Chapter 4
IT TOOK LONGER FOR Chad to break free of the ER than he’d planned, so he made it only for the tail end of Mary Alice’s presentation to hospital staff on Fountain of Hope. She was explaining how to fill out the paperwork that would allow people to adopt a child for the holiday season. He slipped in at the periphery, where he could watch and listen.
“Each coin has been anonymized, so it’s important that the people doing the record-keeping make note of the identification number on each coin before releasing it to adopters.”
Chad and Mary Alice had spent long hours after work the last two days getting all the coins filled out for each child and divided up for each participating local business. Long hours they’d spent talking about anything and everything. He knew someone else was
