Trapped (Caged #2)(26)

“That’s probably easier,” she agreed. “I’ll keep it short. Mom didn’t want me, and as soon as I was old enough to go to the morning daycare the church down the street provided, she would drop me off there as much as possible. I think she was supposed to come in and help with all the kids sometimes as a co-op or something, but I don’t think she ever did. Anyway, I woke up one day and she wasn’t there. It wasn’t so unusual, so I just made myself breakfast and—”

“You made yourself breakfast?” I interrupted. “A four-year-old?”

“I was hungry,” she said, her voice small. “It was just cereal. The milk had gone bad.”

I gripped my hands into fists and wondered if I was ever going to get the chance to meet Tria’s mother.

“She didn’t come back,” Tria continued. “It got dark, and I just kind of watched TV and looked for food in the kitchen. I remember I had to pull one of the chairs over to get in the cupboard up high where she kept the cereal. I had a hard time opening any of the canned stuff and cut my hand trying to do it with a knife.”

She rubbed at a tiny scar on her palm, and my stomach clenched as a vision of a little girl in a green dress, sitting on the floor in the kitchen, came into my head. There was a knife in one hand and a can of soup in the other. I shook my head to clear the thoughts.

“I didn’t really know at the time, but I remember hearing later that they thought I had been alone for four days when the church called child protective services because they hadn’t seen me. The police and a bunch of other people came, and I was so scared I hid under the bed. They still found me, though.”

Tria looked over to me briefly before going on.

“I went into foster care,” she said. “I’m not sure how long—maybe a few months. I was moved around a lot. There were always other kids, and the foster parents…well, they never really seemed interested in having me around. I…I cried a lot. They didn’t like me.”

My teeth ground together, and I was glad she had moved to the other side of the bed because if I had still been holding her, she might have been crushed by the tension in my arms. I was pretty sure there would be marks in my palms from my fingernails.

I kept quiet so she could continue.

“I had to go and talk to a judge,” she said. “I remember that part because his big, black robe scared me. I don’t know if they were trying to get my mom to shape up and take care of me or what. They didn’t tell me much of what was happening, but I overheard some of it. It was pretty clear she was refusing to take me back and told the courts to just keep me. Her sister—I can’t remember her name—said she didn’t want to take care of me either.”

Tria twisted her fingers in her lap.

“I was in another foster home for a while and then in a home with a bunch of kids—a group home, I guess. Modern-day orphanage. There were kids there that got adopted, but…well, no one wanted me. I heard some of the workers there talking once, and they were saying how hard it was to get homes for the older kids. There was this other girl there, though, and she was older than me. I remember thinking at the time that since she was the oldest, I would find a home first.”

She took a long, shuddering breath.

“That’s not what happened, though,” she said. “She was…she was so pretty. She had beautiful, long, blonde hair, and I was just…me. She was adopted, but I was still there.”

My muscles tightened again as images of a tiny Tria, thinking she wasn’t pretty enough to be adopted, clambered around in my head. I couldn’t grasp the notion of no one wanting her, and all my visions turned into Annie song and dance routines.

“I don’t know how long it was between the time that girl was adopted and the time someone came for me,” she continued. “Maybe a few weeks? That’s when this man showed up.”

She smiled then, and her eyes glistened with tears.

“He was so tall.” Her face took on a faraway look as she remembered. “And he had long sideburns that made me laugh. He played with me for a while. Then the lady who I guess was my social worker came in and told me he was my dad and that I was going to go home with him. Apparently, he didn’t even know he had a daughter before then, but my mom must have told the courts to contact him.”

Tears fell over her lashes and down her face as she focused on me with a sad smile.

“It was the best time of my life,” she told me. “I had this pretty room with a pink blanket on the bed, and the trees around the house were so huge, and my dad said he’d build a tree house in the summer. I would get up early in the morning so I could watch the fishing boats head out into the water. The only thing I didn’t like was that he wouldn’t let me touch the stove.”

She looked down at her hands, and I reached over to cover them with mine.

“He didn’t want me to get hurt,” she said quietly. “So he gave me a kid’s book on how to cook in the microwave and showed me how to use that instead. He said as soon as I was tall enough to reach the dials on the back of the stove, he’d teach me how to use it, too.”

She took in a long breath and then blew it out slowly.

“I was only with him for a little under a year when he died,” she said. Tears welled up in her eyes. “I went back into the system in Maine, which was much the same as the others had been. They tried to reach my mom and my aunt again, but my mom had signed over her parental rights. My father had an elderly aunt and uncle, but they were in failing health and unable to take me, either. I was in foster care for a few weeks, and then Leo came and told me he had it all worked out. I was going to come and live with them.”