by Nina Monroe
It will be good for the community to hear from their spiritual leader … the reporter’s words come back to her. Your voice is important to people at times like this.
A young woman. Big, open blue eyes. An empathetic smile. A chain with a small cross around her neck. Avery had trusted her.
Avery looks around the store at the people from her congregation, people she knows so well, who’ve supported her and confided in her—people she’s come to see as part of her family. None of them will meet her eye.
She pushes the newspaper into her bag and walks across the general store and out down the front steps, and then breaks into a run. And she keeps running, past the church, through the cemetery, with the beautiful flowers Hillary planted, and then deep into the woods.
Interview Special: Reverend Avery Cotton, Middlebrook
Minister
The Dark Side of Fostering
By Fern Spencer
Rev Avery, as she’s fondly known to the Middlebrook community, is as wholesome as apple pie. Rosy cheeks. Sparkling eyes. A ready smile. A popular, loveable local with a liberal theology. Rumors have it that her appointment to St. Mary’s caused quite a stir—but not for long. As a local says of her: “The minute you meet Rev Avery, you’re smitten. You kind of feel lucky just for bumping into her.”
Which is what her latest two foster kids must have felt when they were dropped off on her doorstep by their social worker at the beginning of the summer: lucky. Because, until Sunday afternoon, you’d have believed that there couldn’t have been a better foster parent for those kids than Reverend Avery Cotton.
Born in Roxbury, to a mother with a heroin habit and a long line of abusive boyfriends, the thirteen- and eleven-year-old siblings must, indeed, have seen a great deal in their short lives. Rev Avery confided in me that, not long before their mother was sentenced to jail on a drug trafficking charge, the girl, then nine, took a .38 caliber (the same type of pistol used to shoot the young victim at the party on Sunday) from one of her mother’s particularly unpleasant boyfriends and threatened to shoot him if he didn’t leave their mother alone. That was the first time the siblings were taken into foster care.
So, yes, these new members of the Middlebrook Community must have felt that their lottery ticket came up when they landed on Rev Avery’s doorstep.
As we sat outside the church in the fall sunshine, she pointed out the basketball hoop she had put up on the back wall of the rectory to encourage one of her foster kid’s passions. She went on to explain how she’d bought a set of paints for the girl’s brother to encourage his love of art. “I wanted to show them that they belong here, and that they’re loved and appreciated for who they are,” she told me.
She promised to give them a good life. There was talk of adoption. And it was going so well. Until the party.
“Rev Avery would have known that there would be guns around,” says Tracy, who had turned down the invitation to the party. “Priscilla warned us that it wasn’t safe to go up to Woodwind Stables, not with our kids.”
But Reverend Avery went all the same.
And now, these two kids from Roxbury, already scarred by a childhood filled with violence and neglect, find themselves at the heart of a criminal investigation.
There’s still disagreement as to where the older boy was at the time of the shooting, but locals confirm that there had been an upset between him and the victim of the shooting earlier in the summer. As for the boy’s sister, as we know, she’s no stranger to handguns.
“Is there not a risk in bringing vulnerable children into a community like Middlebrook?” I asked Reverend Cotton.
She was quick to defend her actions: “It’s precisely children like this who need to experience communities like ours—kind, warm-hearted, welcoming places where kids get to be kids and where everyone looks out for everyone else. They need to see that the world can be different. It’s healing—”
“But it didn’t work, did it?” I said, interrupting her. “They wound up in trouble—again.”
“Bad things can happen anywhere,” Reverend Avery was quick to answer. “And we have to work through them. That’s life. And we’re going to work through this together.”
It’s obvious that Reverend Avery is an optimist. Perhaps too much so for her own good.
Before we parted, I asked her one last question. The question that everyone’s been asking, in one form or another, since the shooting on Sunday.
“Could your foster kids have fired the gun?”
She remained silent for a long time, looking up into the branches of the tree under which we sat, as if in prayer. And then she said, “I don’t know.”
“But you believe that you know these children—and what they’re capable of?” I replied.
She paused again. Even longer this time. And then she said, “Do we ever really know anyone else? I mean, truly? Completely? Human beings are mysteries. And most of us are capable of doing bad things. But we have to believe in the essential goodness of children, don’t you think? Otherwise, what hope is there?”
Sunday’s shooting has left the local community reeling and at times like this, a community turns to its minister for guidance. But when that minister may herself be implicated in that shooting, what happens to a town like Middlebrook?
All this raises questions, not only about gun control but also about who should be allowed to foster and whether there should be tighter monitoring of foster parents.
The investigation continues.
CHAPTER
24
12.30 p.m.
LILY WATCHES BRYAR standing outside the cafeteria, gripping his lunchbox. Everyone’s staring at him and whispering, like they’ve been doing all morning.
He’s frozen to the spot—which is making him even more of a target.
She takes his clammy hand. “Come on,” she whispers, “let’s go outside.”
He doesn’t move.
“Bryar—we need to go.”
She pulls at him. At last, he starts to shift.
When they get outside, she guides him to a tall birch tree in the corner of the school yard. It’s been raining all morning; the trees are dripping. But Lily and Bryar don’t mind. It means the other kids are less likely to come outside.
Lily thinks about being back in London in a school where she had a best friend she’d known since she was three. If anyone had stared at Lily like they’ve been staring today, Amanda would have marched up to them and told them to stop.
But Amanda isn’t here.
Lily’s on her own. And she has to take care of Bryar. In the playground this morning he seemed okay but he’s got worse through the morning. She’s worried he’s going to shut down altogether. So, she has to be the strong one. And she doesn’t feel strong, not one bit.
She looks at Bryar’s lunchbox. “You should eat something,” she says.
He just stares, not moving. Then, in a really quiet voice, he says, “You don’t have to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Hang out with me.”
It had crossed her mind a few times—how not hanging around with Bryar would make things easier for her. How the other kids wouldn’t stare as much. How maybe she’d be able to make new friends. But then she felt guilty. Bryar had it much worse. Everyone blames him for what happened. Being there for him was the least she could do. And he was her friend. If there was one thing Amanda had taught her, it was that friends don’t let each other down—no matter how bad things get.
“I like hanging out with you,” she says.
“Even after what happened?”
“We’re in this together, Bryar.”
“But …” His voice trails off.
It’s been playing over and over in her head, those few seconds before the grown-ups came rushing in, just before Astrid lost consciousness. They’d sworn that they wouldn’t say anything. And it had felt right—or it had, then. Anyway, it was too late to back out of it now.
“But nothing.” Sh
e takes his hand and threads her fingers through his. “Like I said, we’re in this together.”
* * *
Cal sits outside with his back pressed into the wall of the main school building with his sister, Abi. They’d both been to enough schools to know that cafeterias are the worst kind of hell for kids like them. It’s like other kids can smell it on them: that they don’t belong.
“How was this morning?” Cal asks Abi.
She shrugs and looks down at her feet.
Ever since Sunday, she’s gone into herself again. She won’t talk, not even to him.
Cal looks over at the school gates.
He wonders how long it would take to walk into town, to the church, through the woods, to the cabin where Skye lives. He needs to tell her that he’s sorry for asking her to go out of the stable with him. But that he’s not sorry they kissed. And that he’ll do anything he can to make things better again.
When he saw Skye being taken into the Child Advocacy Center for a police interview yesterday afternoon, he’d tried to catch her eye, to make sure she was okay, but she’d looked away. He was worried that she blamed him for her little brother getting hurt. Just like he blamed himself for not having been there to protect Abi. They were the oldest kids at the party. They should have known better than to leave the younger kids on their own.
But whatever Skye’s thinking, he has to find a way to talk to her.
To set things straight.
And to let her know he can’t bear not seeing her again.
Because in the entire thirteen messed-up years of his life, he’s never met anyone like her. Someone who makes him feel like maybe he’s worth something. Like if he sticks it out, if he tries to be good and make a go of things, life could be okay, after all.
That’s why he’d brushed away Astrid Carver earlier in the summer. He didn’t want anyone like her to spoil things for him.
“Abi—Cal!”
It takes him a second to work out where the voice is coming from.
The English girl, Lily, is standing on a mound of earth on the far side of the playground, waving. Bryar, the boy whose party it was, is sitting beside her.
“Over here!” Lily says.
Abi and Cal look over at them and he knows they’re both thinking the same thing: Stay away.
Because wasn’t that what they did whenever something bad happened in Roxbury? Heads down. Mouths shut. Stay away from the kids who could bring them down.
But these kids felt different from the kids back home.
Just like Skye felt different from any girl Cal had ever met.
And, deep down, Cal and Abi feel something else too: that if anyone should be avoiding anyone else right now, those two kids sitting under the tree should be avoiding them, not the other way around. Because didn’t everyone here know that Cal and Abi were the foster kids whose mom was in prison? The kids who’d grown up with guns. The kids who brought trouble with them wherever they went.
Cal looks over at Abi. Ever since Sunday, he keeps getting flashbacks of that night two years ago when she got hold of Mike’s handgun. It had looked so big in her nine-year-old hands but she’d held it steady, like she knew what to do with it, even though no one had ever shown her, not properly. Mom was sleeping. Her boyfriend, Mike, was sitting on the sofa smoking and drinking beer. He’d had a fight with Mom. Pushed her so hard against the kitchen counter that she fell and cut her head open on the side of the dishwasher.
When Cal had heard Abi arguing with someone, he’d stumbled out of his bedroom.
I want you to leave! Abi was yelling, waving the gun around.
And, before Cal could grab the gun from her, it went off. Hit Mike right in the leg.
Cal had blamed himself for not watching Abi more closely. She should never have gotten hold of that gun. And he blames himself now, for leaving her on her own in the stable on Sunday afternoon.
When Abi gets angry, she loses control. When he and Skye got back into the stable, he’d seen it in Abi’s eyes: how wound up she was by Astrid.
He has to find a way to protect her. To take the attention of the investigation away from her. From both of them.
The English girl waves them over again.
Cal knows that if they’re going to get through this, they have to stick together.
“Come on,” he says to Abi.
And before she has time to object, he grabs her hand and they walk over to Lily and Bryar.
* * *
The Sayed twins look over at Bryar, Lily, and the foster kids having lunch together. They feel it: the thread that ties them together. How, ever since the gun went off in the stable on Sunday afternoon, and in the moments that followed, when everything was so quiet, when they looked each other in the eye and then nodded, slowly, agreeing that there was only one way they were going to get through this: by keeping quiet. And by sticking together no matter what.
They were part of them now, those other children.
Behind them, they can see the top of the minaret above the trees. Dad had explained that he wanted it to be so big that everyone would see it from miles around.
Standing out. Making everyone see that they’re different. Ever since they left Lahore, that’s been Dad’s focus. He doesn’t understand that they just want to fit in with the other kids: to wear the same clothes and play the same games and mess around—even if that means getting in trouble. Even if that means doing something really bad. That’s why they’d been so excited when Mom agreed to take them to the party. And it’s why they’d gone into the stable. And joined in with the game. For the first time in their lives, they felt part of something bigger than just the two of them. And they liked it.
All morning, they had to sit in that room outside Mrs. Markham’s office, filling out worksheets rather than being in a classroom with the other sixth graders. Because Dad didn’t want them to mix with the other kids.
He thinks it’s the other kids’ fault, what happened on Sunday.
Because he’d never for a second believe that Hanif or Laila could have done anything wrong.
Lily spots them and waves them over.
The twins wave back and, as they walk over to the yellow birch tree where the other kids are sitting, they have the same thought: Dad’s not here. He’ll never know who they had lunch with. Just like he’ll never know what really happened in the stable on Sunday afternoon.
CHAPTER
25
3.30 p.m.
AVERY WAITS FOR them on the bench outside the church, clutching the newspaper. She didn’t dare go to the school gates—all those parents staring and whispering about how she could have done this to the children put in her care. So, she’s waiting for them here, praying that they haven’t seen the article yet.
And she’s ignoring Bill’s calls. He would have seen the article, obviously. But she wants to talk things through with Cal and Abi before their social worker gets involved.
For God’s sake don’t talk to the press. That was one of the first things Bill had said to her when they talked on the phone on Sunday night.
And she hadn’t meant to. But then she’d bumped into that young woman, just outside St. Mary’s, and they’d sat under the tree, talking so easily. The reporter said she wanted to present what had happened in a more nuanced way than the other reporters. That her article would help the community.
Naïve. Stupid and naïve. That’s what I am, Avery tells herself.
When Abi and Cal spot her, they shoot each other a look. It’s the look they used to give each other all the time when they first got to Middlebrook. A look that said: Don’t trust her. Don’t trust anyone. Keep your distance. It had taken them two months to let her give them a hug before turning off the light at bedtime.
Did they blame her for taking them to the party on Sunday?
Was that reporter right when she said it was her fault for putting them in a vulnerable position?
She stands up and walks toward them.
They look at each
other again.
“We need to have a chat,” she says.
Their bodies tense up.
“It’s okay—you haven’t done anything wrong.” She swallows hard. “It’s actually me—I’ve done something I need to tell you about.”
Cal’s brow furrows.
She has to tell them before they find out from someone else.
* * *
While she explains about the article, Cal and Abi stay really quiet. They don’t touch the cookies she made for them.
“Can we read it?” Cal says, looking at the newspaper sitting on the kitchen table.
Avery’s throat goes dry. She nods. “Sure.”
She watches Cal’s eyes scanning the reporter’s words. Abi doesn’t even bother to look.
“The reporter left so much out,” Avery tries to explain. “She only used some of what I said—the bits that weren’t important. And then she twisted things and put them out of context …”
When Cal’s finished reading, he looks up and says, “What about the bit where you said you thought we could have shot Astrid. Did you mean that?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He points down at the newspaper. “You said that most people are capable of doing bad things. So that includes us, right?”
“I was making a bigger point—about everyone—”
“But you didn’t tell the reporter that you believe we didn’t do it.”
“I wasn’t blaming you, Cal—”
But he doesn’t hear her.
“And what about the bit where you said you don’t know us? That we’re …” He looks back down. “A mystery?”
“Everyone’s a mystery, Cal. You, me, Abi. Everyone. It takes a lifetime for people to really get to know each other—and even then …” She pauses, knowing that her words are coming out wrong. “Look, I just wanted the reporter to understand that people are complicated.”
She realizes how stupid she’s been. How the words of her theology books, of the sermons she writes, are a world away from the words used by reporters. She may as well have been speaking to Fern Spencer in a different language.
