Half an hour later, Charlotte and her housemate come out to play in the backyard. He could see glimpses of them as they ran to the far end of the chain-link, fenced in area.
Two older girls came running from across the street, and called to them, going up to the fence. They talked, and Charlotte and her housemate shook their heads, looking sad. The older girls said ‘bye’ and came walking back past the car. “He never lets them do anything,” one of the girls said to the other, before crossing the street.
Roger had seen enough. He shimmied himself back into the driver’s seat and put his key in the ignition. Was the foster father the problem? Or was it the foster mother and the foster father defends the girls, or does he yell at just the mother? Or did both foster parents just run a tight ship? He shook his head at it all, and turned to take one last look before pulling out.
There Charlotte stood, fingers threaded through the chain-links, face pressed to the fencing, staring at him.
He wondered if she was just staring at some strange guy she happened to see crawling over a car seat, wondering what he was doing, or if she was staring at him because she recognized him.
He let out a sigh, hoping she knew how to keep her mouth shut, or at least to only talk to Penny about it.
He wanted to wave, or smile, or something. But not knowing how she’d react; he could only match her stare.
The other girl called for Charlotte and she looked the girl’s way, took one more look at Roger, and then went to her housemate.
Roger wasted no time in leaving. He pulled out and headed for home.
"That's the Tunisian stitch," Kelly remarked, bringing Roger his coffee.
"It's called 'the pain in the ass stitch'," he said, reaching for the mug. "Thank you." He took a sip before putting it down, refusing to acknowledge that she'd mastered his two vanilla creamers, one sugar combination. She made a man feel like she was paying attention.
She hid her smile over his poorly hidden appreciation. "Also called the afghan stitch."
He harrumphed over that, studying his messy stitches. "If it's the afghan stitch, why aren't all afghans made with it?"
"Because the art of crochet would have died out," she teased.
He let out a grunt of agreement. "Why would she have gone through this torture?" he muttered to himself as he tried turning the project and looking at it from another angle.
"Probably because it's a stitch that doesn't leave any holes, and checkered patterns never go out of style… May I?" she asked, holding out a hand.
He raised his eyebrows and handed it over.
She moved beside him, and knelt to hold the project so he could see, and began working the hook. "It has its own rhythm, just in two parts. Push through the loop, yarn over, pull through. The extra loop on the shaft stays. Rinse, and repeat. Push, grab and pull. Push, grab and pull. The whole way across." She showed him how to attach the end of the row to the neighboring block of a different color. "And then, coming back, it's just yarn over, pull through two loops, yarn over, pull through two. So, grab and pull, grab and pull, grab and pull.
I'd like to grab and pull you… Roger shook his head to clear that thought out. He had enough on his plate, no way could he add her to it.
She caught the look on his face and smiled to herself as she moved back to the visitor side of his desk. "Anyway, like I said, it has its own rhythm."
He tried a few stitches.
“That yarn is squeaky,” she thought out loud.
“Yeah, it’s only this skein that’s ever done it to me.”
“If it’s distracting, you can solve that problem.”
“How?” he asked, honestly curious.
“You take a bar of soap and rub it all over the tip, throat, and the part of the shaft you insert.”
Roger’s mouth went dry.
Max appeared in the doorway. "Do I want to know what you two are rubbing soap on?"
Kelly smiled.
Max shook his head. "Never mind, I don't want to know."
Roger shot him a look. "What did you want?"
Max tossed a printout of a spreadsheet onto the desk. "The one account is off."
Roger lifted a paperweight, grabbed a folded strip of paper from under it, and tossed it onto the spreadsheet, before replacing the paperweight. "I bought a new treadmill for the gym. It’ll be delivered tomorrow."
Max lifted the receipt and unfolded it, looking over the numbers. "Cool. Why didn't you input it?"
Roger shrugged. "It was past my work hours when I got in and I laid it on the desk. It slipped my mind, but I still had it in my to-do pile. I'll put it in."
Max snorted. "What work hours, you work seven days a week, I see it in the logs."
Kelly's brow wrinkled. "You should take some downtime. You'll burn yourself out."
"She works seven days a week, too," Max said. "Don't listen to a hypocrite. We should plan a group vacation."
It was Kelly's turn to snort. "You mean like one of those corporate retreat things? No, thanks."
"I was thinking more like a condo on a boardwalk along a beach. Come and go as you please."
"Great," she deadpanned, "four drunk guys and me. I'll build a huge pyramid with the empty beer cans to barricade myself."
* * * * * * * * * *
“So, Charlotte asked me questions about you,” I said, by way of opening the conversation, as I shut the car door and buckled my seat belt.
Daddy let out a long sigh. “What did she want to know?”
“If you were out of the mental ward, if I’d heard from you, what I remembered you looking like.” I turned to him, “Did she see you, or something?”
He nodded, “Last week, from a distance. I didn’t wave, or anything. But we locked eyes for at least thirty seconds.”
“Well, she thinks she saw you. Thought you were there to take her home.”
“Did she want me to take her home?”
I let out a sigh. “Yeah.”
Daddy sat back in his seat. “Well, that’s a far cry from the girl we knew before. She didn’t really want to come home, remember? She was only going along with it because she was told she should.”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
“What is it?”
“Well, I asked her what was going on that she wanted you to take her home.”
“And?”
“Promise you won’t end up in jail again?”
His hand went into his hair, scrubbing back and forth over it. “What’s happening to her?”
I squirmed in my seat a little. “Her foster father is hitting her.”
Dad went completely still and his voice fell flat. “Just her?”
“Her and the other foster girl, there.”
“What about the other one?”
“She’s his real daughter.”
“I see, so the bastard has no issue beating on someone else’s kids, just not his own,” Daddy muttered.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, with more than a little dread in my voice.
“Me?” he asked, looking at me through eyes of solid steel. “There’s nothing I can do, remember? I’m not allowed to even know about this. You’re her sister, she told you. You call your social worker, and tell him what your sister confided in you. If that gets you nowhere, you call Child Protective Services. And remember, we never had this conversation.”
I nodded. “Does that mean it’s my job to make it stop?”
“No. It’s the social worker’s job to get her and the other girl out of there. It’s your job to tell him it’s happening.”
“She begged me not to. She said if the guy finds out she told; he’ll beat her good.”
“And if you don’t, it’ll never stop. You have to tell the social worker.”
“But—”
“Penny, for the love of all that’s holy, if you don’t, I will. And then I will go back to jail for tracking her down and for visiting you! Please, the only legal way to handle it is to tell, so the social worker ca
n do his job and get her out of there.”
Geez, did I sigh hard.
“I’m sorry, Penny, but sometimes you’ve got to take the chance and do the right thing.”
“What if she hates me for telling?”
“What if you don’t and the guy starts breaking bones?”
I let out a frustrated groan.
Daddy nodded. “Tell me about it.”
* * * * * * * * * *
“What’s the matter with you?” Kelly asked.
Roger looked up from his computer monitor, “What?”
“I said, what’s the matter with you? You haven’t been yourself this week,” she asked, sitting down.
“Nothing’s wrong with me,” he muttered, eyes going back to the screen.
“Something, somewhere, is wrong. You look haunted.”
Roger regarded her a moment and let out a sigh. “I know something I shouldn’t. And because I shouldn’t, I can’t do anything about it. I have to rely on someone else coming forward about it, and then yet another person to actually do something about it.”
“And that’s eating you alive,” she said knowingly.
He nodded.
“How long until you know if anything has been done about it?”
“A few more days.”
“Is worrying about it in the meantime doing anybody any good?”
“I appreciate your logic, but if you knew what was going on, you’d understand why I can’t just let it go.”
She smiled and shook her head.
“What?”
“I knew it, that’s all.”
“Knew what?”
“This has something to do with one of your kids, right?”
He looked equally guilty and shocked.
She put a hand up. “Don’t confirm it, I don’t want to know if you’ve had contact. I’m just saying, there’s no one else in your life that you would care so much about. It has to be one of them in trouble. And, that being the case, I can understand why you’re having a tough time this week. Just make sure you take care of yourself, so you don’t go flying off any deep ends, okay?”
He nodded.
She got up to leave his private office.
“Kelly,” he called out.
She turned back, “Yeah?”
“I care about you guys, too. You know that, right?”
A soft smile graced her features. “I figured, but it sure is nice to hear.”
He tucked his lips between his teeth and nodded.
She turned away and left.
For as much as Max liked to make comments about him and Kelly starting something, Roger couldn’t bring himself to do anything to pursue it. The most he could admit was that she was the only one in his orbit that caught his attention.
And her? Roger couldn’t decide if she was showing an interest, or just cared about someone she knew was struggling with re-entry into the real world.
For now, he chose to ignore any implications and put all thoughts of it on the backburner.
He had enough to contend with.
* * * * * * * * * *
“She’s out,” I announced as I opened the passenger door and got in.
Dad’s gaze froze on me. “Really?”
I nodded. “I called my social worker, told him Charlotte said her foster father was hitting her and the other foster girl, and he thanked me for telling him and said he’d take care of it.”
“That was it?”
“Yeah. I talked to Charlotte that night. She said both social workers walked into the house and said they needed the girls for some paperwork and took them out to the cars and drove away with them. She said they were taken to another foster home, where they were reassigning bedrooms so they could both share a bedroom with one another, which was nice. She appreciated that she could stay with a familiar face.”
“That was nice for them both.”
“Yeah, I talked to her the next day and she said the social workers came back with their things. So, that was good. I’ve talked to her every night, actually, and she really seems much happier. The new foster family has really treated them well, so far.”
“So, she’s not mad at you for telling your social worker,” Daddy said with a smile.
I grinned. “She’s glad I did. I’m glad I listened to you. I was only scared because I didn’t know both social workers would go in there and remove them, no questions asked. I thought they’d go in and start asking questions and then leave them there. Charlotte and I both thought she’d get hit a bunch more over my having said anything.”
Daddy let out a sigh. “The people who work within the system know that it’s broken. And, because of that, they’re trying to work with what they’ve got to make it better, bit by little bit. I’m sure it was a mixture of having two social workers ready to move mountains, and having a foster home available with two spots open. I’m glad they made it work out.”
“Yeah. And the social worker called me to say that she was out, in case I hadn’t talked to her, and that they’ve gotten Child Protective Services involved in an investigation to determine if it will now be safe for the biological daughter to stay with them, in case he decides to start hitting on his own kid. No more foster kids will go to them, either. They’re being removed from the network, no matter what they find.”
“Just like that, they removed them? With the shortage of foster homes and no proof?”
“The social worker brought a nurse to the new foster home and got the girls to show their bruises that they’d been made to hide. Stomach, legs, back, handprints on their upper arms from being grabbed. That’s enough proof for reasonable doubt and that’s enough to get the family removed from the list, at least in this case.”
Daddy let out a breath of relief and slouched back in his seat. “And how does it feel to be the one to put all of that into motion? To save two girls from further abuse?”
I thought about it a moment and felt the smile spread across my face. “Pretty good.”
He smiled in approval. “You done did good, kid. I think you deserve some ice cream,” he said as he put the car in gear.
I chuckled. “Well, I hope you’re getting two ice creams, because without you, I never would have taken the chance and made that phone call.”
“Two ice creams it is.”
* * * * * * * * * *
“You’re back to joking around with us again,” Kelly remarked that Monday afternoon. “Good to have you back.”
Roger leaned back in his desk chair and stretched his legs out, crossing them at the ankles. “Right now, in this moment, everything in my life is good.”
Kelly snorted, “You must have really low standards on good.”
Roger’s head drew up, his brow crinkling. “Excuse me?”
She shrugged. “You’ve lost a lot. To be able to say that things are good, despite all you’ve lost, means that life has beaten you down so much that your standard unit of measurement must no longer be what it used to be.”
He sighed. “The past is in the past, and I can’t change it. All I have is what’s left. What’s left consists of a large roof over my head, a thriving business, good employees, a distinct lack of bars and prison uniforms, and… my daughter has been liberated from her abuser.”
Kelly’s eyes sparkled with her smile. “That does sound like a good day.”
Roger could see the hesitation and look of questioning on her face. “I got word to her social worker, through someone else, and she was moved from the home to another one, just so you know.”
She sat down, relief showing through her smile. “Good for you, for not letting it break you.”
He sighed. “I blame my being rational on all the years of therapy.”
“Does your daughter know that you had something to do with it?”
He nodded.
“Good. She won’t be a kid forever, and if she ages out without being adopted, she’ll know that despite everything else, she has a father who loves her enough to make sure she’s
okay, and to work the channels to help her out when she’s not.”
“I shouldn’t have known in the first place.”
“But you did, and you didn’t freak out and cross the line. You handled it through legal channels. That’s what counts.”
“That’s what counts to you, but if anyone found out…”
“I think, given that your kids are in the system to keep them safe, and one of them wasn’t safe, and you used legal channels to correct that wrong, they might be a bit forgiving.”
“It’ll be better if no one ever finds out… Max told you one of them reached out to me, didn’t he?”
She nodded. “He only told me, if that makes you feel any better. He wanted one of us to be aware, in case she showed up again while you and he were busy or away.”
“What did he tell you to do?”
“He wanted me to get her name and maybe a phone number. And he wanted me to find out why she was reaching out, in case she was in trouble. He thought maybe if you two communicated through either him or me, it could maybe bypass the no contact order and still allow you two to pass messages.”
He shook his head. “I appreciate the thought, but that would still violate the order and implicate you and Max.”
“I’m just saying, we’re all on your side, here.”
Chapter Nineteen
An Unnoticed Ember
Willowvine Elementary. All the kids exited the building through a single entrance, which you would think would make it easy to spot someone. But, no one he saw lit a spark of recognition.
It dawned on Roger that a five-turned-ten-year-old may be hard to recognize. And when you put that girl within the masses of rambunctious little kids screeching with joy to be free of the brick building they’d been held hostage in all day, well, there was no hope of pinpointing which one was Sophie.
He shook his head as he drove away.
“All right, baby, let Daddy see you,” Roger whispered, early on Friday afternoon, from his parked car along the fence line of Willowvine’s playground. It was hard to not look suspicious, sitting in a parked car, overlooking a children’s playground.
Good thing he’d had lots of practice avoiding looking suspicious.
We're All Broken Page 15
