He bangs his hands together in baby sign language, telling me he wants more before tugging at his ear.
I set my green juice down and start stacking the bowls even higher. This distracts him for about thirty seconds before he starts fussing and crawls onto my lap. Just like the last couple of days, his fusses turn into cries. Nothing makes me feel more hopeless than when he’s sick and I can’t fix it.
I’m about to give him ibuprofen when the doorbell rings.
“Shh, it’s okay, baby. Hang on and mama will get you something.”
The ringer is impatient. I shift him in my arms and hurry on my bare feet, still in my black sheath dress from the funeral. It’s odd that security didn’t call from the gates.
Too focused on Griff, I don’t bother to look out the sidelight and come to a standstill after I swing the door open at the sight in front of me.
Standing there are two uniformed police officers, one male and one female, with another woman in a floral dress, an ID hanging around her neck and clutching a set of files.
What the hell?
“Can I help you?” I ask over my crying son.
With full authority, the woman in the dress asks, “Twitchell Grace Ketteman?”
My jaw hardens the way it always does when I hear the horrid family name my crazy-ass parents hexed me with at birth. We were all given surnames—Cam, my oldest brother is named after my maternal grandparents, Campbell. Jen got a decent one, Jensen, after our grandmother on our dad’s side.
But no—not me.
I got Twitchell and I fucking hate it. Who names a girl Twitchell?
It was some family name buried deep on my father’s side. At least they had the decency to call me Ellie since the day I took my first breath in the world.
“Twitchell Ketteman?” the female officer repeats since I haven’t answered and it’s not lost on me the woman in the dress won’t take her eyes off Griffin.
“Yes, but call me Ellie. Can I help you? I really don’t have time for whatever this is, my son isn’t feeling well.”
The woman in the dress with the short brown hair who’s wearing interesting tortoise-shell framed glasses introduces herself right before she blows my mind. “It’s nice to meet you, Ellie. My name is Paula Watson and I’m with Child Protective Services. We’re here,” she tips her head to the uniformed officers, “because an investigation has been opened on you for child neglect.”
I had no idea today could get any worse after saying goodbye to Faye, seeing Trig for the first time in a decade, and Griffin not responding to the meds for his ear infection. But as I stand here in the double doorway of the house I’ve come to loathe, I cannot believe my ears.
If I weren’t holding my son, I might fall to the ground and give up on life.
Veils: A Killers Novel, Book 4 Page 31