Chương 8
"We received a referral connected to the welfare check yesterday," she said.
"From the sheriff?"
"I can't discuss the reporter."
I nodded.
She asked me to explain my concerns in my own words.
I started with the threat message.
Then the eviction notice.
Then Penny's refusal to let me speak to Lily.
Then Miami.
Denise interrupted occasionally with precise questions.
"Who sent the photograph?"
"Someone named Kayla."
"Full name?"
"I don't know."
"Did Kayla indicate she's seen Lily?"
"No."
"Any known violence in Penny's home?"
"Not that I know of."
"Substance abuse?"
"I don't know."
"Domestic partners?"
"Several."
Denise looked up.
"Several currently?"
"No."
Heat rose into my face.
"I meant over the years."
She made a note without reacting.
That steadiness made me realize how desperately I wanted somebody official to gasp and tell me I was right.
Denise did not.
She asked what financial support I had provided.
I turned the laptop toward her.
"I started totaling it last night."
Her eyes moved over the spreadsheet.
"You've kept records?"
"My bank did."
"Why were you paying these expenses?"
"Because the kids needed things."
"Did Penny ask directly?"
"Sometimes."
"Your mother?"
"Usually."
"Did you ever refuse?"
I opened my mouth.
Then closed it.
"Not often."
Denise waited.
"Until now," I said.
She wrote something down.
The scratch of her pen irritated me.
"What happens next?"
"We assess safety."
"That's vague."
"It's supposed to be."
I stared at her.
She did not seem offended.
"We're not here to punish somebody for being financially irresponsible," she said.
"I understand."
"And taking a child on a trip isn't neglect by itself."
"I know."
"Being behind on rent isn't automatically neglect either."
"I know."
She leaned back slightly.
"You're saying that quickly."
"Because I understand the difference."
"Good."
Her tone was gentle enough to annoy me more.
"What concerns me," she continued, "is the instability around housing, the allegation of fabricated threats, and uncertainty about who is supervising the children."
I shifted Hazel to my other shoulder.
"Can you make Penny bring Lily home?"
"Not because you want her to."
The answer stung even though it was obvious.
"I'm not trying to take her child."
"Okay."
"I just want her safe."
"Those two things can become complicated very quickly."
I looked away.
On the kitchen counter sat a bottle sterilizer Daniel had ordered after reading three hundred reviews.
Its little blue light blinked steadily.
Denise asked whether I had ever witnessed Penny leave the children alone.
"Not recently."
"Previously?"
I thought of a summer afternoon four years earlier when Penny had dropped Lily and Noah at my apartment for what she called forty minutes.
She returned eleven hours later.
I had been furious.
Then she cried.
Then Martha called and told me Penny was overwhelmed.
By breakfast the next day, everyone acted as if nothing unusual had happened.
"Yes," I said.
Denise's pen moved.
"Tell me."
I did.
Then I remembered another time.
And another.
None sounded catastrophic alone.
A missed school pickup.
Lily calling because Penny had not come home by bedtime.
Noah staying with a neighbor for two nights because Penny was "sorting things out."
Each incident had been solved by somebody.
Usually Martha.
Sometimes me.
That was the shape of the neglect.
Not children abandoned in an empty house for a week.
A hundred small emergencies absorbed by other adults before anyone outside the family could see the pattern.
Denise asked for screenshots.
I sent them.
She asked for Penny's phone number.
I gave it.
Then she asked something I had not expected.
"If the children required temporary placement with a relative, would you be willing to be considered?"
I looked at Hazel.
"Both of them?"
"Potentially."
The room seemed to get smaller.
I had spent the last twenty-four hours furious that nobody protected Lily and Noah.
Being asked to protect them in a concrete way felt entirely different.
I had a newborn.
Daniel was deployed.
I was recovering from childbirth.
I had not slept.
I could barely remember when I had last showered.
"I don't know."
Denise nodded as if that answer pleased her more than an immediate yes.
"You don't have to decide today."
"I thought you said temporary."
"Temporary can still be difficult."
I rubbed my thumb over the seam of Hazel's blanket.
"What happens if I say no?"
"We look at other appropriate options if placement becomes necessary."
The guilt arrived instantly.
I hated how familiar it felt.
Denise must have seen something change in my face.
"Do not answer from guilt."
I almost laughed.
"You don't know my family."
"No."
She capped her pen.
"But I know what guilt sounds like."
After she left, I stood in the kitchen for a long time doing nothing.
The coffee had gone cold.
I drank it anyway.
At nine, Martha called.
I let it ring.
At nine oh three, she called again.
At nine seventeen, she sent a message.
"You have gone too far."
Then another.
"CPS called Penny."
Another.
"Do you understand what you've done?"
I stared at the words.
My first impulse was to defend myself.
I typed, "I called because you told me criminals were threatening the children."
I deleted it.
I typed, "You lied to me."
Deleted that too.
Then I put the phone down.
At ten thirty, Rosa came over carrying bananas, paper towels, and a bag of tiny socks.
"You bought more socks?"
"They disappear."
"She has been alive two days."
"They begin early."
I told her about Denise.
Rosa stopped unpacking.
"Would you take the children?"
"I don't know."
"Good."
I frowned.
"Why is everyone happy when I say I don't know?"
"Because when you say yes too fast, you usually mean somebody else decided for you."
That irritated me because it was true.
I took the bananas from her and put them in the fruit bowl more aggressively than bananas deserved.
Rosa watched.
"Did you sleep?"
"Enough."
"That means no."
May you like
She opened my refrigerator and frowned.
"You have six containers of breast milk and no lunch."
