Chapter 7
Across the street from the Greenwiches’ house, Sharon pulled a tissue from the half-full box she kept in the passenger seat of her car. Almost all kids initially placed into foster care stained their faces with tears. The bond with their parents being ripped—even abusive parents—was difficult.
She used the tissue now to dry her own cheeks and eyes.
Cindy was off her caseload, so she didn’t have much say in the girl’s life. Sharon could inform the county social worker that the grandparents’ home wasn’t the best place, but the girl had no visible signs of abuse. It’s hard, if not impossible, to convince social workers that a child should be taken from her natural family just because the home doesn’t feel good. It had appeared that Cindy hadn’t been sleeping well, but that was not a condition for which DCFS breaks apart families.
From the car window came a rap … rap … rap.
She put the tissue down and turned to the window.
Outside, stood the man who had run from the crash scene last night, bent over with one hand on his knee and the other holding her cell phone against the glass. A light stubble shadowed his sharply sculptured jaw and cheeks. Strands of his dark brown hair curled over his forehead.
“Can I come in?”
All her doors were safely locked. “Who are you?”
“Someone who cares.”
“Is that why you left the man in the truck to burn?”
“You don’t know who he was.”
“What does that matter?”
He gazed at Sharon soberly. “He wouldn’t have come out, even if you had reached him in time.”
“What?”
“Did you notice his door was unlocked? But even if it had been locked or jammed, he could have easily broken a window.”
“What’re you saying? He was suicidal?”
He shrugged. “In a sense.”
She huffed. “How could you know that?”
The man stood up straight. He still wore blue jeans, but had a white t-shirt on today. It was snug and revealed a well-developed, firm chest and broad shoulders. “Am I going to have to stand outside here and talk through this window?”
“Why shouldn’t you? You might as well be responsible for his death. Maybe you should be standing in jail.”
He looked troubled. Shades of doubt and despair rippled across his face. “Would you have used these words on him?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“You don’t know who he was, do you?”
“Of course not.”
He sighed. “Think of a case of sexual abuse you’ve encountered in your career.”
She could think of plenty. One in particular, though, stuck out. A toddler girl was prostituted out by her drug addict mother to pedophiles so the mother could get money for Heroine. By the time the authorities stepped in, the toddler was badly damaged in the genital area. She died of gonorrhea meningitis.
He bent forward again, eyes level with Sharon’s, and spoke slowly. “Imagine the perpetrator.”
She scooted away in her seat. “Who are you? An officer? The FBI?”
“Will you let me in now?” He glanced back at the Greenwiches’ house. “The sun is getting hot out here.”
“Why should I trust you?”
He licked his lips. “I did save your life yesterday.”
They appeared to be wonderful lips. Tender and soft in such a masculine, hard face. “What?” she asked, caught off guard. Then she replayed in her mind what he had said. “Oh.”
She considered his words. If he hadn’t have stopped her, she would have been blown into tiny, charred bits, along with the crash victim. Alone, she would have continued attempting to break the truck window. Could this man outside really be all bad? If he didn’t care about anyone, he would have let her die. He would have just stood by and watched her deadly mistake.
She studied his brown eyes. They were calm, like when he had done nothing to help the man in the overturned pickup truck. How could he have done that? What kind of person could do that? “I think you should stay where you are.” She cracked her window. “But give me back my phone.”
He stuck the cell-phone through the crack and she took it. It had a few scratches.
The morning light gilded a few beads of sweat forming on his forehead. It was another beautiful Southern California day, already over eighty degrees at 10:45 in the morning.
“If you’re not with the police or FBI, how did you know the man was a predator?”
He leaned forward until his face was almost touching the glass. “How do you know the girl is in danger?”
“What girl?”
“Please … you know who I’m talking about.”
Her heart raced. Really she didn’t know Cindy was in danger, but just felt it. And how did he know her feelings? He must have been following her, maybe had tapped her phone at work or even planted a microphone in the Greenwiches’ residence. He wasn’t supposed to know these things. What else did he know about her? She felt exposed.
“I saw you crying,” he said. “What were those tears for?”
She looked away. “None of your business.”
“Maybe it is.”
“Who are you?”
“Laif.”
“Laif?” she repeated loudly.
“Laif Dryson.”
She glared at him. “I mean, how do you know all this stuff, and where do you get off sticking your nose into other people’s affairs?”
“Can I come in?”
“What are you? Like a vampire, needing permission to come in and suck the life from women?”
He laughed. It was a free, deep laugh, not one of maliciousness, but genuine amusement. It reminded her of her favorite singer, Johnny Cash, with his low-pitched, sexy voice. Then he turned away, and Mr. and Mrs. Greenwich were standing on the front porch of the house, looking out at them.
Laif raised his shirt to cover his head and ran to the dark blue Mercedes twenty feet up the street. No goodbye, no explanation, just running away. This seemed to be a pattern with this guy.
She watched the Mercedes drive off. That’s all Sharon needed—another man who leaves without explanation. She was glad to be rid of Laif Dryson. Her ex-boyfriend had been enough, abandoning her with no explanation the day after he proposed marriage. He had issues with commitment the whole time they had been going out. It always had been her who tried bringing the relationship closer, creating intimacy, and fostering its growth and development. He always seemed to resist. Why would someone do that? It didn’t make sense. She was better off without him. She was better off without any man in her life right now.
But all her girlfriends had somehow found men that could commit. They had gotten married early—perhaps too young—right after high school. They had grown away from Sharon, mostly because they stuck together, as though marriage bonded them not just to their husbands, but to other married women as well.
She looked at the Greenwiches’ porch. They were headed back inside.
What on earth was she going to do about Cindy? Maybe she couldn’t do anything. Hopefully the girl was fine, just nervous about returning to family, and all Sharon’s concern was for nothing.
But it didn’t feel that way.
Cindy’s old foster home was only a mile away. She thought she might pay them a quick visit.
***
Sharon pushed aside a stuffed pink teddy bear, a purple rabbit, and a green frog to make room to sit on Cindy’s former bed.
She was glad the frog was just stuffed. Reptiles and amphibians had always made her squeamish. They just were too slimy, scaly, and alien-like. And getting bitten by a rattlesnake at the age of nine didn’t help matters. She had almost died. Mom had been too drunk to drive to the hospital, so she called an ambulance instead, which took thirty long, painfully throbbing minutes to get to their house. A hospital trip in Mom’s car would have taken only ten. After that, Sharon and her sister stopped going into the deserted lot across the street to play, even though the owners hired an exterminator to rid the lot of all snakes.
Standing against the wall of Cindy’s old bedroom were two wooden dressers, green paint so thin in places that you could see the natural wood color.
Adriana Huffen was sitting on the other bed across the room, her crutches leaning against the mattress on either side of her like twin protective towers, protection that should never be necessary for such a sweet nine-year-old. Sharon wished all the children on her caseload were as easy as Adriana. She was exceptionally bright, in spite of the occasional B grade she brought home. She was open with her feelings, but not haughty with them. She was able to get along with other children, regardless of how often they teased her, and this was frequently. She never caused problems in the three foster homes she had been placed in, despite the chaotic home she originated from.
Because of the severity of abuse from her natural father, she would never return home to him. She had been on the adoption track for over nine months now. But unfortunately not many families were interested in crippled children. If Sharon were married, she would adopt this girl in a second.
She adored Adriana’s genuineness, compassion, and courage in the face of atrocious evil.
But as it was, Sharon could barely get by herself financially—besides the commitment of attention, energy, and time a child also required. Though with a husband, she was sure she could share the responsibility of raising this girl.
She sighed and asked, “Sweetie, did you notice anything strange about Cindy before she left?”
The girl squirmed between the crutches, her brown bangs washing across her clear white face. “She was nervous.”
“What do you mean?”
“She would wake up in the middle of the night, talking weird stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
Adriana crinkled her nose in a cute way. “Like hearing things when no one was around.”
Auditory hallucinations. This worried Sharon. Recent clinical theory informed that the disease of schizophrenia could be part biological and part environmental in origin. Foster children went through so much emotional stress, and Cindy’s case was particularly extreme. If she was stressed to the point of experiencing psychotic symptoms and she had a schizophrenic gene, she had to receive professional help before the symptoms worsened.
“Did she say what kind of things she heard?”
“No.”
“Was she tense about anything?”
“Her parents. She never wanted to go back.”
Sharon closed her eyes, but shame burned behind them anyways. She wished she could have done more to prevent the girl’s reunification with her family so soon, but that decision was out of her hands. The judge, county social worker, and child’s attorney held the power in these decisions. After the parent visit yesterday, she left messages with the county social worker and the child’s attorney describing exactly what happened during the visit. But that evidently hadn’t been enough. Opening her eyes, she asked, “Did she say why she didn’t want to go back?”
The beautiful girl frowned. Sitting there in her pink dress, her eyes were older than her age. “Sharon, do you know her parents?”
Guilt made her eyes drop. “I’ve met them once.”
“Cindy lived with them. She’d seen through the disguises they wear for other people.”
“What do you mean?”
“The masks,” Adriana explained. “The fakeness.”
She looked into the girl’s dark brown eyes. “The mask like your father put on for others?”
“Yeah. But she doesn’t really know.”
“Know what?”
Adriana frowned. “I’ve had more time to work through my stuff. Each time I think I know my father, I learn something new. It makes it better when you know exactly who your parents are, but it’s hard.”
Sharon assumed her guilt must have been making it difficult to understand the little girl. “Cindy doesn’t know her parents?”
“I guess what I’m saying is she can’t accept them for who they are.”
Sharon nodded. “Who are they?”
Adriana looked over Sharon’s shoulder. “Who’s he?”
She turned, and Laif Dryson was standing in the bedroom doorway. He said, “I know who they are.”
She felt anger rise inside her, but she kept a lid on it because she didn’t want to lose it in front of Adriana. This girl had already experienced far too many emotional outbursts during her limited nine years of life, courtesy of her father. “How did you get in here?”
“I told the foster mother I was a social worker from your agency.” He smiled. “Sorry.” He had a beautiful smile.
The girl broke down the twin towers of her crutches, clinking them together, stood on her single leg, and then positioned the crutches under her arms, hobbling her way to him. She extended her hand. “Hi. I’m Adriana.” Her eyes gleamed and face blushed, as though a prince had walked through a forest and found her room. He squatted and took her hand in both of his, saying, “It’s nice to meet you, sweetie. You have a wonderful way about you.”
“Why, thank you. Please come and sit with us.”
“No,” warned Sharon. “Don’t come. Adriana, you know better. You don’t know him.”
But Adriana’s eyes glued to him as she spoke. “Oh come on, Sharon. I meet new social workers almost every other month.”
“He’s not a social worker.”
“Well … he seems nice enough.”
“You don’t know him.”
He said, “Cindy is not psychotic.”
“How long have you been eavesdropping?” Sharon asked.
He stood. “Look, are you going to stop questioning me and just talk?”
“I thought I was talking, Laif.” Then she immediately regretted using his name. Why did she call him by name? Really, she didn’t want to acknowledge his invasive presence and wanted to give him no power or belief that he was welcome here.
Adriana had this dreamy look in her eyes. “Yes, let’s talk.”
“No,” she quickly warned.
“Laif, what month were you born?”
He smiled. “October. I’m a Libra, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“A Libra. That’s wonderful. I’m a Scorpio,” the girl chattered. “It’s a constellation in the Southern Hemisphere, close to Libra and Sagittarius, holding the bright red star Antares—”
“Stop.” Sharon was feeling out of control. She wanted to stick a large cork in the girl’s mouth and smack Laif.
“—and Libras and Scorpios have been known to get along well together,” she continued without pausing for a breath. “There is a good energy they share that the other constellations don’t. I’m not sure I understand it all, but the thing that most impresses me—”
Sharon took Laif’s arm and escorted him out of the room, away from Adriana, down the hall, out the front door, and onto the grass of the front yard.
Hidden somewhere inside three large pepper trees in the yard, birds chirped, squawked, and twittered.
“Why don’t you get into your Mercedes and drive off? You don’t belong in this. You’re not a social worker. I don’t even know what you are.”
“I’m not unlike yourself.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” She made tight fists with the material of her white cotton skirt, groaned and said, “I’ve got way too much to think about right now—”
“That’s part of the reason I’m here, if you’d just listen.”
“I am listening!”
“Really?”
She looked away, eyes burning. “Okay. I’ll listen, but only if you promise to leave and not come back.”
He didn’t respond.
She waited.
He cleared his throat.
She waited a moment more, then looked him in the eyes. “Well, aren’t you going to talk? You’ve finally got my attention.”
He held his hands out. “It’s difficult to say.”
“You spend all this time and energy following me and trying to speak with me, and now that you have my attention, you can’t say—”
“Please.”
She folded her arms across her chest and held her thoughts.
“Cindy’s not psychotic.”
Just to the left of his shoulder, she noticed the curtains of Adriana’s bedroom window drawing open. She sighed, and looked back into his eyes. “She certainly sounds like she meets the diagnostic criteria.”
“Just listen. Cindy’s blessed.”
“Blessed?”
Adriana came into view through the bedroom window. Her face and hands pressed against the glass, fogging it, looking longingly at Laif, distracting Sharon. Sharon groaned and moved a little to the right so that his broad shoulders blocked sight of the girl.
He continued, “She has a gift.”
“Gift?”
“A talent.”
“A talent to hear things and see things that don’t exist? Are you psychotic?”
He looked away. And strangely, she missed his eyes on her.
“Sorry,” she allowed an apology, “but what are you talking about?”
“I can relate to Cindy.”
“So can I.”
“I mean I know what she’s going through. I’ve been through it.”
She had no response. As far as she knew, the only people who’ve been through hallucinations were other psychotic people.
He asked, “Have you ever tasted a sunrise?”
“What?”
“Ever smelled the song of a mocking bird?” He looked into the tree and breathed. “Ever heard the flavor of barbequed chicken? It’s a wonderful melody.”
Sharon took a step backward.
His dark brown eyes flashed to her and he stepped forward. “I know you must have felt evil before, but have you seen it? I mean actually seen it, as dark steam rising off a person’s skin.”
She was getting scared. He was freaking her out.
“I have.”
She moved around him and quickly walked to the front door of the foster home, hoping he wouldn’t follow.
He didn’t.