“Yeah, he’s sending Stan up here.”
“Great. I guess we’ll head to Sparrow.”
Stan was an elderly man who had been in recovery for decades. He volunteered to come to Turtle Grove to interact with clients, tell his story, and share his experience with the program. His knowledge and experience were vast, and having him was great for the clients.
“Have you ever flipped a house before?” asked Kerrie as they walked to Sparrow. The pretty day was starting to get cloudy, and the wind had picked up.
“No.”
“So here are the rules. Anything in the common areas, like the living room and bathroom, we can search. We can’t open anything of the clients’, like their little stands, without them here, but anything open or in plain sight is fair game.”
“So we’re going to just look for the phone?”
“Pretty much. I doubt we’ll find it, but hopefully it’ll make them uncomfortable, and someone will talk. Let’s start in Upper Sparrow.”
The little house looked like usual. The pale yellow walls with white trim were bright and happy, a stark contrast to the gloominess outside. She walked over to the semi-ripped-out kitchen. The sink and one row of kitchen cabinets were still there, but nothing else. No stove or microwave. No appliances or dishes in the cabinets. She pulled open a drawer. It had crayons, colored pencils, and several different coloring pages that they gave clients to use. She did the same with the one beside it. She laughed as she pulled out a rubber-banded pack of cards. “They made their own playing cards. They actually look pretty good.”
“Confiscate them. They’re not supposed to have cards.”
“Someone’s not going to be happy. This had to have taken a while to make,” she muttered to herself. She pocketed them in her lavender cardigan.
“Remind me to give them praise for keeping it clean. It looks like we’ve got some tidy people in here.”
She finished looking through the cabinets and went into the adjacent room with two beds and two wooden wardrobes. One bed was neatly made, and the other looked like a pile of unfolded laundry.
“Well, most of them look neat." Kerrie grinned over at her. She easily groped around the top of the wardrobe thanks to her towering height.
“So, what do we do if we find out it’s been used by many of them? Danielle said she didn’t think it was Payton’s phone but that he was borrowing it.”
Kerrie sighed, following her into another room. “Well, if this were a substance brought in then we would only send home the one who brought it in. We can’t fault them for being weak if it’s waved in front of their faces. We offer a safe environment, and when it slips in, can we really expect them to resist?”
“But a phone isn’t something their bodies are craving.” She used the closest bed to lower herself to the floor to look under it. Nothing.
“True. So that brings us to punishment. Obviously, whoever brought it in or had it dropped off will go. The temptation to contact the outside world would be great, but we can’t give it the same grace as if it were a substance. Are all yours on legal? Do you mind checking under the other one? Getting on the floor would be hell on my back.”
“Can do. You handle the tall search, and I’ll do the low.” She moved to the other and repeated the motion. She was only five-five, while Kerrie was much taller. “All of mine are on legal, except I have one that wasn’t court-ordered. He asked his probation officer if he would find funding for him to go.”
“Will?”
“Yep. That’s him. He hadn’t used in about a year, then his mom passed away, and he went on a short bender.”
She nodded as she shifted through a trash can. “I can tell he actually wants to be here. He’s very responsive when I do Group.”
“Yeah, I, ” she stopped, tilting her head.
“What?”
“Shh.”
There was a noise. A low buzz was somewhere in the room. She followed it to the farthest wall. There was nothing there except a painted-over brick panel and a platform where a woodstove would have once been.
“Did you hear that?”
Kerrie nodded. “I did. But from where?”
Reese looked around until her eyes landed on a plate-like cover that would have been where the woodstove vented out by a large pipe. It was well above her head. “Does that open?”
Kerrie stepped close to the wall. Using her fingers, she caught the lip of the cover and pulled. It opened right up. Kerrie grinned over her shoulder. “I’ll be damned.”
