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“What did you hear?”
“I don’t know. Noises like someone was tired, and sometimes I would hear my mom cry.”
“You heard your mom cry?”
“Yeah, I think some of her boyfriends were mean to her. She sometimes came out with red marks on her face or arms, and once, she was bleeding back there.” He pointed at his behind, and I ground my teeth.
“I’m sorry they were mean to her.” If there were any way to know who those men were, I would hunt them down and kill them. A moment later, I froze as Carmen asked another question. “Did they ever try to hurt you?”
There was a long pause before he spoke again in a softer voice. “Yeah, sometimes.”
I put my hands over my face and rocked forward, suddenly wanting to shut out what he was saying. Tears began to fill my eyes, and then Candy was there, pulling my hands away and climbing onto my lap to hold me tightly. I buried my face into her neck and quietly cried as I listened to how he vividly described several men molesting him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CANDY
Iwas horrified, and I knew Mike was too. I watched the man begin to crumble right in front of me, and I knew I had to do something for him. I climbed on his lap and held him as his body shook softly. He only cried for a few moments, but I felt every single tear burn into my soul as it dropped onto my chest.
I wiped my cheeks now and again as we continued to listen. That was the most horrifying information that we learned. Carmen kept Harley talking for another thirty minutes and then asked him if she could visit with him again.
Harley was excited to know she would come to see him again, and when he joined us in the kitchen, our tears had dried, and I dug in the freezer for an ice cream sandwich I had seen the last time I cleaned out the freezer.
“How would you like a treat?” I asked him.
“A treat?”
“Have you ever had an ice cream sandwich?”
“You can make a sandwich with ice cream?”
“You sure can.” I unwrapped it and put it in a bowl. “Why don’t you take this out to the living room, and we will turn the TV back on?”
He followed me into the other room as Carmen came in with the two empty glasses. I turned the television up a little louder than it had been to hide some of our conversations and returned to find Carmen and Mike standing on the far side of the kitchen near the laundry room.
“I’m so glad you called me, Candy. That young man is so sweet, and he is smart, Mike. He's really smart, but he hasn’t had any education, so he’s very behind, but I think with some tutoring and the right structure, he will blossom.”
“What about the other stuff?”
She winced. “Well, the fact that he was in the house with his mother’s body for about three days will one day rear its ugly head and cause some issues.”
“Three days?” I echoed.
She nodded. “Yeah, I had Ethan do some searching, and he found the police report and was able to get a copy of the autopsy. She succumbed to a heroin overdose but would have died soon anyway from cancer. She was probably using heroin to combat the pain, and they found the cancer was in more than just her breasts. It was all over her body.”
“Do you think heroin was a new thing to her then? Because of the cancer?”
She shook her head. “No, the police reports said she had a long history of heroin use, and as you can probably guess, she had a history of prostitution, too. From what Harley was saying, I’d think that payment was in the form of drugs and food.”
Mike frowned. “Ethan knows all this?”
“Yeah, but don’t worry, Mike. He won’t say anything and was utterly outraged at what he learned. He might not like adults, but he has a real soft spot for kids. He even got me pictures of where they were living, and Harley describes it pretty accurately.”
“Can we see the pictures?” I asked.
“I don’t think it would be a problem, but I’ll have Ethan send them to you. I can’t legally show them to you, but he could.”
“Does Ethan know that they are here?” I asked.
