phone call
He didn't like the idea of it. "What are we supposed to do?" Letting her do it...well, that was letting her make her own decisions to determine things about her life. But how could he protect her like that? Now he couldn't protect her at all. Not while he didn't know anything and she was kept in the library. "You could have told me, Alice. We could have figured something out." He looked down at the table, not really sure how to respond to the last part. Alice would be gone forever. Only now she wasn't.
Either way, it didn't matter here because she was Alice still.