to look for him sooner.
“Okay, Bailey. Spill. What’s wrong?”
“I wouldn’t call it wrong. I was just wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t hid what I am.”
“That you’re my most beautiful cindercorn and wife?”
“Wayfinder.”
“I don’t know. What I do know is that when we invite Commissioner Dowry to spend Easter with us, we’ll be bringing quite the surprise with us. I’ve decided we’ll be visiting Delaware at least three times a week during his treatments, and I’ll be bringing the familial records from the case. His family did a lot of work trying to find him.”
“How did they miss him in Delaware?”
“He had no symptoms of the disease, Bailey. That’s why. Why would we look for that? We had queried about amnesia patients. He’s not an amnesia patient. He’s an Alzheimer’s patient. And so you now see one of the many failings of law enforcement.” My husband sighed. “I don’t know if you would have found him sooner. Was your magic strong enough then? How does your magic work? Does it need the weight of longing from others to work? When you looked for proof of Audrey’s guilt, it was one of the most important things I needed in my life.”
I understood what he meant.