Page 46 of False Start

Rylee wiggled next to me, her eyes wide open as she chewed her lip.

“What’s the matter?” I whispered down to her, giving her a snuggle.

“Nothing,” Rylee said quietly.

I nudged her little chin. “Hmmm, I don’t know about that. When a girl says nothing, it’s almost always something.”

“How would I get to spend time with you if I can’t go to the center anymore?” she asked, her voice small and broken.

I tipped her face up to mine, surprised to see the glistening of tears welling there. “Why wouldn’t you get to go to the center anymore?”

“Well, if it closed down or something.”

“Honey, the center is not going to close down,” I said, squeezing her close.

She glanced away, her voice barely a whisper. “Okay.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“It’s just…well, I heard…”

The tentative beginnings of a confession made me breathless. I swallowed against my suddenly dry throat in an effort to keep my voice strong and reassuring. “What? What did you hear?”

“I was listening in when I shouldn’t have been.”

A lump of dread lodged in my throat as I told myself to stay calm and keep the conversation light. “You’re not going to get in trouble, honey. Just tell me what you heard.”

“Mrs. Rutledge said she didn’t know where the kids would go after March. Do you know where we’re going?”

I glanced around at the kids sleeping peacefully in the van, my stomach pitching. “Maybe she wasn’t talking about you. It’s hard to know what she was talking about when we don’t know what the other person said, right? That’s the danger of eavesdropping.”

“I didn’t mean to. It’s just, she sounded worried. Really worried. Like my mom used to sound right before my dad came home.”

Rylee’s father spent years beating his wife and kids with little to no consequences. Over and over her mother took him back, accepting his apologies, lying to herself, thinking that maybe this time if he did fly into a rage, he’d keep his hands off the kids and only hurt her.

And so what if he did commit to only hurting her. Every yell, curse, slap, punch, and kick, even if only directed toward their mother, was a yell, curse, slap, punch, and kick for them.

Sheriff Chase and his officers repeatedly hauled him off to jail only to let him out hours later because Rylee’s mother made excuses for him or worse, refused to press charges.

Rylee’s dad was a pro at making sure to be careful of the visible marks he left on their mother, making it hard to press any sort of lasting charges. It wasn’t until Rylee borrowed a friend’s cell phone overnight and caught one of his worst beatings on video that the kids finally broke free.

Their mother had a long way to go to prove she could handle having her kids back. First, she had to start with getting well herself.

As for Rylee’s dad, he’d be behind bars until well after Rylee became an adult.

“Mrs. Rutledge’s words gave you that funny feeling in the pit of your tummy?”

Rylee nodded and snuggled in closer.

The sign for Crossroads appeared around the corner, letting me know I only had a couple minutes to make her feel better.

“How about I speak to Mrs. Rutledge and make sure everything’s okay? How does that sound?”

She nodded against my chest and sighed. “I’d like that.”

“Okay. For now, I don’t want you to worry about what you heard okay? March is a long way away and next week we’ll talk about it. It’s all going to be okay; you’ll see.”

We bumped over the side street alongside Crossroads and pulled right up to the door. I shuffled the sleepy crew off the bus and helped them shed their boots and jackets, reminding them along the way not to just toss them in a heap, but hang them on the hooks where they belonged.

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