AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’ll get to the bottom of it. Do you want to bypass going out to breakfast? I’ll make something here.”
“Okay, that’s fine. It’s probably for the best.”
“In the meantime, I’d better call Maggie and tell her to prepare Tina for a playmate,” Annie said, patting Stevie’s back.
“Dave and Katrina are bringing Davie so there will be plenty of playmates.”
“Come on, baby, you’ll be okay,” she murmured to her son, checking him out. “Do you want to take a bath? Then you can see Tina and Davie.”
“Tina and Davie!” He nodded his head, wiping his eyes, happy for the first time in hours.
“Why a bath now?” Chris asked.
“It’ll calm him down and maybe I can get him to tell me what’s wrong. A toddler doesn’t cry for no reason and if what Steve said is true, he started this twelve hours ago. Look at his eyes! They’re swollen from crying so much.”
She put Stevie’s feet on the ground and took his hand. “Take Mommy to the tub,” she said, grinning down at him, and he picked up his pace, pulling her along.
It only took a minute for Annie to see that something was terribly wrong and she called Chris into the bathroom. “Look at his back!”
Chris knelt down and saw red marks where possibly the child had been hit from up around his shoulders to below his waist, concentrated on the right side.
“Do you want me to photograph him?”
“Yes! Hurry. Maybe you should call Dave.”
She did all she could to prevent falling apart in front of her little boy while Dave photographed the signs of abuse.
***
At Creole Cottage, after church on Sunday, Dave and Katrina were on opposite sides of the house. Dave was up front in the renovated kitchen, putting the finishing touches on the potato salad he made to take to Sunday at Bayou Cottage, while Katrina was in back in the nursery, looking through picture books with Davie. Just as he folded in one more tablespoon of mayonnaise, Dave’s phone beeped. It was Chris.
“Did I get you at a bad time?”
“Not at all. What’s up?”
“I’ll make it snappy. Annie thinks her son was abused at his father’s house. Steve dropped him off this morning because he’d been crying since last night. She was going to bathe him and when she undressed him, saw red marks on his back from his shoulders to his butt.”
Dave thought for a moment. “I’ll be right there. Did you take pictures?”
“Yes.”
“Tell her not to put him in the tub.”
Chris stuck his head in the bathroom door. “Don’t put him in the tub, Dave said.”
“Okay. He can play in the water from outside of the tub.”
She let him splash her and the interaction with his mother calmed him down. Smoothing his hair on the nape of his neck, she saw something she’d missed before—scratches on his neck.
“Chris.” She pointed to the scratches. “Fingernails?”
He shook his head, appalled. It was unlikely that Steve, who appeared to love his son, would ever hurt him.
“Girlfriend?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I’m going to call Steve.”
“Should you wait for Dave?”
