by Lisa Gardner
“Roxy was an outsider. A loner,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Meaning she had that stress.”
“Yes.”
“And no friends at all to help her?”
Tricia hesitated. “There’s a boy. Right now, that’s the only person I can picture her with. Another loner type, to tell you the truth. Sometimes, you’d see them sitting together in the commons area.”
“Is he her boyfriend?”
“I don’t know.”
“His name?”
“Mike. Mike Davis. He’s, um, a bit different. But he and Roxy seem to get along. Frankly, I was grateful to see them together. He is another student for whom school life can be pretty rough.”
“Do you have his address?”
“Yes. But I’m not going to give it to you.”
I stilled, looked at the guidance counselor.
“Flora Dane,” she said quietly. “It took me a bit. When you first appeared, I had that sense of déjà vu. It’s because I’ve seen you on TV. You helped rescue the college student last fall.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t live next to Roxy.”
“I care about the dogs,” I offered, because I had to say something.
“Why are you really here?”
“I know Roxy. She’s part of a . . . support group I belong to. We’re worried about her.”
“A support group?”
I didn’t offer any more details. After another moment, the guidance counselor nodded slightly. “What happened to Roxy’s family?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“But you don’t think she did it?”
“I think she’s in trouble. Have you noticed any changes in the past few weeks? Is she late more often? Stressed, missing homework assignments, mentioned anything to anyone?”
“No. But it’s a very large school. I can go days without seeing a student. Unless something specific happens that’s brought to my attention . . .”
I nodded.
“I can’t give you a student’s information,” the counselor said at last. “But if you want to give me your cell, I can ask Roxy’s friend to call you.”
“Fair enough.”
“The dogs really have been found?”
“Yes. And they really do need someplace to stay.”
“All right. I can work on that, too.”
I rose to standing. “Thank you.”
At the last minute, as Tricia opened the door, she hesitated. “Remember what I was saying about this group of Hispanic girls trying to recruit Roxy?”
I nodded.
“I’m told Roxy’s younger sister, Lola, is more than just a little involved in the gang. I don’t know if you’ve ever met Lola, but she’s very pretty. Dangerously so, for a thirteen-year-old girl.”
I waited.
“She’s also, from what I’ve been told, very aware of her own looks.”
“Manipulative,” I filled in.
“I don’t think she joined the group just to hang out. From what I’ve heard and seen, Roxy is the responsible member of her family, while where her younger sister goes, trouble usually follows.”
“Are we talking drugs, violence?”
“I’m not sure. But a bunch of rabid teen girls? Anything’s possible.”
Chapter 12
Name: Roxanna Baez
Grade: 11
Teacher: Mrs. Chula
Category: Personal Narrative
What Is the Perfect Family? Part II
My little sister and I stand in the ratty living room. The pinch-faced lady is with us. She has a tight grip on my shoulder, as if she thinks I’ll bolt any minute. On the other side of me, Lola is wedged up so close I can feel her trembling.
Manny is gone. I can’t think about it. Lola won’t stop crying. The police took him out the door, and there was another lady. No purple blouse, but a white shirt and the same firm/sorry expression. We’d never even seen her pull up. Somehow, they’d outflanked us. I feel betrayed, but I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m just disappointed in myself, because for all my hard work, I didn’t see this coming.
Pack, the pinch-faced lady told us. Pack what? Lola stared at me, so I pulled her away. We had our school backpacks; that was it. I took ours down from the hooks, refusing to look at Manny’s red Iron Man bag. He hadn’t even been allowed clothes. Or his favorite car. Why hadn’t he been allowed to take anything?
My pack is powder blue. It fit me when I was eight. Now, it’s tight in the shoulders, but still gets the job done. Lola has a hot-pink backpack. Newer. Manny’s dad, Hector, bought it for her before he left. He was always nice to Lola and me. He stayed with our mom for five years, which was five more years than we had with our own fathers.
Clothes. Laundry money ran out weeks ago. I’d been washing underwear and socks in the sink. They were still damp, draped over radiators, windowsills, anything I could find. Wordlessly, I handed Lola hers, then took mine. Lola had a stuffed blue dog. I found our toothbrushes.
At the last minute, I spotted a sock. Little, black. One of Manny’s, stuck beneath a closet door. I picked it up. It smelled of sweaty toddler feet. I stuck it in the front pocket of my backpack.
Then we left.
And now we’re here.
The foster woman is huge, nearly as wide as she is tall, with a double, double chin. A quadruple chin? She wears a blue housecoat, and her hair is a mass of black and gray Brillo around her rotund face. Standing behind her are four kids. Three boys, one girl. They all stare at me. Then, as one, they turn their attention to Lola.
The tallest boy smirks. He nudges the older girl, a blonde, in a way I don’t like. Beside them, a shorter, skinny boy is rocking and bouncing on his feet. He won’t meet my gaze, just jangles away.
“This is Roxanna,” the pinch-faced lady introduces, shaking my shoulder, “who is eleven. And her younger sister, Lola, who’s eight.”
“Call me Mother Del,” the massive woman instructs.
Lola and I nod slowly. The big lady holds out a hand. We shake it.
“This is Roberto.” She pulls the largest boy forward. “Thirteen. Anya, twelve. Sam, ten. And this one—” She pokes the skinny, bouncy boy. “He’s eleven, same age as you, Roxanna. We call him Mike.”
His gaze pops up, meets mine for a brief second. His body stills. Then his gaze slides away, and his bouncing resumes.
“We don’t have many girls, as you can tell. Roxanna—”
“Roxy.”
“Roxy, you can sleep on a cot in Anya’s room. Lola, being one of the younger ones, we’ll put you in with the babies.”
There are babies in this house?
Behind the woman, I can see the kid Mike moving again. He slowly but surely shakes his head.
“No, thank you,” I hear myself say. “I’ll stay with Lola in the babies’ room, as well. I’m a big help.”
“Nonsense. Not enough room. If you really want to help with the babies, then you can have that room and Lola will stay with Anya instead.”
The bouncy boy shakes his head harder. Spotting his actions, the bigger kid—Roberto—punches his shoulder.
“I’ll stay with my sister,” I say again.
“There’s not enough—”
“We’ll both sleep on the floor with the babies. And we’ll both help. We’re good at that. We have . . . had . . . a baby brother.”
The woman frowns at me, the folds of her face deepening. She doesn’t know what to do with me. On the other side of me, Lola is still trembling uncontrollably. She has a death grip on my hand. I can feel her fingernails digging in.
Briefly, I can see Manny again. Hear him crying. “Roxy, Roxy, Roxy! No . . .”
A ripple goes through my body. I catch it. Soldier on.
Lola
and I don’t have dads. Just our mom, and she’s gone. But Manny has Hector. He loved Manny. Before that last fight, Hector’s fist smashing through the wall, before he went thundering out the door and didn’t come back . . .
If I can just figure out a way to reach him. Tell him about Manny. I know he’ll come for Manny. And maybe, if I ask really nice, he’ll take Lola and me, too. I’m a big help. I swear it. I can be such a big help.
“Let them stay with the babies for a little bit,” the pinch-faced lady is saying. She has finally relaxed her grip on my shoulder. “Until the girls get settled.”
“I guess.”
There’s not much to talk about after that. The pinch-faced lady leaves. Lola and I are escorted upstairs by the girl, Anya, who has long strawberry-blond hair and exotic greenish-gold eyes. She would be beautiful, except she has a way of smiling at us that’s not really smiling. She reminds me of a grinning cat, happy to have new toys to play with.
There are babies. Three. Wedged into a room barely big enough for a single nursery. I don’t see how Lola was ever going to fit on the floor given the three cribs. I definitely don’t know how both of us are going to do it. But we will. Because we can’t be alone. I’m starting to understand that. Whatever happens in this house, never get caught alone.
Anya’s room is across from the babies. She has a twin-sized mattress on the floor. There is room for one more, but I’m sticking with the nursery. Next to her room is a larger one. Three cots for the three boys.
Manny could’ve fit, I think. But suddenly, I’m grateful he’s not here.
Clanging downstairs.
“Dinner bell,” Anya says. That smirk again. She leads us back to the kitchen.
There are two tables. One for boys, one for girls. A new arrangement, just for us. We say grace and pass around a large bowl of pasta and red sauce. It’s plain, but it’s the first hot meal Lola and I have eaten in a bit. We start shoveling before catching ourselves. The others are staring, even Mother Del.
“One plate per child,” she says. “And you will eat what you take. There’s no wasting food in this house.”
Lola and I nod, try to eat slower. Later, I wash dishes with Anya. Lola and the boys dry. The bouncy boy Mike keeps drifting closer and closer to me. I feel something pressed against my thigh. A small butter knife.
“Tonight,” he murmurs ominously; then his hand transfers the knife to mine. He jangles away, stacking up freshly dried plates.
Lola and I each get one pillow and two blankets. In the nursery, the babies are crying. I show Lola how to change diapers. Mother Del sets us up with bottles. When there’s a break, we both brush our teeth. But mostly, we stay in the nursery. We hold the babies close.
Eight P.M. Lights out. We should change into our PJ’s, but we don’t. Instead, we move the cribs around, creating a small pocket of space. We have to lie on our sides on the tattered carpet in order to fit. We don’t mind. We’ve slept in smaller spaces.
Briefly, I let myself relax. I feel my sister’s breath on the back of my neck, as I have so many times before. The house is old. It creaks, it hums, but there’s no screaming, no crash of bottles, no slamming of fists into walls. If anything, it is too quiet for me.
The babies stir, make rumbling noises, sigh little baby sighs.
I start to drift off.
The door opens. Backlit from the glow in the hall, I can make out the form of the larger boy, Roberto, with golden Anya beside him. She’s giggling. It’s not a good sound.
“Hey, newbies,” the boy whispers. “Time to come out and play . . .”
Behind me, Lola whimpers.
I am the oldest. These things are my responsibility.
I finger the butter knife.
I climb to my feet.
I square off against them.
• • •
I know this: Perfect families don’t just happen. They have to be made. Mistakes. Regret. Repair. A mother drinks, the children are taken away. One child is separated, two must work to stay together. A younger sister is threatened, the older takes a stand.
Mistakes. Regret. Repair. This is my family’s story. And we’re not finished yet.
Chapter 13
GIVEN IT WAS A BUSY Saturday afternoon at the hospital, it took D.D. and Phil some time to find a supervisor who knew Juanita Baez and could point them in the right direction. But thirty minutes later, they were ensconced in the staff lounge with Nancy Corbin, an ER nurse who supposedly was close to the victim.
“It’s true then?” the nurse was asking. She was a middle-aged woman with short-cropped blond hair and deep blue eyes. Her hands were shaking as she raised her coffee cup, but her face remained set, a woman who’d given and received bad news before in her life. D.D. appreciated the nurse’s composure. She didn’t have time for theatrics right then. Five hours after the first report of shots fired, time was not in their favor.
“We heard a report on the news. The family’s dead, Roxy’s missing?” the nurse continued.
“Did you know Juanita’s family?”
“The kids, sure. She talked about them all the time. Her family was her life.”
“What about Roxanna? Have you seen her today?”
“No. But the ER has been very busy. We keep the TV on in the waiting area, which is how we knew about the Amber Alert. If Roxy showed up—someone would’ve noticed.”
“When was the last time you saw Juanita?” Phil asked.
“Umm, we both worked graveyard Wednesday night. Juanita is designated night shift. She works Monday through Thursday graveyard, off for the weekends. I bounce around more, some days, some nights.”
“But Juanita’s schedule is set?” Phil pressed. “Isn’t that unusual for nursing?”
“Yes, but Juanita has seniority, plus not everyone wants to work nights. For her, however, it meant more time with the kids. She’d work eleven P.M. to seven A.M., which really turns out to be eight or nine A.M. Then she’d head to a local meeting—you know she’s an alcoholic, right?”
“Yes.”
“Post shift, straight to a meeting. That was very important to her. Then she’d finally make it home, sleep for three to six hours depending, and wake up when the kids returned from school. She’d spend all afternoon and evening with them before reporting back to work.”
“Grueling schedule,” D.D. observed. She was content to let Phil take the lead with the interview. She considered Phil the yin to her yang—while she was hard-edged and intense, his presence was warm, even comforting. Between his thinning brown hair and relaxed-fit trousers, he looked exactly like what he was, a happily married father of four, which for many nervous witnesses or arrogant suspects was the perfect fit. Certainly, Nancy Corbin had gravitated toward him from the first moment they’d sat down. It probably didn’t hurt that, receding hairline and all, Phil retained a certain older-guy charm.
“Please,” Nurse Corbin was saying now. “That’s only half the battle. On Fridays, Juanita basically had to keep herself awake all day, so she’d be tired enough to sleep Friday night and be back to days on Saturday and Sunday, before returning to night work on Mondays. Take it from me, that kind of flip schedule never gets any easier. But for Juanita that made the most sense. Night shift is good money, plus she could be home for her kids’ waking hours, even if it was at the expense of her own.”
“She sounds like a caring mom,” Phil said.
“Absolutely. She lost the kids once. I’m sure you’ve heard? She’s very open about it. As an alcoholic, her rock bottom was the day child services took her kids away. She had to battle addiction, depression, the entire system, to get her children back. She’ll tell you she counts every day with them as a blessing.” The nurse’s expression faltered, broke. She looked down at her mug, then raised it for another shaky sip of coffee. “Do you know who did this?” she asked quietly.
“Doe
s she have any enemies? Maybe recently lost a patient, has a family who blames her?”
Nancy shook her head.
“What about her fellow nurses, doctors?” Phil pressed.
“Everyone liked Juanita. She’s solid under pressure, not one to complain or whine. And she has a wicked sense of humor. Night shift, you need these things.”
“She seeing anyone?” D.D. asked.
“You mean hospital staff? No. She was committed to Charlie. They were good together.”
“Any problems on the home front? Money troubles, relationship woes?”
“Money’s always tight.” Nancy shrugged. “Welcome to health care, where we can’t afford to help patients or pay the staff. Which is why Juanita worked nights instead of staying home with her kids. But I know things were tighter before she moved in with Charlie. She considered him a real godsend. Stable, hardworking guy, good with children, content not to party or drink. In the past year, she considered life to be looking up.”
“He didn’t drink?” D.D. asked, because Hector had implied that Charlie had had his own partying ways.
“No.” Nancy uttered the word firmly. “Juanita would never have stayed with him if he did. She’ll tell you, sobriety still isn’t easy for her. But she loves her kids. For her kids . . .”
“She works a crazy schedule and stays clear of the booze.”
“Exactly.”
“And she and Charlie were happy?”
“Wednesday night, she had nothing bad to say. You work graveyard, Detectives?”
“Back in my younger days,” Phil assured her. “Now it’s more of a twenty-four/seven gig.”
“Then you know what it’s like. There’s a bond that comes with being the only people alive when the rest of the world is sleeping. Juanita’s been working graveyard for the past three years. A lot of things come out during that amount of time.”
“You ever meet Charlie?” D.D. asked.
“Sure. If he was up and out to job sites early, he’d swing by with breakfast for Juanita. He seemed like a good guy. God knows I wouldn’t mind a handsome contractor dropping off a breakfast burrito for me at six A.M.”