I’m not waiting for the next exit. I flip on my hazards and pull over to the shoulder, moving all the way over to the edge of the gravel so I won’t get hit by any cars racing down the interstate. “Okay, I’m on the side of the road. Tell me what’s going on. What happened to Harper?” I already know it’s her. He wouldn’t be acting like this otherwise.
“I got a call from the school about an hour ago, and they want me to meet them down at the hospital with Harper and the school nurse. She—”
“What happened? Did she fall? How bad is she hurt?” It wouldn’t be the first time she tumbled on the playground or broke a bone there. I’m always telling the recess aides that they need to keep a better eye on her. She doesn’t need one-to-one care in the classroom, but she probably needs it there. She’ll climb anything. She doesn’t care how tall it is or how dangerous. Her lack of fear and her insensitivity to pain are a terrible combination.
“It’s not that.” He takes a deep breath. Lets it out slowly. “I want you to brace yourself, because you’re not going to like what I’m about to say, okay?”
“Dad, what is it? Just tell me!” I don’t mean to yell, but I can’t help it. I can’t stand how he’s stalling.
“I hate being the one who has to tell you this, so don’t shoot the messenger, but according to the social worker, someone witnessed an altercation between you and Harper in the Walmart parking lot that alarmed them enough to come forward and say something about it. According to the report they filed with family services, Harper was screaming for help and for you to let go of her.” His voice loses steam as he talks and grows even slower, like he has to force the words out because he doesn’t want to say them, but he has no choice. “They said you twisted her arm and she kept screaming that you were hurting her, but you refused to let go.”
A cold stone settles in the pit of my stomach. My mouth instantly dry. I’ve only had one incident in the Walmart parking lot like that.
She wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
Except I just spent three hours listening to her own daughter explain that she thought she killed her father, so I’m pretty sure she did. Just like I’m sure she’ll hurt anyone who stands in the way of her plans or slights her in any real or imagined way.
“How’s Harper?” I shove those thoughts down. They’ll only make me furious, and I need to think straight.
“I haven’t been able to talk to her yet, but Kelly was there, and we spoke on the phone a few minutes ago. She went with her from the school and hasn’t left her side so that Harper will feel comfortable, which is really sweet of her to do. It sounds like she pitched it to her like they were going on a weird, unexpected trip to the doctor’s office.” He can’t help but laugh. Harper loves the doctor’s office. She’s obsessed with muscles and tissues. We’re hoping she goes to medical school, and she seems pretty on board with it, too, so she was probably giddy at the idea of going to the doctor’s office with her assistant teacher, Kelly.
Relief floods my body for Kelly. She’s been the assistant teacher in Harper’s classrooms for two years, and she knows her as well as we do. She has this amazing way of talking to her and easing her anxiety that nobody else does. They speak in weird math formulas that I don’t understand at all, but it works for them. She’s probably doing a better job with her down at Memorial than I would be.
“What happens now?” I ask like I don’t already know every step of the process.
“They’re waiting to have her examined by the doctor. Once that’s happened, there’s going to be a formal interview. She—”
“Will you—”
“Yes, I’m going to be there for that. Every second,” he assures me. “Once they’ve done all that, then they’ll release her to me until they decide whether or not to open up a formal investigation. The social worker said it will probably only be two or three days until they make their decision. I know it’s not ideal, Casey, but at least she’ll be with me, and it won’t be long until she’s back home with you. We’ve just got to get through this one step at a time. She’s going to be okay.”
“Yeah, but she’s never slept over at your house.” She’s never slept anywhere besides home. Harper has a thing with beds. A big thing. She’ll only sleep in her own bed. Anything beyond day trips is impossible.
“She’s nine, and we’ve been saying since her birthday that it was time to start trying to teach her how to do it again. Well, it looks like now is the perfect time.”
“But I’m not going to be there, and you know how she gets.”
It won’t be the first time we’ve tried getting her to sleep somewhere else. We’ve been working at it since she was a toddler. I can’t count the number of times we’ve taken her out of town thinking that if she had something fun and exciting to look forward to in the morning, she’d go to sleep. It was the same result every time—she cried all through the night, and nobody slept. Our last attempt was at the Nashville Adventure Science Center. None of us got an ounce of sleep, and we were zombies the next day. We even tried just getting her to sleep in the guest bedroom at our house once, and she went ballistic, ended up biting her wrist.
“It’s okay, Casey. I’ve got this. I’ve got her,” Dad reassures me.
“I know you do. I just hate when she’s upset and I’m not there to help her through it.” I move my shoulders, trying to let some of the nervous tension out. “I just don’t understand how this is possible. How can a random person from Walmart make a report that they saw something happen, and they automatically yank my kid away from me?”
But as soon as the words are out of my mouth, the realization smacks me in the face again that they just did the same thing with Mason.
Mason.
And Genevieve. I can’t believe she did this.