Seven Reasons Why

by Neesa Hart

  A flutter of dread tripped down her spine. “They said that specifically? They’re worried about Odelia?”

  “Ummm.” He didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the conversation. Something about her ear seemed to fascinate him. He traced the curve of it with the tip of his finger. “They think she’s going to run them, and you, out of town.”

  At his words, she felt a wave of bitter anger wash through her. Those fears, she knew, were terrifying to a child. Boys like Bo and Chip and Lucas and Teddy, especially, lived in terror of being sent “back.” The remembered agony of sleepless nights, horrifying dreams and wrenching disappointments made sweat break out on her palms. “She wouldn’t,” she whispered. “I won’t let her.”

  Zack’s fingers moved over her face in a restless caress. She felt the probing strength of his eyes as he tried to gauge her mood. “August? Is there something you want to tell me, here?”

  “When?” she asked. “When did they tell you that?”

  “The day they came through my fence while you were talking to Odelia.”

  She knew the color had drained from her face, had felt it wash out of her. “I’ve got to talk to them—” She would have moved away from him then, but he stayed her with a firm hand on her shoulder.

  “Wait a minute. Just wait a minute. Tell me why you’re so upset.”

  She gave him a startled look. “Upset? Do you know what they’re going through? They’re scared to death.” She’d had no idea they harbored those fears. She’d tried so hard to protect them, to make them feel safe. “Have you got any idea what it’s like to be eight years old, to have lived in three different states with eight different families, and spend every waking minute worrying that you’re going to be out on the street again?”

  His gaze narrowed. “Do you?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. And it’s terrifying. If they think—” she shuddered “—if they’re even slightly worried that I’d let that happen to them, then I’ve failed them. God, they’ve got to be scared out of their minds. Why didn’t you tell me this right away? I had a right to know.”

  “I didn’t tell you because my business is with the boys”

  “This isn’t a game, Zack.” His hands had begun to knead the tight muscles in her shoulders. “This is serious. When those boys came to me, everything they owned fit in a shopping bag. Hell, their life is so mobile, they don’t even own suitcases. They just stuff two pairs of jeans, a couple of shirts, and a baseball into a bag and drag off to the next place that’ll take them. You can’t even imagine how terrifying that is to a child.”

  “I know that.” His strong fingers refused to yield to the pressure of her smaller hands.

  “Sure you do. That’s why you just glibly informed me that you’re their lawyer.”

  “There wasn’t anything glib about it. I decided to take their case.”

  “They don’t have a case.” She couldn’t seem to keep the slightly hysterical note from her voice. In some dim corner of her mind, she knew that remembered fears were clouding her judgment, but she couldn’t seem to keep the demons at bay. In her mind were visions of finding a bag with her meager belongings sitting on a small bed, of buses and trains that had led to scary new places, of cold nights in dark rooms with nothing and no one to hold the fears at bay. She pictured that happening to her boys and felt her sanity slipping away.

  “The way I see it,” Zack said, his voice strangely calming, “if four kids are worried they’re going to find themselves on the street because of a nasty old lady’s personal vendetta, they’ve got a case. The law takes that kind of thing very seriously.” He paused. “So do I.”

  August met his gaze, found a strange sense of comfort in the clear intent she found there. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  He nodded. “I told you, I’m on retainer. Nothing’s going to happen to them as long as I have anything to do with it.”

  “I want to believe you.”

  “But you don’t?”

  “Zack, I—”

  He pressed his thumb to her lips. “Why don’t you let me start?” he said. “I’ve been going over the legal records regarding your fostership of the boys. There’s a lot of sketchy information in there about your past, August. I think it’s time you leveled with me.”

  Chapter Five

  His thumb traced the curve of her lower lip. “Whoever did the paperwork on the boys evidently wasn’t too concerned about procedures. You’ve got a tenuous hold on them, at best.”

  August’s eyes widened. “What?” she whispered, as his fingers moved to trace the path of her jaw.

  “You didn’t know?”

  “No.” She felt a soul-deep panic. “No. I assumed Kaitlin had taken everything through the proper channels. Why would she cut corners?”

  His thumb had found the curve of her ear. “Probably because those poor kids had already been bumped around a few times. She figured the chances of a challenge were slim to nothing. If she’s like most social workers, her first concern was getting them placed somewhere safe. She could worry about the paperwork later.”

  “Only she never did?” August asked, starting to feel queasy as she thought of the possible consequences. What if Odelia knew? What if her lawyers learned that legal maneuvering could force her to give up her boys? The thought made her blood run cold.

  Zack dropped his hand to take one of hers. “Only she never did. So we don’t have a lot to work with. I’m going to need you to level with me.”

  Reluctantly, August met his gaze. “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know why you agreed to take on four kids the system didn’t want, and why you refused Odelia’s financial offer to leave town.”

  “I couldn’t run away.”

  “August—” his thumb moved along the sensitive skin of her palm “—she offered you more than the value of your house. You could have taken that money, and the boys, and relocated somewhere she wouldn’t bother you. You want me to believe that the only thing that kept you here was determination?”

  “Would you let Odelia run you out of town if you didn’t want to go?”

  “I wouldn’t let her break up my family.”

  “Don’t you dare accuse me of endangering the boys' future! You know I’d do anything for them!”

  “Damn it, August, I need answers from you. I’m not the enemy.”

  “No?” She tried to move away from him, but he stopped her with a firm hand at her shoulder.

  “No.” His gaze held hers. “No,” he said, more quietly, “I’m not. I’m going to help you, but you’ve got to help me first. We’re not playing a game here. We’re talking about four young lives. They need you.”

  She fought an internal battle and lost. Zack was going to make her admit things she longed to keep buried inside. He would want to know everything, the stories, the fears, the motivations, all of it. “You can’t let her take them away from me,” she whispered.

  “Help me,” he urged.

  “What do you want to know?”

  He seemed to sense the importance of the concession. “What are you willing to tell me?”

  “Most of it. Maybe not the gorier details, but I’ll tell you how it started.”

  “Fine. We’ll start there. Why don’t you tell me how you ended up in Keegan’s Bend?”

  “Inheriting the house from Enid was a like a miracle. I had no idea why. I had just graduated from veterinarian school, and was ready to set up practice. I got a call from Odelia’s lawyer telling me I should come to Keegan’s Bend right away.”

  “I assume Odelia’s attorneys investigated the provisions in Enid’s will.”

  August managed a slight laugh. “Investigated isn’t the right word. Scrutinized, maybe. Dissected, even. Odelia was furious.”

  “And no one found out why Enid left you the house?”

  “Not that I know of. Everything was iron-tight. Odelia even tried to question Enid’s state of mind when the will was drafted, but the lawyer in Hampton Roads
who drew it up had witnesses. There was no way around it.”

  “So what about the boys? Where do they fit in?”

  “As soon as I knew the house was mine, I called Kaitlin. She had them waiting for me.”

  “She’d been having trouble placing them?”

  “Yeah.” August shook her head. “That’s a major flaw in the foster system. People want kids they can turn around in a night, but most of the children are so emotionally scarred, it can take months, even years, to reach them. Most foster parents don’t have that much patience.”

  “Or love.”

  She met his gaze. He was watching her with a tenderness that tugged mercilessly at her heart. “I suppose.”

  “How much do you know about the boys?”

  “Lucas, he’s fairly typical of kids in the system. His father abandoned his mother. She couldn’t take care of him, so she turned him over to the state.”

  Zack’s eyes narrowed to dark slits. “There’s maternal instinct for you.”

  “Actually, it’s better for a woman to recognize she can’t care for the child than neglect him, or worse, because she doesn’t want to admit she can’t hack it. Social workers have to take too many battered kids out of too many homes. Lucas has scars—who wouldn’t—but his are the emotional kind. They’ll heal in time.”

  “What about Chip? He’s—” Zack paused, as if searching for the right word.

  “Simple?” August supplied.

  “I guess. Not slow, I don’t think. Just different.”

  She nodded. “He’s brighter than he seems. He’s the youngest. He just turned six. As I said, Lucas is fairly typical of the kids in the system. They’re hurt, and the only way they know to express that hurt is with anger. But some kids react like Chip. He can’t stand what’s happening to him, so he just switches it off. He’s got an internal protective mechanism that enables him to ignore whatever’s happening around him.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “It could be. If he’s not nurtured out of it, he could explode one day. That generally happens to kids in their adolescence, when they lose some of their ability to escape into fantasy.”

  Zack exhaled a long breath. “How do you keep from wanting to kill their parents?”

  August waited while a warm breeze rustled the leaves overhead. She gently squeezed his hand. “I concentrate on the kids and try not to think about how they got that way. Bo’s a good example.”

  “I’ve never seen an seven-year-old with better manners.”

  “He entered the foster system after his mother was killed in an automobile accident. When Kaitlin found him, he was living with a foster family in Norfolk. He’d been there a year. She’s still trying to locate his younger sister, but the case files are missing. There are hundreds of children in the system who fit his sister’s description, and the only way Kaitlin can find her is to check each one individually.”

  “Great.”

  “Exactly. Here’s this kid, completely traumatized by the death of his mother, and the first thing social services does is separate him from his only living family member.”

  “If Kaitlin finds her, are you going to take her. in?”

  August looked at him in surprise. “Of course. I doubt Bo will even begin to heal until he knows his sister is all right. That’s part of his problem. Unfortunately, a lot of families take in foster kids for the money. I get an allowance from the state for each child. Some foster parents see it as supplemental income.”

  “Damn.”

  “It’s enough to make your blood boil,” she told him. “The family Bo was with kept telling him that if he behaved, if he didn’t give them any trouble, or tell his social worker that he didn’t have enough food, or enough clothes, or enough blankets, they’d find his sister and let her live with them.” She saw the way Zack’s jaw tightened into a rock-hard line. “He’s convinced that if he manages to be perfect enough, he’ll get his family back.”

  With a muttered exclamation of disgust, Zack wiped his hand over his face. “This is repulsive. How does this happen?”

  “The courts are just now getting to the place where they’re starting to believe the kids. It happens to hundreds of foster kids every day. There are some good families out there. Some kids make it through the system relatively unscathed, and social workers like Kaitlin do everything they can for each child. But she’s overworked and underpaid. As much as she wants to, she can’t give every child the personalized attention they need. There’s not enough time, and not enough money. Kids fall through the cracks.”

  “Did you?” he asked quietly.

  August drew a deep breath. The afternoon sun had made the air thick with humidity and heat. Even in the shade of the tree, she felt the dampness seeping through her clothes. “Don’t you want to know about Teddy?”

  “Yes, but I’m not letting you off the hook, either.” He reached for the pitcher of lemonade where it rested in the shade of the tree. Filling a glass, he pressed it to her lips. She took a greedy swallow. A drop of the icy liquid spilled from the corner of her mouth. Before she could wipe it away, Zack bent his head to catch it with his tongue. At her gasp, he smiled at her. “Tell me about Teddy,” he prompted. “We’ll get to the rest later.”

  “Then stop touching me. I can’t think when you do that.”

  A flare of heat that had nothing to do with the warm afternoon sparked in his eyes. “That’s the best news I’ve had in weeks.”

  With a disgruntled frown, she leaned slightly away from him. “You said you looked at the kids’ files this week in Hampton Roads. Wasn’t this stuff in there?”

  “Some of it. I’m getting a clearer picture from you, though.”

  “It’s not pretty, is it?”

  “It’s making me furious.” Zack shook his head. “People have no right to treat children like this.”

  “Teddy’s case is the worst, I think. He comes from an abusive home. The social worker who first handled his case had been called out to his stepfather’s house on four separate occasions. Each time, despite the evidence, she left him with his father.”

  “Oh, hell.”

  August shrugged. “That’s one of the flaws in the system. The courts are very adamant about trying to keep families intact.”

  “Even when the kids are getting knocked around?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. There’s a philosophy that removal from the home will be more traumatic for the child. The emphasis is on family counseling to end the abuse.”

  “How often does that work?” He bit out the question.

  August shook her head. “I don’t know the statistics, but I doubt it’s very effective. Generally, when a child is abused by a male figure in the home, the male is either the boyfriend, or the second husband, of the mother. Natural fathers are rarely inclined to physically abuse their own children. It’s territorial.”

  “It’s criminal.”

  “That too. In Teddy’s case, he was living with his stepfather. Kaitlin still hasn’t determined what happened to the mother, but two years before she took over Teddy’s case, the courts had given the stepfather legal guardianship.”

  “If he was beating him up, why did he want to be his guardian?”

  “My guess would be the added welfare money he could get from the state.”

  Zack swore again. August ran her thumb over the tense lines of his hand. “When Kaitlin went to check on Teddy’s progress, she found him locked in a closet. He had several very obvious signs of previous abuse, and he’d stopped talking.”

  “Has he ever said anything?”

  “Not since Kaitlin has been his caseworker. We’re not sure when he stopped.” Two unexpected tears welled in her eyes. She shook her head to prevent them from falling. The tears she cried for her boys, she’d always cried in private. Through the years, she’d learned to scorn the pity of others. She would never subject her kids to the same cloying false concern she’d endured so many times. She’d always been able to tell their stories without feel
ing it personally. Only when she sat alone in her bedroom did she weep for them. But now she met the tender look on Zack’s face and realized why her throat felt suddenly clogged. She’d never told their stories to a person who responded to them as he did. “I guess,” she whispered, still fighting the tears, “I guess he just ran out of things to say.”

  “Ah, August…” Zack’s hands closed on her shoulders. He guided her to a comfortable position against his chest. “Don’t cry.”

  “It’s so unfair.”

  “I know.”

  “They’re just little boys, Zack. They’ve never felt safe in their lives.”

  “But they’re safe with you.”

  “Only if Odelia doesn’t win.”

  “She won’t.” Gently, he tipped her away from him. With the rough pads of his fingers, he brushed away her tears. “She won’t,” he promised again. “You’re not going to let her, and neither am I.”

  August drew comfort from his quiet assurance. “Thank you,” she told him, “for understanding.”

  He regarded her for several long seconds. “Are you going to tell me your story, too?” he asked. “Or do I have to wait for that?”

  A familiar feeling of panic lodged in her throat. She didn’t tell this story to anyone. The secrets were hers alone. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “I want to understand you,” he persisted. “Not just because of the boys, either. I want to understand who you are. Please, August, trust me.”

  In her entire life, she’d never been urged to trust anyone. Her survival had depended on her ability to trust only herself. Zack’s persuasive plea was almost hypnotic. She couldn’t take her eyes from the strong set of his face, the compassion in his gaze. More than she wanted her next breath, she urgently wanted to believe in this man. Perhaps it was the way he’d listened and responded to her stories about the boys. Maybe he’d seduced her with his quiet confidence. More likely, the feeling that Zack Adriano was a man who got what he wanted had lured her into a rare tranquillity. Beneath the sheltering limbs of the tree, she allowed herself to relax.