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I wanted to get her help before I had to find out whether I was wrong.

She came out wearing a sweatshirt and leggings. Her eyes were swollen. She looked fifteen, and that pissed me off all over again because I needed this to be something a fifteen-year-old could come back from.

I took her downstairs.

At Shady Grove Medical Center, I told the woman at the emergency department desk that my daughter needed a psychiatric evaluation.

Storie stood beside me, staring at the floor.

When they asked what had happened, I lowered my voice.

“She hurt two animals on purpose. One died because of her. She admitted it to me today. I don’t feel comfortable taking her home without somebody seeing her,” I said.

Saying it in a hospital made it sound even worse.

We went through registration. A nurse checked her over and asked questions while I sat nearby. Storie answered quietly, occasionally looking at me before she spoke.

I wanted to tell her to stop checking my face and tell the fucking truth.

Instead, I waited.

When the mental health clinician came in, she spoke to us together, then asked to talk to Storie alone.

Storie caught my wrist.

“Please don’t leave,” she begged.

“I’m going to be right outside.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah.”

I stepped out and sat where the nurse directed me.

I had signed papers as her father. Whatever that paternity report eventually said, I was still the person they called when she needed something. I had raised her. I had loved her. I was sitting in a hospital hoping somebody could tell me how to keep loving her without getting somebody else hurt.

Dropping off a threat to a psychiatric facility was something new for me. This wasn’t typically how the Banks family handled things. But this might be my little girl. She was a little girl regardless.

When they called me back in, Storie was holding a wad of tissues. The clinician asked her to tell me what they had discussed.

“I told her about Midnite,” she said.

“And Cookie?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I told her I did it.”

I looked at the clinician.

“She understands that what she did could cause serious harm,” the woman said. “We need more time to assess what’s happening and what support she needs.”

“How much time?”

“We’d like to keep her for observation over the next twenty-four hours and reassess her tomorrow.”

Storie started crying again.