It came from across the hall, loud and flat, the voice of a man who had spent thirty years calling across machine rooms. James's stomach dropped before his head even turned. Ron was coming toward them through the crowd with his reading glasses bouncing on their cord against his chest, and beside him, half a step back, was a young Amtrak police officer James didn't know, with a radio clipped high on his shoulder and a polite, professional, faintly worried face.
"Fitzhugh," Ron said again, closer now, and then he saw Ruby, and his face did a complicated thing. "Oh, for— James."
"Ron," James said, standing up. He was aware, as he did it, of Iris's hand sliding off his knee. "I can explain."
"I'm sure you can." Ron stopped in front of the bench and looked at Ruby, and at the old woman, and at Petra in her blazing red, and at the blue suitcase, and for a moment he simply looked tired. "Hi, Ruby."
"Hi, Mr. Winnick."
"Your dad's going to explain to me why you're here. And then he's going to explain to Officer Akers why he's been sitting on a bench with a vulnerable adult who came in alone with luggage, because somebody at the info desk called it in, which, I'll be honest, James, was the right thing to do."
"She's not alone," Petra said, standing too. "She's with me. I'm her granddaughter. I'm her guardian. I've got the paperwork in my bag, I've got her doctor's number—"
"Okay, ma'am, that's great, that's really helpful," said the officer. Officer Akers could not have been more than twenty-five, with a fresh haircut and an earnest face, and James could see he had been to all the trainings and meant well with every cell of his body. He stepped around Petra toward the bench, and he bent at the waist, and he put his hands on his knees, and he spoke to Iris in the clear, loud, cheerful voice people used for the very old and the very foreign. "Hi there, ma'am! How are we doing today? Can you tell me your name?"
Iris looked up at him. She had gone still in the way small animals go still.
"Ma'am? Can you tell me your name for me?"
"Officer," Petra said. "Please. If you could just let me—"