Under Her Care(3)

“Mason’s being abused?” I jump in. Nobody’s made that accusation yet. At least not that I’ve heard or read anywhere.

“No,” he says, shaking his head to emphasize the point. “I just mean those are instances when a CASA is automatically assigned, but sometimes, they can be assigned in other circumstances if a judge deems it necessary, and this is one of those times where we could take the position that one is needed. It’s easy to arrange with the courts, and we can file an emergency petition to do it, so we’d be able to move it through even faster. Nobody’s going to give us any grief on pushing things through with this case, you know what I mean?”

This time I do. But I’m still not understanding my role.

“Once that person has been assigned, they have legal permission for alone time with the child. In fact, that’s the entire point—alone time with the child so the child can talk about whatever is bothering them. Now, we could go through the bureau and find a specialist with kids, but that’s going to take time, and it’s likely they won’t have the kind of expertise this case is going to require. Not anywhere close to what you do.” He leans back in his chair and rubs his belly like he’s pregnant. “I’m just going to level with you, Ms. Walker. You know Genevieve. She knows you, and she needs someone she can trust. You trust people you know.”

“Just because we know each other doesn’t mean we’re friends.” We should be friends, best friends, really, since we have so much in common—having children with autism spectrum disorder, being single moms, growing up in the South—but we’re not. We’ve met on three different occasions, and each time, she never remembers who I am. She’s always had a prettier story and wanted nothing to do with getting to know mine. I don’t take it personally. She’s like that with everyone who doesn’t live in Camden Estates.

“She’ll trust you more than she’ll trust a stranger.”

“It sounds a little sneaky.”

“It is a little sneaky.” He doesn’t bother to lie.

“I don’t think I can do that.” There are so many reasons why I can’t.

“Look.” He splays his hands open on the desk like he’s laying down his cards at the casino. “We all know the likelihood of this being someone local is pretty high given where it happened, and we’re hoping this turns out to be a simple accident.” He shrugs. “Things happen. Unexpected things. We just gotta find out what.”

“Still. I just don’t know if I can.”

“Don’t you see? You’d be doing this town a huge favor. You’d be helping them put their terror to rest.” His eyes bore into me. “You don’t have to give me your answer tonight. Just think about it, okay?”





TWO


CASEY WALKER



“So what are you going to do?” my dad asks as he carries Harper to my car parked in his driveway. She’s dead asleep in his arms and will probably stay knocked out on the drive home, but the minute I lay her in bed, you can bet she’ll spring awake like it’s time for breakfast. It’ll be another hour before I’ll get her to go back to sleep.

I open the back door and help him slip her into her booster seat, buckling her in tight. Her head lolls to the side. Coffee-colored curls fall over her face. I tuck her stuffed bunny, Charles, underneath her arm, then turn to face my dad. “I have no idea.”

“I think you should do it,” he says. I filled him in on Detective Layne’s strange proposition the minute I left the police station. We’d been through ten different scenarios by the time I arrived to get Harper, even though it’s only a fifteen-minute drive. He picks her up from school every day and has her until I get off work at five. I asked him to keep her later tonight.

I punch him in the arm playfully. “Of course you do.” I’ve told him a million times he should’ve been a police officer or a detective instead of an electrical engineer. He smiles down at me underneath the streetlight and wraps his arm around my shoulder, pulling me in close.

My parents’ neighborhood is eerily still. Nobody’s out after dark. That’s how it’s been since the incident. Everyone’s tucked safely in their houses with the doors locked and the blinds closed. It hasn’t been like this since I was a kid and Scarlet Evans got kidnapped on her way home from babysitting in Jacksonville. She was walking with her best friend when a man in a ski mask approached them with a gun. He made them lie down on the ground and close their eyes. When Scarlet’s friend opened hers, Scarlet was gone. She’s never been found. There’s still an old billboard behind the car wash, tagged with spray paint so many times you can barely see the missing poster underneath, but it’s there.

Even though it was a state away, we spent the entire summer double-checking our bedroom windows every night before bed, and nobody stayed out past dark. It took a few years to work that fear out of our veins, and I don’t know about anyone else, but all that’s boiling in my blood again.

I stopped for gas on my way over, and the hairs on the back of my neck tingled the entire time I was at the pump. Earl didn’t make any of his usual chatter with me when I ran inside the station to grab creamer for the morning. Neither did Nadine on my way out, and she’s always got something to say. Everyone is head down or eyes forward.