I wanted to believe her, but I couldn’t shake the horrible worries weighing on me that things were about to get a lot worse before they got better.
While we ate, the front door opened, and another officer stepped inside, but this one was her husband.
She introduced us all, and he joined us for breakfast. Neither of them stared at us with pity, at least. I wasn’t sure I could’ve handled that.
She asked him about his night, and he politely smiled at us and excused himself from the table, taking his wife with him. They moved down the hall towards the bedrooms, but I could just barely hear their whispered words.
Curious about what was so bad they had to leave the kitchen, I told Mason I had to pee and quietly moved towards the hall to listen.
“—tracked him all the way across the city,” I heard her husband whisper. “But then the trail just vanished.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, and I leaned closer.
“I mean there were footsteps and a trail of blood and then… nothing. It’s like he vanished on the spot.”
“People can’t disappear into thin air.” She sighed, and I braced myself to move away in case they came back to the living room, but then she was talking again. “What about the other guy? The one she said saved her?”
“Nothing in the alley or the surrounding area. Whatever happened last night, we’re at a dead end. How’s she holding up?”
“As good as can be expected I guess, considering what happened.”
“Yeah, true. Anything I can do?”
“No, I got this. Go take a shower. You stink,” she teased, and I heard his rumble of laughter.
Tiptoeing, I made my way back to the kitchen, not wanting to listen to their intimate moment, and sat down just as Rosa stepped back into view.
“Well now, you two eat up, as much as you want. You might be at the station for a while today, and food there is nothing compared to my cooking.”
Mason took her at her word, but I only managed to eat a biscuit and a piece of bacon before I gave up.
We drove to the station that morning in her patrol car, and Mason was ecstatic because she let him turn on the lights in the parking lot.
I grinned, happy at least to see him having a good time. Once inside, she took us to this back room; I guess it was their break room or something. There was a couch, a refrigerator, a coffee maker, a sink, and a table with some chairs.
Mason and I sat on the couch uncomfortably for a minute until a woman in a pencil skirt and suit jacket came walking in with Rosa.
“Everest, this is Mrs. Norah Peddler. She’s in charge of the local foster care programs. She was hoping you two could have a private talk?”
I nodded and stood up, but glanced back at Mason.
“Don’t worry,” Rosa said with a wink. “I’ll hang out with the little man while you’re gone.”
I smiled, admittedly half-heartedly, and thanked her before following Mrs. Peddler into an office toward the back of the station. She sat down at her desk and started going over some information with me—asking me mine and Mason’s birthdays, our social security numbers, and a bunch of other information about our identities.
There was no point in not telling her what she wanted to know, and I was anxious to get back to Mason so I rambled off numbers and dates as quickly as I could. She asked about Mom, and I was honest. At this point, I didn’t see a point in lying anymore. I told her about Mom’s problems—her alcoholism, her tendency to disappear on occasion, and her sometimes running off with a boyfriend here and again. She asked some normal questions, but then her face turned serious, and her tone lowered.
“Was there ever any abuse in the home?”
“What? God no,” I snapped. “Mom might’ve been a drunk and yelled, but she never hit either one of us.”
“I’m sorry, I know this is hard, Everest, but I have to ask.”
“No, I know I just… we’ve been through a lot and life was hard, but no, she never physically abused us.”
“What about mentally?”
My mouth opened and closed a few times on that one before I finally shook my head. “No, we argued, but it was usually about me throwing out her booze. And she rarely yelled at Mason, I didn’t let her.”
Mrs. Peddler jotted down a few more notes, nodding to herself, and I tried to get more comfortable on the plastic chair.
The whole time she asked questions, she was kind and reassuring. She kept telling me how smart and brave I was for taking care of Mason for so long on my own, like I needed her approval.
I wasn’t in the mood for this sort of thing. In fact, it was getting old really quick, and my decision to cooperate was starting to bite me in the ass the longer she kept me in here.
“The good news,” she said while propping her elbows up on the desk, “is that the two foster homes that are going to be taking you and Mason in are only about an hour away from each other, so we’ll be able to work something out to where you’ll get to see one another often.”
I felt as if time screeched to a halt and I stared at her blankly. Then her words echoed again in my mind, and I felt like my head almost exploded with a sudden burst of anger.
My eyes widened, and I think if I wasn’t so shocked I would have jumped up and knocked her out right then and there. “Excuse me?”
“The two homes are very close together,” she repeated. “The foster parents we’re talking to say they would be more than happy to meet up some weekends so that you and Mason can see each other often, at least once a month.”
“You’re sending us to two different homes?” I slammed my palms down on the desk, and she calmly leaned back like she had been expecting it. “I won’t go,” I said firmly. “You can’t make me. I won’t be separated from my brother!”
“I know this is all a big change, but it’s for the better.”
“For who? Who says its better?” I snapped. “Find a foster home where we can go together.”
“There is nothing available right now. We are looking, and as soon as something opens up, we’ll, of course, move you two. We try to do our best to keep siblings together, but there is simply not enough room right now.”
“Find room,” I demanded. “You’re out of your mind if you think I will let you take Mason away from me.”
She offered a gentle smile, and a terrifying thought hit me.
What if that’s why they had just separated us? To make it easier to take him away? In case I caused a scene?
I know that was a bit paranoid on my part, but I bolted.
She yelled after me, but I didn’t stop. I ran out the door, flinging it open with such ferocity that the doorknob left a dent in the wall.
“Everest,” Mrs. Peddler yelled louder, chasing after me. “Everest, stop!”
I ran down the hall back into the break room, trying not to slam into any of the officers moving around the hall. Most looked at me confused until they heard Mrs. Peddler yelling and I heard one of them say something into their radio. By then I was in the other room and flinging the door open.
Thankfully, Mason and Rosa were both still there. I doubled over from my sprint before I stepped inside.
By my freaked-out look, Rosa must have sensed something was amiss. “Everest, what’s wrong?”
“They want to send us to different homes,” I shouted. “I thought they were going to take him without me getting to say goodbye. I wasn’t going to let them take him from me.”
Mason’s bottom lip poked out, and he no longer looked twelve. He was a toddler again, scared about the bogeyman under our bed, or the monsters in the closet. Or tucking his head under the pillow when Mom started drunkenly screaming in the middle of the night, screaming things that never made sense to me.
He jumped up and ran to me. I hugged him tightly, not about to let him be taken from me, not now.
Mrs. Peddler arrived behind me and had the audacity to try to touch me on my shoulder.
I flinched away from her, dragging my broth
er with me. He might be almost as tall as me, but I was supposed to protect him, and that’s exactly what I was going to do.
“Don’t touch me. Mason and I are not going to two different homes. Find somewhere else that we can both go.”
“Everest, there is no reason to be upset,” she tried to say.
“Yes, there is. There is plenty of reason to be upset. We were fine until you all showed up.” I gripped Mason tight. “I’m not letting you take him away from me—I’ll… I’ll kill you,” I stammered, but no one reacted to my threat.
Mrs. Peddler was still calm as ever, and Rosa looked torn on what she should do.
I guessed Mrs. Peddler probably dealt with this sort of thing all the time and had found some way to keep herself detached from the kids who screamed threats at her for taking them away. I was probably not even the feistiest kid she had met. I held Mason like someone was trying to take him away that very moment. For all I knew, they were going to do just that.
“We are here to help,” Mrs. Peddler assured me. “And, I mean that with absolute sincerity. I know this is difficult. I realize that. But, you have to think about what’s best for you and for Mason.”
“What’s best is that we stay together.”
Before the moment could escalate even further, Officer Stenson arrived. “Um… Mrs. Peddler?” he beckoned.
“Not now,” she said, looking at him like she was a crisis negotiator and he was risking ticking off a bomber.
“But, ma’am, there is a man here claiming to be their great uncle.”
Mrs. Peddler raised a brow, and she looked at me. “What great uncle? You didn’t mention any other family during our interview.”
“I don’t know any great uncle,” I mumbled.
“Everest, there’s no reason to lie to me. If you have family and neglected to tell me, there must be a reason. Do you not trust this man?”
I shook my head, tired of her talking to me like I was playing some game with her. “I swear, I have no idea who that man is. Mom always told us everyone was dead, or as good as dead.”
Mrs. Peddler’s lips thinned, but she seemed to believe me. She’d asked about our dad, too, but I’d told her what I always told when anyone asked. We had no idea how he was, or where he was from. I didn’t even know his name. And Mom was an only child from what she told us.
Clearly, Mom had left a few important details out of her life. Because she hadn’t screwed us up enough already.
Copyright © 2017 by Kit Bladegrave
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
I hope you enjoyed Ravages! I can’t wait to bring you the next book in this series!
Asylum!
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Copyright © 2017 by Kit Bladegrave
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Ravages Page 18