Aftermath
Ashley's POV
When we got back to the house, Quin was sound asleep in the car. I careful picked her up and carried her into the Hearth. Everyone else was upstairs. The kids were most likely all asleep and Dave was probably upstairs doing work. I brought Quin over to the living room and laid her on the couch. I hadn't thought about where she would be sleeping. I sat down next to Quin on the couch and eventually found myself falling asleep.
≈≈≈ TIME SKIP, December 29th ≈≈≈
I woke up to someone stirring beside me. After thinking for a moment all the events of yesterday came flooding back to me. The accident. Quin. I turned and looked over at the small and bandaged body beside me. I slowly reached over and gently woke Quin up completely. She looked over at me, her green and blue eyes glistening in the morning sunlight. Slowly but surely, everyone woke up and we all had breakfast.
The rest of the day went pretty well. Quin was a bit more timid than usually, but after a while she seemed to regain her old spirit again. It's true what they say, kids are resilient. I asked Quin if there was any adult back home who I should call. She was hesitant at first, but eventually ended up showing me a contact on her mom's phone who she agreed to letting me call. The contact didn't answer, so I left a message and hoped they would call back. I had only known Quin for three days and she was already in my custody, I was in serious need of help.
Night time came around and we decided that Quin would sleep in the same room as Claire, since we were only in Spokane for one more night. Night time was pretty uneventful, aside from the bandage changes. Quin was completely terrified of anyone who tried to change the bandages but by some miracle, Claire managed to calm her down enough for me to change them all. The next morning we were going back to Seattle, and based off of the conversation I had with the social worker, Quin was coming with us too.
I spent most of the night packing and getting the car ready. Luckily for us Linda and Jim had a carseat for when Quin visited, so we could use that. After getting the car as ready as we could Dave and I headed to bed. As we were sitting in bed Dave's phone chimed with a notification. He reached over to grab his phone and look at the message. I watched as he did this, just wanting to go to bed so that we wouldn't be totally sleep-deprived on the drive back to Seattle. As soon as Dave picked up his phone, his jaw dropped in surprise.