Concealed in Death (In Death #38)(88)

“I have. She wasn’t in residence at either of your establishments, officially.”

“If she’d been one of ours, she’d be in our records.” Shoulders stiff, she sat back. “We don’t take our responsibilities lightly.”

“But she looks familiar?”

“I . . . I just have this little flash of seeing her with Shelby, Shelby and Mikki—maybe DeLonna.”

She lifted the photo, frowning at it until a vertical line formed between her eyebrows. “She . . . I’m not sure. It was years ago, but something seems familiar.”

“Only this one?” Eve said.

“Yes, and I’m not sure of that. I—in the market!” She sat up very straight. “I went into the market, and they were all in there—with this girl. Dae Pak’s market—oh, he was such an impatient man. He complained to me, more than a few times about the children coming in, stealing or acting up. I remember because I happened to go in, and, frankly, they were being rude. I ordered the girls—our girls—to apologize and come straight back with me. I remember because I asked the other girl her name, where she lived. She told me to mind my own business, only not that politely, and ran out. I remember,” she repeated, “because I kept an eye out for her after that for a couple weeks, in case she came back. I had the feeling she might be a runaway. You start to get a sense when you work with them routinely.”

“Okay.”

“Was she? A runaway?”

“Yeah.”

“And one of the girls who died.” Closing her eyes, Philadelphia laid her hand on the photo. “I should have gone after her, called CPS. I only thought of getting our girls back, and I didn’t follow through.”

“You couldn’t know,” Peabody began.

“It’s my work. I’m supposed to know. Shelby and Mikki, both of them were out of my hands when this happened to them. But some of the responsibility’s mine, isn’t it? Shelby deceived us, and she shouldn’t have been able to. We should have been more vigilant with her, but we were distracted, so excited by our good fortune we let her slip through. Now we have to live with that, with knowing that. Mikki, I don’t know what we could have done, but it feels like we could and should have been able to do something. Now they’re both gone. Both of them.”

She looked back down at the pictures, then sharply up again. “But not DeLonna. She’s not there. They were so close, the three of them. But she didn’t go with them. She stayed with us, stayed until she was sixteen.”

“But you don’t know where she is now?”

“No, and I admit, I expected, hoped, she’d keep in touch. Some of the children do, some of them don’t.”

“Did she ever ask about them? Ask to go see them or contact them?”

Philadelphia rubbed at her forehead. “It’s a lot to remember. I’ve been reviewing my notes from that time, trying to see how . . .”

She shook her head. “I noted that DeLonna withdrew for a while, claimed to be unwell. Natural enough, when two of her closest friends left.”

“Was she sick?” Eve asked.

“Lethargic, according to my notes, and my memory. Weepy, though she tried to hide that. In session, when I was able to get her to open up a little, she talked about being one of the bad girls. Everyone left her because she was bad; she didn’t have a real home, a real family because she was bad. We worked on her self-esteem. She had such a beautiful voice, I was able to use singing to bring her out a bit more. But she never bonded with any of the other girls in the same way. And, as I said, she withdrew, went into a kind of grieving, which was natural, expected. She spent her free time in her room, and was, well, too biddable if you understand me. She’d simply do whatever she was assigned, then go back into her shell. It took nearly a year before she seemed to resolve herself.”

“Didn’t you question the fact neither of her friends made an effort to see her, to hang with her?”

“Lieutenant, children can be self-absorbed and their world is often . . . immediate. It’s the here and now, so the bonds formed inside The Sanctuary, or now HPCCY, can be strong, lifelong, or they can be tenuous, situational bonds, that dissolve once the situation changes.”

“And you don’t follow up?”

She lifted her hands—short, neat, unpolished nails, no rings, no bracelets. “We’re a transitional home, and most often for a relatively short time. Often the children and their guardians prefer to leave that behind, start new. We don’t interfere.”

“So when they walk out the door, that’s it?”

By the way Philadelphia’s shoulders stiffened, the little barb struck a nerve. “We give the children in our care everything we can, physically, spiritually, emotionally. We do everything in our power to see that when they leave us, they leave in a better state, and go prepared to lead a productive, contented life. We feel deeply for them, Lieutenant, and on a professional level we understand they’re only ours for a short time, so we have to let go. For their well-being, and for our own.”

“But you interact with them every day, basically live with them.”

“That’s correct.”

“Who’s in charge?”

“I’m not sure what you mean. My brother and I share duties, responsibilities. We founded both The Sanctuary and HPCCY together.”