Chapter Twenty-Eight
T anner kept his hand on Savannah all the way home, one palm on her knee where she sat strapped into her car seat, his arm stretched awkwardly across the gap whenever they stopped at lights.
She had fallen asleep before they reached the edge of town, rabbit tucked under her chin, mouth slightly open.
Tanner sat in the passenger seat with the folder on his lap and the appointment card jammed under his thumb.
He hadn’t said much since they left the building.
TJ had gone back to the station after telling them to call if they needed anything, and Tanner had nodded without taking in half of what was said.
The forms were in the folder and his name was on them.
The woman had taken them away in neat stacks and written down tomorrow and Friday and court and assessment as if those words were ordinary.
Maybe they were to some people, but they weren’t for him.
Miles turned onto Tanner’s street and parked outside the house. He switched off the engine but didn’t move straight away.
“You getting Savannah in?” he asked.
Tanner stared ahead then nodded. “Yeah.”
He got out, opened the back door, and unbuckled her carefully. Savannah made a soft noise and folded into him without waking properly. Tanner held her close and shut the door with his hip and walked up the path. He got inside and took her straight through to the bedroom.
Her room was warm enough. The blanket was folded at the end of the bed because he’d made it that morning before they left. He put her down carefully, eased the rabbit into her arms, and pulled the blanket over her legs. She shifted once, turned onto her side, and settled again.
Tanner stood there for a moment, looking at her, and then he walked back out into the hall and shut the bedroom door quietly behind him.
Miles was in the kitchen putting the folder on the table when Tanner came in. He’d already filled the kettle and flicked it on without asking.
“You want anything to eat?”
Tanner laughed under his breath without humor. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“I signed papers saying they can come into the house tomorrow and decide if I’m good enough to keep my sister, and you’re asking if I want something to eat?”
Miles held his gaze. “Yes.”
Tanner yanked a chair back from the table hard enough that it scraped the floor. “I don’t want coffee or food. I don’t want anybody coming in here tomorrow and poking through drawers and checking if the goddamn cereal boxes are lined up right.”
Miles didn’t answer that. The kettle clicked off and he took two mugs from the cupboard anyway. That made something in Tanner snap.
“I said I don’t want a drink.”
Miles put one mug down on the counter. “Then don’t drink it.”
Tanner shoved both hands through his hair and turned away, then turned back because there was nowhere for it to go. “You keep acting like this is manageable.”
“It is.”
Tanner stared at him. “No, it isn’t.”
Miles poured hot water into one mug and then the other. “It is because it has to be.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
Tanner’s chest was tight enough to hurt.
He paced across the kitchen and back again.
The room wasn’t big. The floorboards creaked under the same spots they always did.
The fridge hummed. Somebody’s dog barked down the street.
Everything in the house was still the same, and none of it was the same at all.
“I signed it,” he said.
Miles put the spoon down beside the sugar jar. “I know.”
Tanner shook his head. “No, you don’t. You don’t.
” He pressed the heel of his hand against his sternum and dragged in a breath that did nothing.
“I signed it, and they took it away and wrote down tomorrow at two and Friday at eleven and a court thing after that, and you all keep saying it’s to keep her here, but that’s what people say right before they tell you it’s out of your hands. ”
Miles leaned back against the counter. “That what happened before?”
Tanner gave a short laugh again. “Before?”
“When people with forms got involved.”
Tanner looked at him and then away. “They talk at you. They tell you what the next step is. They tell you it’s temporary or standard or necessary. Then everything moves and you’re the last one to know.” He swallowed hard.
Miles didn’t jump on it or push for more. “Alright.”
Tanner’s jaw clenched. “That’s it?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know.”
Miles nodded once. “That’s the first useful thing you’ve said in five minutes.”
Tanner should have gotten angrier at that. Instead it knocked some of it out of him. He dropped into the chair he’d pulled out earlier and sat with his elbows on his knees, staring at the worn patch in the linoleum near the sink.
“I hate this,” he said.
“I know.”
“I hate needing help.”
“I know.”
“I hate that TJ saw me in there.” Tanner rubbed both hands over his face. “I hate that woman. I hate that she kept talking to me like I was a problem she had ten minutes to sort out.”
Miles carried one mug to the table and put it in front of him. “Coffee.” Tanner looked at it. “You don’t have to thank me,” Miles said.
That got the smallest huff out of him. “Thanks.”
Miles sat opposite with his own mug and gave Tanner a minute.
He didn’t fill the silence. He never did when it mattered.
That was one of the worst things about him sometimes.
Tanner could get mad at speeches. He could push back against them.
Sitting there with somebody steady and patient and impossible to shake was harder.
Eventually he wrapped both hands around the mug and exhaled.
Miles waited until Tanner took one sip before he spoke. “We need to do one thing today.”
Tanner shut his eyes for a second. “I can’t.”
“You can.”
“I don’t want another form.”
“It’s not another form for them.” Miles took a drink from his own mug. “Doctor registration.”
Tanner opened his eyes. “What?”
“She needs a local doctor on paper before tomorrow. You’ve got the old clinic card and the birth certificate. We do the registration now. That’s one box ticked before Rebecca Palmer walks through the door.”
Tanner stared at him. He didn’t want to do it right then, but it made sense. “She’ll see the forms tomorrow anyway,” he said.
“Exactly.”
Tanner looked down at his drink. “You planned this already.”
Miles shrugged a shoulder. “I thought it was the best use of the next hour.”
Something in Tanner wanted to refuse on principle.
Wanted to say no just because everyone had been telling him what the next hour, the next day, the next week needed to be.
But Savannah was asleep in the next room.
A doctor on file mattered. He knew it mattered.
He’d known before Rebecca Palmer ever said it across that table.
He reached for the folder and pulled it closer. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
Tanner flipped it open. “I might a bit.”
The registration form was on the clinic website, but the printer at the house still jammed on anything more than one page, so Miles called ahead instead and got them to agree to prepare a paper copy if Tanner came in before closing.
They were open another forty minutes. Tanner changed Savannah from her jeans into soft leggings without waking her properly, carried her back to the truck half asleep, and slid into the passenger seat with the folder tucked under one arm again.
The clinic receptionist behind the desk wore reading glasses low on her nose and spoke fast in the way people did when they were trying to get through a queue before closing.
“Child registration?” she asked.
Tanner nodded.
“Current address?”
He gave it.
“Parent or guardian?”
His mouth dried out, but he forced the words out. “Brother. Guardianship process started today.”
The receptionist glanced up then, quick and assessing. “Fine,” she said, already pulling a form from the tray. “Put your details here, and I’ll need the child’s full name, date of birth, previous practice if you have it, and an emergency contact.”
Tanner took the clipboard. The pen was attached with a piece of plastic chain. He sat in one of the waiting room chairs and bent over the form while Savannah leaned against his side with her rabbit in both arms and her head tipped onto his shoulder.
“Why we here?” she asked, voice thick with sleep.
“Doctor stuff,” Tanner said.
“I not sick.”
“No.”
That satisfied her. She played with the rabbit’s paw while Tanner filled in each line. His own writing was rougher than usual. He had to stop twice to check dates in the folder. Emergency contact made him pause.
Miles said quietly, “Put me.” Tanner looked at him. Miles met his eyes. “Put me.”
Tanner didn’t say anything. He wrote Miles Owens and the number he already knew by heart.
When he took the clipboard back to the desk, the receptionist checked the form, copied the documents, and stapled a temporary registration slip to the front.
“There,” she said. “That covers you pending the full transfer. If she needs an appointment before the records come through, call first thing in the morning.”
Tanner took the papers back carefully. “That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
The woman gave him a brief look over the top of her glasses. “You were expecting a fight?” Tanner nodded. She softened a little. “Not from me, love. Next.”
When they went outside, Tanner stood on the sidewalk with Savannah on one hip and the registration slip in his hand.
Miles shut the clinic door behind them. “One box ticked.”
Tanner looked down at the paper. The print was cheap and slightly crooked where the printer had fed it through, but it still counted. He let out a breath and tucked it into the folder.
Savannah patted his cheek. “Can we have fries?”
Tanner looked at her. “You always hungry?”
“Yes.”
Miles smiled as he opened the truck door. “That sounds like a yes.”
They got food on the way home because Savannah had asked and because the kitchen held too much leftover tension to walk straight back into it empty-handed.
She sat in her booster seat at the table with ketchup on her fingers and told Miles very seriously that her rabbit did not eat fries because he was “only cloth.” Miles accepted that information with the respect it apparently deserved.
Tanner stood at the counter and watched them for a second before he unwrapped his own food.
Savannah dropped a fry and gasped. “Oh no.”
“You’ve got six more,” Tanner said.
She counted, got to four, then shoved another fry into her mouth.
By the time she was done, she had ketchup everywhere. Tanner wiped her hands and face, got her into clean pajamas, and carried her through to bed when her eyes started to droop again. She wrapped her arms around his neck before he laid her down.
“You stay?” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
He sat on the edge of her bed until her breathing evened out, then he went through the house with a bin bag in one hand, not because it suddenly mattered more than it had that morning, but because tomorrow somebody was coming to write things down.
He cleared the junk mail from the hall table.
Put the half-empty laundry basket through a cycle.
Checked the bathroom cupboard and threw out old blister packs and a cracked bottle of cough syrup.
Tightened the stair gate even though Savannah rarely tried to climb it.
The practical things helped. Not by much, but enough to keep him moving.
Miles replaced the loose bulb in the back porch light while Tanner wiped down the kitchen sides. Neither of them talked much, but they didn’t need to.
When the house was finally quiet and the last of the dishes were done, Tanner stood at the sink with his hands braced on the edge and looked out into the dark yard beyond the window.
The glass showed a faint reflection of the kitchen behind him.
Miles was at the table going through the folder again, stacking papers into a better order for tomorrow.
“They’ll still come,” Tanner said.
“Yeah.”
“They’ll still look at everything.”
“Yeah.”
Tanner nodded. He didn’t turn around straight away. “I wanted to run.”
Miles answered softly, “I know, but I’m here so you’re not alone.”
Tanner looked down at his own hands on the sink. “I still want to.” When he turned around, Miles was watching him. “But I’m not going to.”
Miles held his gaze. “Good.”
That should have annoyed him, but it didn’t.
Tanner pushed away from the sink and crossed the room, stopping beside the table.
The folder sat there with the new doctor registration slip tucked in at the front.
One more piece of paper. One more proof that he was trying to build something solid before somebody tried to take it away.
He put his hand on the folder and left it there for a second.
Tomorrow at two they would come through the front door and look around and write down what they saw.
On Friday they would sit in another room and talk about what happened next.
The fear was still there, but it wasn’t moving him tonight.
Savannah was asleep. The house was clean.
The forms were in order. The doctor was done.
And Miles was still with him, and Tanner realized how much he needed him.
For now, that had to be enough.