“Hello?” she calls.
“What can we do for you?” Connor asks, not sounding very welcoming.
“Is Greer Woods here?”
She lowers her hands, squinting to see us through the light. All the color drains from Greer’s cheeks. She starts to step forward, but Connor inserts himself between them. “Who are you?”
“I’m not here to make trouble,” she says, ignoring his question. “I only need a few minutes.”
“Not going to happen. How’d you get up here?”
“Caught a ride to the nearest town and walked.”
“Are you with the press?”
“What? No.”
“Does anyone else know we’re here?”
She shakes her head. “No, look, I understand why you’re concerned, but I promise, I’m not here to expose anyone—”
“Expose anyone? What’s that supposed to mean?”
He’s advancing on her now, and she, in turn, slinks back toward the pines. “Nothing, just, well, because of who your parents are—”
“How do you know—”
“What the fuck—”
“Who told her—”
Everyone starts talking at once, but their shouts are cut short by the deafening blast of the car horn.
“Okay,” Greer says, taking her palm off the steering wheel. “Let’s try this again.”
“I just need your help—” the stranger says, but Connor seizes her by the elbow.
“You’re trespassing on private property. We’ll give you a ride back to town, but that’s all the help you’re getting.”
He yanks as hard as he can so that she has no choice but to stumble after him, then throws open the door to the back seat. “Don’t,” she protests, but Connor’s clearly had enough. He pushes down on her shoulders, trying to force her inside like the police do with perpetrators, but she resists. The waistband of her jeans rolls down as she tries to scramble out of his hold, and that’s when we all see it.
A knotted rope of scar tissue.
Like someone jabbed a hook through her skin, then ripped it free. Disgusting, and yet all of us keep staring. Connor tries once again to push her into the back seat. “Wait!” We spin around to stare at Hannah, who’s pointing at the laceration. It’s the first thing I’ve heard her say. She immediately shrinks back into herself, her next words coming out in little more than a whisper. “Who did that to you?”
The woman wavers, as if trying to determine whether she can trust us. Finally, she tosses her backpack onto the ground, drops to her knees, and unzips the main compartment. “I’m here because I have a story that needs to be shared.” She tugs out a thick manila envelope.
“What kind of story?” Greer asks.
Instead of answering, the woman pulls a sheet of paper free andstarts reading. “?‘Steffani has four burn marks on her forearm. She claims she was playing with a lighter and accidentally injured herself; however, the wounds are inconsistent with her narrative. Her father has a documented history of domestic violence and sole custody, her mother having left the home last year.’?”
“You’re Steffani?” Kemy asks.
She pulls up her T-shirt so we can see the full extent of the damage; there’s a collective intake of breath. “The man who did that”—she points to the scarring—“I want him gone.” She pulls more papers out of the envelope, spreads them across the ground. We’re too far away to see the details, but some display government seals. “I have his arrest records, a catalogue of all the foster homes they sent me to, statements from my social workers.”
“We’re not law enforcement—” Connor starts, but Steffani ignores him.
“You have that television show—”
