Christy-Lynn averted her gaze, wishing Rhetta would reappear so she could leave before things got any more awkward than they already were. In light of Rhetta’s revelations, she didn’t trust herself to hold her tongue.
Iris had been playing with her shovel in the dirt. She looked up, shrinking visibly as her uncle moved past without so much as a glance in her direction. The cousins came next, swarming across the yard. Iris ducked as the oldest, a boy with stained jeans and greasy blond hair, stepped over her as if she were a puppy.
Ray stared up at Christy-Lynn from the bottom step of the porch, a slight man with sharp shoulders and long, stringy limbs. Beside him, Ellen Rawlings ran her gaze over Christy-Lynn in one long, dismissive pass.
“Afternoon,” Ray said coolly. “You here to see Rhetta?”
Before Christy-Lynn could respond, Rhetta reappeared, her purse in one hand and a plate of cling-film-covered muffins in the other. She handed the purse over, her eyes full of apology.
“This is Mrs. Ludlow, Ray. We’ve just been chatting about your sister—and your niece.”
Ray snorted, a blend of disgust and dismissal. He closed one eye, as if drawing a bead on Christy-Lynn. “That so? You come all the way from Maine to talk about my sister?”
“I live in Virginia now, and I’m here—”
“I know why you’re here,” he shot back. “And I’ll tell you the same thing I told the police when they came sniffing around. I see my family’s name in the papers, I’ll sue everyone from here to kingdom come. We’re good, decent people, Mrs. Ludlow, just trying to raise our kids and live our lives. Your beef was with my sister, and since she’s dead, I’d say you’re all done here.”
Christy-Lynn lifted her chin, meeting his gaze squarely. She would probably have disliked Ray Rawlings on sight, but knowing he was capable of turning his back on a child cemented her revulsion. “You mentioned raising your kids. Does that include Iris?”
“She’s not my kid.”
“She’s your flesh and blood, a part of your family.”
“She’s an abomination is what she is. Born in sin, and no part of my family.”
Christy-Lynn stared back at him, dumbfounded. “So that’s it? You’d let your own niece end up in foster care because of something her parents did?” She knew she was overstepping her bounds but couldn’t seem to help herself. It was impossible to look at Iris and not see herself. She might have been sixteen when she entered the foster care system instead of three, but that was just math.
“The wages of sin, Mrs. Ludlow. Right there in the good book. The Lord shall visit the inequities of the father on the children.”
“Praise His name,” Ellen murmured coldly as she pushed past Christy-Lynn and disappeared inside the house with her casserole dish.
Rhetta glared at her grandson. “For God’s sake, Ray, the child’s right there. And Mrs. Ludlow is company.”
Ray shrugged. “Not my company.”
As if sensing she’d become the topic of conversation, Iris dropped her shovel and raised her eyes to Christy-Lynn. Christy-Lynn looked away quickly, tormented by the silent plea in the child’s violet gaze.
“I need to get back,” she told Rhetta. “Thank you for the coffee and . . . everything. I came for answers, and now I have them—or as close as I’ll ever get. That couldn’t have been easy for you.”
Rhetta nodded, her eyes suddenly awash with tears. “It’s only what you deserved, though I’m not sure I’ve done you any favors with the truth.”
Christy-Lynn wasn’t sure either but reached for Rhetta’s hand just the same, giving it a squeeze before she turned to descend the steps. Ray made no move to get out of her way, forcing her to sidle past. She was heading for the driveway when she heard footsteps behind her. Before she knew what was happening, Iris had launched herself full force, arms locked tight around her knees, clinging like a limpet.
Rhetta scurried down the steps after her. “I’m sorry,” she said uncomfortably. “She doesn’t like it when people leave. She never knows who’s coming back and who’s not.”
Christy-Lynn nodded, an ache suddenly clawing at her throat. What kind of future would this child ever have? With a caregiver in decline and an uncle who wanted nothing to do with her. One day Rhetta would fall ill, or worse, and the county would come for her. A woman with sensible shoes and a vague, practiced smile. And Iris would disappear, swallowed up by a system too flawed to protect her. It was too terrible to contemplate. But as Christy-Lynn backed out of Rhetta’s driveway, it was all she could contemplate.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Goose Creek, South Carolina
June 27, 1998
Christy-Lynn turns off the water and steps from the shower. Her reflection stares back at her from the steam-mottled mirror, dripping wet and unnaturally still. Her eyes are enormous in her face, great pools of bewilderment.
It’s been eight weeks.
Eight weeks since Charlene Parker was arrested. Eight weeks since the caseworker drove her back to the apartment she shared with her mother and told her to pack her things. Eight weeks since she had been shuffled off to a suitable foster home.
It isn’t a bad place, a two-story colonial out in the cookie-cutter suburbs, the kind of house she always wanted to go home to after school. The furniture is new, the phone works, and there’s plenty of food in the fridge. But it isn’t home. At least it’s not her home.
They call it a receiving home, a temporary place to stick new kids until they decide where to park them long term. The people who run the receiving home, Jean and Dennis Hawley, like to brag that they specialize in teens, but Christy-Lynn isn’t so sure.
There are two others kids living with the Hawleys now. There were three until last week, when the girl who shared Christy-Lynn’s room—a thirteen-year-old named Dana whose entire left arm was crisscrossed with a web of fine white scars—got hold of a razor blade and nearly bled out on the bathroom floor.
Christy-Lynn had watched from her bedroom window as they loaded the girl onto a stretcher and then into an ambulance, siren screaming as the flashing red lights sped away into the darkness. Even if she lived, she wouldn’t be coming back. Not to this house.
Down the hall there are two other residents, a pair of brothers, Terry and Todd Blevins, whose parents died when their trailer exploded while they were cooking up a batch of meth. They’re the thickset, sullen sort—mouth breathers, Dana called them—and Christy-Lynn is careful to give them a wide berth. She doesn’t like the way the oldest brother’s eyes follow her, lingering just a little too long for comfort.
The one thing they have in common is that none of them have any hope of finding a forever family. Forever family. It’s the stomach-turning term some caseworkers use for adoption, as if they’re corgis or cocker spaniels instead of human beings. Kids who end up in foster care already have two strikes against them, but toss in the potential for alcohol, drugs, and unwanted pregnancy, and a teen’s pretty much guaranteed to remain in the system until the clock runs out, and they’re finally kicked loose on their eighteenth birthday, often without a job or a cent to their name.
Not that Christy-Lynn wants a forever family. It’s too late for that. She only wants to be left alone, to finish school, then find a way to get into college so she can get a decent job and never have to depend on anyone but herself. But she’s in a holding pattern now, caught in a bureaucratic limbo where every kid is treated the same—a mouth to feed, a soul to save, a government check to collect.
But it’s how things are. Nothing to do but wait and wonder while her mother serves her time. Her lawyer—the one the court appointed—was saying three years, maybe eighteen months with time off for good behavior. And then what? Would she keep her promise when she got out? Or would it just be a repeat of the same old nightmare, like the movie Groundhog Day where Bill Murray wakes up every morning to the same old hell?
The thought of going back to that life sends a chill through her. Not that she’ll have much choice if it comes to that. Eighteen months from now, she’ll still be a minor. They’ll make her go back to her mother, and that will be that.