Chapter 8 - FOUND
"Elise!"
Thomas's scream was swallowed by the roaring thunder. He and Clare were sprinting through the muddy, sprawling gardens of the estate, armed with heavy flashlights, their beams cutting through the sheets of driving rain.
"Elise! Please!" Clare screamed, her voice tearing her throat, completely heedless of the mud ruining her clothes or the freezing rain plastering her hair to her face.
Panic, dark and suffocating, clawed at Thomas's chest. Elise was weak. She had just recovered from a severe fever. The freezing rain could induce shock within minutes.
"Check the rose garden!" Thomas shouted to the security guards who had joined the search.
Clare ran toward the far edge of the property, where a line of heavy oak trees stood against the brick perimeter wall. Her flashlight beam swept wildly across the shadows.
Then, she saw it.
A glint of metal caught in the mud. The wheelchair was stuck deep in the wet earth, tilted on its side. And lying next to it, curled into a tiny ball beneath the roots of a massive oak, was Elise.
"Thomas! Over here!" Clare shrieked.
Clare dropped to her knees in the mud, tossing the flashlight aside. She scooped the freezing, shivering child into her arms. Elise was ice cold, her lips turning a terrifying shade of blue.
"Elise, baby, look at me," Clare sobbed, pressing the child against her own chest, trying to transfer her body heat. "Why did you go outside? Why did you leave?"
Elise's eyes fluttered open, barely conscious. "I heard..." she whispered, her voice a fragile rasp against the storm. "I heard I'm ruining the company. I'm a disaster. You have to send me back, Mrs. Lawson. I'm sorry."
Clare let out a cry that was half-sob, half-roar. It was the sound of a mother’s heart breaking and reforming all at once.
"No! No, you are not a disaster!" Clare wept, rocking her fiercely. "You are the best thing that has happened to this family. You didn't break our house, Elise. You put it back together! You put me back together!"
Thomas dropped to his knees beside them in the mud, wrapping his large coat around both his wife and the child. He gathered them both into his massive arms, tears mixing with the rain on his face.
"I am so sorry, Elise," Thomas cried against her wet hair. "I wasn't talking about you. I was talking about bad men who don't understand what truly matters. I don't care about the company. I don't care about the money. I only care about you. You are my daughter."
Elise looked up at them. Through the freezing rain and the shivering cold, she saw something she had never seen before.
May you like
She saw parents who were terrified of losing her.
For the first time in her life, Elise wrapped her small, weak arms around Clare’s neck, buried her face in her mother's shoulder, and held on tightly.
