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“It wasn’t a dream,” she said again, louder. “The flat tire, the toilet seat, the missing things—”
“Ma’am, first you say it was silly, a nightmare, now you’re saying it happened? Come on now.” He shook his head slowly as though he were a disappointed teacher. “Stop this.”
The sergeant paused, then released a long exhale that rattled her, given how it seemed designed to create a sense of foreboding, to impress upon her that he was about to play an important card.
“I didn’t want to bring this up, but frankly, I have to. Maybe it’ll help you understand how important it is that you level with us.” She looked up at him, at the sky-blue glass of his eyes. “A report was filed with Family Services. They’ll need to evaluate you, evaluate your home, before you can get your kids back.”
The pounding swell of her cracked eye socket, her pained skull, surged outward.
“What?” she said, voice strangled. “What?”
He talked slowly, deliberately. “Family Services will need to assess you, the kids, your home, before you get them back.”
“I don’t—what?”
There were bright spots in her vision. She tried to see the sergeant through them, blinked rapidly to clear things up.
“My understanding is this is just a first evaluation to see if there’s a case for escalation.”
“Escalation?”
“To see if there’s any need for supervision, or a change in custody.”
She felt her arms around her children in the hidden place. Heard them desperate and scared, calling outMama!
“How—why?”
“Someone reported you as possibly unfit.”
“What—who?” she stammered.
“That’s anonymous.”
“My father-in-law?”
“I can tell you that he’s disturbed by the way you harmed them that night. So he could very well have reported you. But it could be someone else. From the hospital, say. One of the kids’ teachers.”
The casual way the sergeant listed the people who might find her unworthy to be a mother clarified her understanding.
This was planned.
“Could it have been a cop?” she asked.
The sergeant gave a half shrug, but his stare bored through her, daring her to accuse him. In her eyes he was transformed to one of the officers in her mother’s courtroom, part of a many-headed whole that efficiently discarded victims and survivors.
They make it your fault because that’s easiest for them.
“Officers are mandatory reporters,” the sergeant said coolly. “The point is, us being able to let them know you cooperated, were truthful, that you’ve got a grip on reality? That’ll go a long way in your favor.”
Yes, it’s blackmail. The police, your father-in-law, all working together to take them from you.
Just as it had in childhood after her mother died, after her husband was rushed bloody out the door, her body curled up unbidden around the aching longing in her chest. Her arms wrapped her ruined calves, her forehead met her knees, and her eyes closed reflexively.
“Trauma doesn’t end when the trauma ends,” the psychiatrist said.
“Ma’am?”
You promised them—promised them! You’d come get them. And now, now what?
