These children needed help immediately.
Peter pulled out his phone.
“I’m calling for help.”
Drew’s expression changed at once.
Not relief.
Fear.
“She’ll be mad.”
Peter knelt directly in front of him.
He needed Drew to hear every word.
“She is not touching you again.”
Then he dialed 911.
Peter answered exactly what the operator asked.
He gave his address.
He gave the children’s ages.
He explained that Drew appeared to have a serious leg injury and that Lily looked weak and underfed.
He repeated Drew’s statement that their stepmother had locked them in a basement.
The word still sounded unreal when Peter said it aloud.
Basement.
Locked.
Children.
Through the entire call, Drew kept one arm around Lily.
Peter tried not to overwhelm him with questions.
He wanted answers badly enough that his chest hurt, but the boy looked like he was holding himself together through pure stubbornness.
So Peter stayed close and waited for help.
The sirens arrived three minutes later.
Peter would remember those three minutes as much longer.
Every second stretched beneath the sound of Lily chewing crackers and Drew breathing through pain.
When the paramedics came through the door, the room changed immediately from terrified improvisation to focused movement.
They stabilized Drew’s injured leg.
They checked Lily’s pulse and temperature.
They spoke quietly to both children rather than crowding them with questions.
Two police officers also arrived and took Peter’s statement.
Peter gave them Reena’s address.
It was the same house where he had repeatedly tried to visit his brother’s children.
The same house where he had been told they were sleeping.
The same house where birthday gifts had been refused at the door.
The same house where Peter had convinced himself that respecting a grieving mother’s boundaries was the responsible choice.
Now Drew was being lifted for transport with an injured leg after crawling seven blocks to escape it.
Peter followed them to the hospital.
Drew was taken for X-rays.
Lily was taken for bloodwork and fluids.
For the first time since the children reached his porch, Peter had nothing immediate to do.
That made everything worse.
He paced beneath the fluorescent lights of the waiting room, walking from one end of the corridor to the other and back again.
Every unanswered call returned to him.
Every excuse.
Every time Reena said Drew was tired.
Every time she told him Lily was sick.
Every birthday gift he had eventually carried back to his truck because she would not let him hand it directly to the children.
Peter remembered telling himself to be patient.
He remembered telling himself not to turn grief into a fight.
He remembered believing that keeping the peace might protect Aaron’s children from more instability.
Now the word Reena had used after Aaron died came back with a different weight.
Stability.
She had said it repeatedly in those first awful weeks.
She needed stability.
The children needed stability.
Everyone had to give them room to find stability.
Peter had accepted that explanation because it sounded responsible.
Because it sounded like something a frightened parent would say while trying to hold a family together after losing a spouse.
But the boy Peter had lifted from his porch that morning had not looked protected.
He had looked exhausted beyond his years.
Peter could still see the way Drew had positioned himself beside Lily even while injured, as though protecting his sister had become so normal that he no longer expected an adult to do it for him.
That thought made Peter stop pacing.
Six years old.
Drew should have been worried about scraped knees, cartoons, unfinished cereal, or whether somebody would make him go to bed before he felt tired.
He should not have known how to get a three-year-old out of a locked basement.
He should not have had to calculate whether his injured body could carry him seven blocks toward the one relative he thought might open the door.
And he should never have been afraid that calling for medical help would make an adult angry.
Peter sat down and immediately stood again.
He could not remain still.
A staff member passed carrying paperwork.
A cart rolled somewhere farther down the corridor.
Every ordinary hospital sound seemed absurd beside what Peter was trying to understand.
He kept thinking about Aaron.
His brother had trusted him.
Not with some formal promise made at the funeral, not with a dramatic conversation, but in the thousand ordinary ways brothers trust each other after years of shared history.
Peter had assumed there would always be more time to be the uncle who showed up.
Then Aaron died without warning.
Afterward, Peter had treated Reena’s decisions as the closest thing he had to Aaron’s wishes because she was the children’s surviving parent and because Peter had no reason, then, to believe she was lying.
Now Drew’s words would not leave him alone.
“She locked us downstairs again.”
Again meant history.
Again meant a first time Peter had not known about.
Maybe several times.
And the phrase Drew had used next was almost worse.