him swinging into Protective Big Brother mode, so be it. And to say that I was out of my comfort zone would be putting it mildly.
Jameson met my eyes as I clicked the receiver into place. “You can leave now, but we would like to talk to you again.”
“Fine. I’m not going anywhere.” I was exhausted.
On the way out of the room Jameson turned abruptly, pulled a card from his wallet, and scrawled across the back with a fat black pen. He handed it to me. “If you think of anything, call me. The office number’s on the front, home on the back.”
I blinked, confused.
He repeated, looking straight at me, “If you think of anything, if there’s anything I need to know.” I was too tired to try to figure out what he meant, and slid the card in my wallet.
DUMOND AND PAUL WERE WAITING ON THE THINLY PADDED chairs in the lobby, Paul playing with a little plastic figurine.
“You shouldn’t have stayed,” I told Dumond. I glanced at the clock on the wall—it was later than I had thought. “I could have called you or taken a bus.”
Dumond looked at me as if I’d said something incredibly stupid. Maybe I had.
“Troy, regardez, from McDonald’s,” Paul said, waggling the toy, a character from a recent animated movie. One more thing for him to catch up on—you can’t fit in with other kids without knowing every popular movie character, especially ones with Happy Meal status.
Dumond gave me that wry What’s a father to do? look. Hey, if my kid I hadn’t seen for more than five months wanted to go to McDonald’s, we’d go to McDonald’s. As we pulled out of the parking lot Dumond called Elise to tell her we were on our way.
“How was it?” he asked me, after he switched off the phone.
“Okay, just tiring.” I closed my eyes for a moment, aware that Paul could hear us. “And repetitious.” The car moved silently through the thickening traffic. I opened my eyes. “Oh, my brother, Simon, is probably flying up.”
“Your brother?”
“Yeah. He’s a policeman, in Orlando. I called him for some advice, and he decided he wanted to be here. Probably just for a day or two.” He didn’t press me. We were both tired. And hungry. Somehow I doubted Dumond had eaten anything at McDonald’s.
The smell of dinner cooking when we stepped into the house was enormously comforting. Paul threw himself to the floor to hug Tiger, then ran off to the kitchen to greet Elise. It would take him a long time to take all this for granted, I thought. If he ever did.
Dumond followed, I assumed to tell Elise the results of the visit to the doctor.
There were three of us now: father, nanny, rescuer, all here to protect and support Paul. Maybe there had been other supporters, back in Montreal, or maybe no one else had been let into the loop because of the kidnappers’ threats. Or maybe Dumond was the type of person who liked to march on alone—not that much unlike me.
Which was about all the insight I could handle for one day.
Elise had made a stew and homemade whole-grain bread, and served Paul small helpings he could easily finish. He was tired, eyelids drooping, and Dumond sent him off with Elise to get ready for bed.
When I went in to tell him good night, he was pink and fresh from his bath, and his hug was tight. Less than ten minutes later Dumond joined me in the library for dessert and coffee; Paul had fallen asleep in the middle of his bedtime story.
Dessert was homemade blackberry pie topped with whipped cream—the real stuff, not the gunk that squirts out of a can. I nearly groaned when the first mouthful hit my taste buds. We ate in silence until Dumond spoke. “So tell me about your brother.”
I finished my last smidgen of pie. “Simon—he’s a year older than me. He’s a little worried and he has some vacation days, so he wants to come up.” I didn’t want it to sound like Simon was suspicious of Philippe, although of course he was.
“If I had a sister, I’d do the same,” he said easily. “Of course he’ll stay here.”
“Thanks.” I was relieved. “If I know Simon, he’ll be here soon.”
“That’s fine. I have to take Paul back to the police station tomorrow to work with a sketch artist on pictures of the kidnappers.”
“He saw their faces?”
He nodded. “Apparently they wore bandannas when they