Chương 4
Her eyes flicked toward mine.
“I was scared,” I said.
“I am scared.”
“Because my mom came back?”
“Because people who love you can want different things for you, and the people who decide may not agree with me.”
She frowned.
“You think my mom loves me?”
I could have made Diane’s mistake in reverse.
I could have protected my place by diminishing Tessa’s.
“I think she may.”
“That sounds fake.”
“I’ve never met her.”
“You saw her at court.”
“Across a room.”
“That counts.”
“Not enough to know what’s in her head.”
Hannah leaned back against the tree trunk.
“She used to make pancakes at night.”
The sentence arrived without warning.
I stayed quiet.
“She burned them a lot.”
A car door slammed somewhere down the block.
“She said breakfast food didn’t know what time it was.”
Hannah’s mouth moved slightly, almost a smile.
“She let me put chocolate chips in them even when we didn’t have syrup.”
I watched a leaf turn slowly on its stem above us.
“Sounds good.”
“They were kind of gross.”
“That can also be good.”
She snorted.
Then the smile disappeared.
“She also left me with Trent for three days.”
I knew Trent from the case file.
Tessa’s former boyfriend.
He had been one of the reasons emergency removal happened.
The official descriptions were dry.
Unsafe supervision.
Substance use in the home.
Failure to ensure school attendance.
Hannah had never said his name to me before.
“She said she’d be back after work.”
Her hands folded together.
“She came back Friday.”
I did not ask what happened during those days.
Not here.
Not because curiosity was absent.
Because her memory belonged to her before it belonged to any investigation, even one meant to protect her.
“She cried when she came back,” Hannah said.
“What did you do?”
“I made her coffee.”
The answer broke something in me.
She had been ten.
I looked away toward the street because if I cried, she might feel responsible for that too.
“I put too much sugar in it.”
She glanced at me.
“Like a stupid amount.”
“She drink it?”
“Yeah.”
We both smiled, barely.
Then Hannah said, “If she wants me back, does that mean I have to want her back?”
“No.”
She looked suspicious.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“And if I want to see her?”
My chest tightened.
“You’re allowed to want that too.”
“You wouldn’t be mad?”
“I might feel things.”
“That means yes.”
“It means I’d work very hard not to make my feelings your job.”
She considered that.
“That sounds like something Marisol says.”
“I stole it from training.”
“I knew it.”
For a few seconds we sat in something almost easy.
Then Noah came through the gate.
He stopped when he saw us.
“My mom’s back.”
I stood.
“What?”
“She parked across the street.”
Hannah looked past him.
Diane’s car sat two houses down with the engine running.
Grandma was at the end of the driveway, arms crossed.
Diane stepped out of the car holding her phone.
Noah’s face went tight.
“She says she wants to talk to Claire alone.”
“That seems unlikely,” I said.
He almost smiled.
Diane walked toward us.
She had removed her sunglasses, and without them she looked less composed.
There were mascara shadows beneath her eyes.
“I’m not here to fight.”
Grandma called from the driveway, “Then you have a poor sense of geography.”
“Mom, please.”
Diane stopped several feet away.
Her gaze landed on Hannah.
For the first time since the porch, she looked ashamed.
Not enough to undo anything.
Enough to complicate it.
“I shouldn’t have called you temporary.”
Hannah did not answer.
Diane swallowed.
“And I shouldn’t have moved your chair.”
Still nothing.
Noah watched his mother with the guarded attention of someone waiting for the apology to become an excuse.
Diane looked at me.
“But there is something you need to know.”
“No more case information in front of Hannah unless it concerns her and she wants to hear it.”
Hannah spoke before Diane could answer.
“I want to hear it.”
I turned toward her.
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
Diane hesitated.
That hesitation frightened me more than the messages.
She held up her phone.
“Tessa contacted me.”
Every sound around us seemed to separate.
A sprinkler clicked.
A dog barked.
The delivery van turned at the corner.
Noah stared at his mother.
“What?”
Diane looked miserable.
“She sent me a message three weeks ago.”
Hannah stood very still.
“How does my mom know you?”
“She found me online.”
“Why?”
Diane glanced at me, then back at Hannah.
“She said she needed someone in Claire’s family to listen before it was too late.”
For several seconds, nobody said anything.
Then Hannah asked, “What did she want you to listen to?”
Diane’s phone hung loosely at her side.
“She said Claire was trying to adopt you before she had a fair chance to finish what the court asked her to do.”
Hannah’s eyes shifted to me.
I felt the accusation before she spoke.
“Is that true?”
“No.”
Diane exhaled impatiently.
“Claire, you filed paperwork.”
“I agreed to be considered as an adoptive placement after the county changed the permanency recommendation.”
“That is paperwork.”
“It is not me deciding what happens to Hannah.”
Hannah looked between us.
“You both sound like lawyers.”
Neither of us answered.
She held out her hand toward Diane.
“Can I see the messages?”
Diane hesitated.
That was the second hesitation, and this one had a different shape.
It contained possession.
Whatever she had done wrong, those messages gave her a role in a story she had not previously belonged to.
I recognized the impulse because I had felt versions of it myself.
Being needed could make ordinary people selfish.
“Hannah,” Diane said, “some of what your mom wrote is upsetting.”
“She wrote it to you about me.”
“Yes.”
“So I want to see.”
Diane looked at me.
I did not rescue her.
“Give her the phone.”
May you like
“She’s twelve.”
“She’s also standing here because you already used part of those messages to frighten her.”
