9. Alan
9
ALAN
A my was the last child at the day care, and she fussed in Addison’s arms while Alan sterilized all the toys and cleaned the playroom. Shea had already vanished, leaving even more stealthily than she had appeared, and Cherry was organizing the craft cabinets and sorting projects for the next day. Alan was astonished how much thought and direction went into each day’s work, given how chaotic and unstructured the day care seemed at any given moment when it was full of kids.
His respect for the team had only grown through the week, watching Addison, Shea, and Cherry turn certain disaster into success, and tears into laughter, over and over again. They were patient and nurturing, but firm about boundaries and rules. It would have been easy to get overwhelmed and stressed by the sheer sensory input, but they were rock solid in the face of every challenge, and never lost their temper. Alan thought wryly that military recruits ought to serve a tour in a playroom as a matter of course; he’d already learned more about cooperation and compromise than a full year of hostile negotiation training and all his tours in the field had taught him.
When everything was orderly and Alan had changed the bedding in the little actual-animal zoo, he vacuumed and realized that Addison was yawning. Cherry was gone, but little Amy was still unclaimed.
“Kendra’s on her way,” Addison said, when Alan had stowed the vacuum and locked the cleaning cabinet. “She had a medical emergency.”
Alan squashed a flare of alarm and touched the charm he’d put back in his pocket, then remembered that Kendra wasn’t part of his network. Besides, if Kendra had been hurt, Addison would probably be more alarmed. She was probably at the other end of any medical emergency. “Is she a doctor?”
“A veterinarian,” Addison said, stifling another yawn. “Livestock, mostly, but she also goes to outlying places that don’t want to bring dogs and cats in. She has a mobile practice.”
“I can stay with Amy and you can go home,” Alan offered. “You look dead on your…uh…you look great.”
“Nice save,” Addison chuckled, but she let Alan lift Amy out of her arms and got carefully to her feet. “We’ve gone over the close-up procedures a few times now, and Kendra shouldn’t be long now.”
Amy was perfectly happy to go to Alan, and immediately took his braid in her fist.
Addison got her things together, went over some last pieces of advice, yawned three times, and left with a grateful wave.
The day care was weirdly quiet with her gone. Alan carried Amy around and let her turn off the lights they weren’t using, to her delight. That left only the playroom overhead on, and the dark hallway in back gave the room a spooky undertone. Alan set Amy down in the middle of the room and she immediately bounced up and went to grab at the shelves of toys. Alan snagged one that she seemed interested in, a light-up ball with various panels of texture, and tried to lure her away from touching the rest of them so he wouldn’t have to wipe them all down again.
Amy resisted his distraction and went to pull down a tub of other toys. Alan finally picked her up and carried her to the center of the story rug where she objected to a great deal of his play, and tried to hit him with the book he offered to read her, scratching at the pages.
She cried when he diverted her, a thin, tired cry of frustration, and tried to escape at every opportunity.
Alan knew that Kendra was coming a moment before his phone security app alerted, his raven suddenly alert and interested. He let Kendra in through the day care door with the push of a button, scooped up a still-protesting Amy, and went to meet her.
“I am so sorry I’m late!” Kendra called, before Alan could see her. “I did not mean to leave you waiting so long...”
She stood on the other side of the gate and stared over it. Dirt smudged her round face and she smelled like barnyard and blood. Alan had never seen anything so lovely, and he didn’t think that it was all because he was ready to hand Amy back to someone who would appreciate her more.
Amy kept the moment from getting awkward by shrieking in joy and trying to launch herself from Alan’s arms. When he wouldn’t let her fling herself into space, she shifted into a fluffy gray owl, trapped in her own clothing.