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“Will you tell me about what happened after you left your aunt’s house? I know you lived with different families, but you never said why you didn’t stay with any of them.”
This would hurt Rhys. I knew it would. But he’d asked for no more lies and I’d promised.
“The first place I went, after I was there a few months all the kids got removed. The guy was . . . doing stuff to some of them. Not me,” I said quickly at Rhys’s horrified look. “The girls.”
Rhys bit his lip and nodded. He stirred the applesauce carefully.
“The next one was a temporary placement. Just a couple weeks. I don’t really remember it there.”
Dark painted walls and a couple of cats whose fur would make tumbleweeds in the corners. Sad kids. Sad woman. Or was it two different places? I couldn’t quite remember.
“Then it was this older couple that was very clean, and they were thinking of adopting. It was only me and this other boy who kinda looked like me there, and it felt like an audition. I saw a picture of the couple with another boy who looked like us. Their real son, I guess? I hated it there. They creeped me out. I didn’t want them to adopt me. So I acted bad so they’d get rid of me.”
Being the replacement for the son they actually wanted was even worse than not being wanted at all.
“Then there was a super religious old couple, and a lot of us who got there at the same time. Everything smelled like mothballs, and they talked about being chosen by God for a mission of redemption, and I didn’t know what it meant, but they watched us like they were waiting for a sign.”
“Is that . . . normal?” Rhys asked.
I shrugged. I’d heard so many stories that normal wasn’t even a word I thought to apply.
“The last one was Mrs. Muldoon.”
Her hair smelled like coconut oil and her clothes like lavender.
“She was really nice. She gave me Popsicles cuz when I got there I was freaked out and eating made me puke. She told me it was okay. She had her real son, Franklin, and then three other foster kids besides me. And Franklin hated me, I guess. I don’t know why. He just messed with me all the time. Shoving me when I passed by him or hiding my shoes. Stupid kid stuff. But after a few months it got worse. He, um. Peed in my bed. Mrs. Muldoon was real nice about it, telling me that it happened and when we get scared our bodies do all kinds of things.”
“Did you tell her it was him?” Rhys asked.
I snorted. “No way. He was her real son.” I could see Rhys, his childhood governed by fairness and love, about to argue, so I went on. “He started shoving a little harder and then pinching me. It just got worse. One day he slammed me against the wall and my head hit. It started bleeding. I told Mrs. Muldoon I got in a fight at school. I ended up telling her that a lot.”
Rhys was stirring the applesauce so vigorously it was splashing over the sides of the pot and hissing as it hit the stove. It hurt my stomach to see him hurting for me.
“Do you want me to stop?”
Rhys ground his teeth and shook his head. “I want to hear everything.”
“One night I was reading a comic book that Marcy leant me—one of the other kids. Franklin grabbed it from me, and the cover ripped. I got mad cuz I’d promised Marcy I’d take care of it. I told him he should buy her a new one, and he laughed at me. I kinda . . . shoved him, I guess. And he . . . beat the shit out of me. Way worse than before. It was like all that time he’d just been waiting for an excuse. I was a mess. Busted lip, broken nose, cut on my head that needed stitches, broken arm. Mrs. Muldoon came home when he was kicking me in the stomach. She took me to the hospital, and the next day I went to St. Jerome’s.”
I’m sorry, she’d said, brown eyes full of pain. I’m so sorry it has to be this way.
“How old were you?” Rhys’s voice was rough, his eyes so very hurt.
“Twelve.”
“How old was Franklin?”
“Seventeen.”
Rhys turned off the stove and moved slowly toward me. He dropped to his knees in front of my chair. “Can I . . .” He gestured like he wanted to hold me.
“I’m okay,” I said.
“I’m not.”
I hugged Rhys as tight as I could. His breath was thick, and I could feel his tears against my neck. I squeezed him even tighter as he cried. When he pulled back, his eyes were red, making the blue glow eerily.
