Her eyes flashed with anger. “Your daddy ain’t no chicken.”
“No, but he taught me a very hard lesson about how your choices have consequences.” Charlie could see that the girl still wasn’t getting it. “My father made some decisions as far as how he was going to be a lawyer that had a lot of negative ramifications for his family.” She didn’t know how to be any clearer. “Our house was burned down.”
Flora looked surprised. She had grown up in Pikeville, so she obviously knew about the shooting. The fact that the house had been firebombed just over a week prior tended to get overshadowed by the cold-blooded murder.
Charlie said, “Someone threw a Molotov cocktail through the front window of our house.”
“What’s a Molotov cocktail?”
“In our case, it was a glass bottle of gasoline with a rag hanging out of it.”
Flora looked confused. “It just exploded when it hit the house?”
“No, they lit the rag on fire before they threw the bottle through the front window. The bottle broke, the gas spread everywhere, the burning rag ignited the gasoline and by the time the fire department showed up, the house was nothing but a smoldering black pit.”
“Holy crap.” Flora did not look as horrified as Charlie had expected. “Like in Endless Love.”
“No, nothing like Endless Love. More like endless hell.” She had forgotten what it was like to be Flora’s age. Everything was either tragic or romantic. Charlie said, “Fortunately, we weren’t home. The fire spread so fast that the house was gone in less than ten minutes.”
Flora pressed together her lips. “I’m real sorry that happened to you, Miss Quinn. That sounds hard.”
Not as hard as what had happened eight days later. “Flora, I feel for you, and I want to help you, but the decisions I make as a lawyer, how I defend my clients, what lines I’m willing or not willing to cross, can have far-reaching ramifications. My family depends on me. Especially now.” Charlie looked down. Without thinking, she had pressed her palm flat to her stomach. “There’s more going on with me than you know about.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Quinn. Is there anything I can do?”
Charlie’s heart broke at the girl’s persistent eagerness to help. “Thank you, but you and I are not out of options. I’m not going to make any promises, but if you’re willing to speak up, I’m certain I can work with a judge to appoint a new executor to your trust. Your Meemaw and Paw are gaming the system, and we can put a stop to that. It won’t return the money that’s been lost, but it will stop the bleeding.”
“You’d have to tell the judge why, though.” Flora had immediately spotted the problem with the strategy. “I can’t do that, Miss Quinn. I’d have to expose them to the law, and then they’d go to prison, and then I’d be put in a home. I’d be better off paying Mark and Jo.”
Charlie wasn’t so sure the Pattersons would welcome Flora without her money. “That doesn’t seem like a good option.”
Flora said, “If I don’t live with them, then where do I go? To a home?” She shook her head vehemently. “There’s some kids at school in foster care. They show up with their heads knocked sideways, lice in their hair, half starved, and sometimes worse. I’d be better off staying at home, losing all my money, than having to sleep with a knife under my pillow every night. If I even get a pillow.”
Charlie could not argue the point. Being lost in the Pikeville foster system was tantamount to being lost in a black hole. Things could be especially bad for teenagers like Flora. There were already hundreds of older kids warehoused in substandard living conditions all over the county because no one else was willing or able to take them in.
Still, she told Flora, “We can take this one step at a time. I can talk to—”
Flora said nothing, but two tears rolled down her cheeks.
“It’s not a lost cause,” Charlie tried, but if she wasn’t willing to go after her grandparents for fraud, there weren’t many remaining options. “It’s only two more years. Maybe I could talk to them, and explain—”
“No.” The tears were coming in earnest now. “It’s okay, Miss Quinn. I put up with it this long. I can take it for a couple’a more years.”
Charlie felt like she had swallowed a rock. As usual, there was something she was missing. She was used to being lied to; helping criminals was not its own reward. But Charlie had lived with the distinct feeling all day that there was an important detail, or perhaps many details, that Flora was holding back.
She asked the girl point-blank. “What do you mean? You can take what for two more years?”
Flora wiped her eyes. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Flora.” Charlie stood in front of her. She gripped the girl’s narrow shoulders. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s nothing.” She shook her head so hard that her tears flew from her eyes.
“Flora—”
She sniffed. She kept her gaze on the floor. “Do you remember with your mama, the way you’d have a really bad day, or something awful would happen, or you would just be really sad, and you’d put your head in her lap and she’d stroke your hair and everything, no matter how bad it was, just got better?”
Charlie could not swallow past the lump in her throat.
“You just kind of feel it in your body, every muscle letting go, because you know that when you got your head in her lap, you’re safe.” Flora wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “Aint’ nobody can do that for you except your mama, you know?”
Charlie could only nod.
“I miss that so much sometimes. More than her smell. More than her singing. Just that feeling of being safe.”
“I know.” Charlie also knew if she followed the girl down that sad, lonely road, she would end up sobbing on the floor.
She stroked back Flora’s hair. “Baby, tell me what’s really going on between you and your grandparents.”
“I’m okay.”
“You’re clearly not okay.” Charlie smoothed back another strand of hair. Flora’s skin felt hot. Her face was red and splotchy. “Tell me what’s going on.” She waited, but Flora said nothing. Charlie asked the same question she had asked this morning, the same question that had troubled her from that moment on. “Is Paw hurting you, Flora?”
Her throat worked. She looked away.
“Flora, I can help you, but—”
“It’s Meemaw.” Flora blinked, trying to clear her eyes. “It’s nothing I can’t take.”
Charlie was momentarily too stunned to speak. Never in a million years had she suspected Maude of abusing her granddaughter.
She finally asked Flora, “What’s she doing to you?”
Flora’s throat worked again. She was clearly reluctant, but she eventually gave in. She untucked her shirt and rolled up the hem. She pulled down the waist of her jeans. There was a black bruise on her hip, roughly the shape of a small fist.
Charlie wanted to put her hand over the bruise and somehow magically absorb the pain into her own body. Instead, she asked, “Maude did this to you?”