Starter House(82)

Lacey knew what these pictures would mean if she’d found them in some child’s book bag—they wouldn’t be Polaroids now, but printouts of digital pictures. Maybe not even printouts, but accidentally forwarded e-mail attachments. She’d never found such a thing, but she knew teachers who had. What did it mean, when they were pictures of herself? What did it mean that Ella Dane had kept them? She fanned them, slipped the naked picture back into its place, and closed the fan, so only the first picture could be seen, the innocent image of the little girl in the blue swimsuit, a picture any proud grandpa might frame. The long tanned legs and the tangled yellow hair.

“Why?” she said.

“In case I ever needed them. In case he tried to get you away from me. If there was a custody fight between him and me—he knew I had these, so he never dared. In case something happened to me, to make sure he wouldn’t get you.”

“No, why, why are you telling me now?”

“I couldn’t tell you before. And also . . .” Ella Dane reached out and touched the baby bump, and the baby kicked under her hand. “And I never knew till you told me the other day, how you felt about the way we lived. You were always so cheerful. All those adventures we had—I thought you were having fun. You looked like you were coping well. You know. Resilient.”

“It wasn’t all bad. But I didn’t feel resilient,” Lacey said. She still didn’t, not a bit resilient. Shattered, maybe. Overwhelmed. And Ella Dane was dealing with all this—threats of a custody fight, from the man who had taken these pictures—during those first terrible weeks of homelessness and confusion. “That day you picked me up from school, was that the day you found these?”

“The very same day. I just flung our stuff in plastic bags and went for you. That was it, we were gone. Some of my cousins had told me nasty things, but I never believed them, till that day.”

Lacey gave the pictures back. “I thought it was the worst day of my life.”

“You’d have had a worse worst day than that, if we’d stayed.”

“So why did you leave?”

Ella Dane looked startled. “What do you mean? It’s what you do. Your kid’s in danger, you get them away safe.”

“Lots of women don’t,” Lacey said. She hadn’t identified any victims of sexual abuse in her classes. She knew the numbers. About 8 percent of girls under ten were abused. Three years, twenty-five kids per class, thirty-eight girls altogether. The odds were she’d seen at least three victims. One every year had slipped past her, children she could have saved as Ella Dane had saved her. Some of those girls, those very quiet girls . . . She’d been so busy with the noisy boys, she would never know how many children in desperate need had sat in her classroom, quiet and mild, their suffering invisible to her teacher’s eye. “Lots of women stay for lots of reasons.”

“You didn’t,” Ella Dane said. “That’s why we’re here. I understand what you’re going through, I really do. What he might have done to you. What that thing might do to your baby. Better to sleep in the car than one more night under his roof.”

Were they talking about Drew or Grandpa Merritt? “I wish you’d told me,” she said. All these years, she’d carried that vision of the white house with the green door, her perfect home. She’d painted her own door green. It made her sick.

“I’m telling you now. I didn’t want you to grow up scared. I didn’t want you to think you’d ever been touched. Because you weren’t; you were never touched. I asked you some questions, not to give you any ideas but to find out what you knew. . . . He took the pictures, but he never did the next thing.”

“What was that?”

“He would have dressed you up and taken more pictures. That’s what my cousin Maureen said. And then other things, but first it was pictures in costumes.”

The swimsuit was almost a costume, in those Polaroids. Maybe he’d been further along than Ella Dane wanted to think. “He wanted to get me a special dress for Halloween, a princess dress. He said something.” Lacey wasn’t sure if she truly remembered this; she remembered that first night in the car, she remembered the palmetto bug in her book bag, and she remembered wanting to go home. She remembered the deep, bitter, adult rage she had felt against her mother for taking away that comfortable life. “I wish you’d told me.”

“There was a silver dress in his closet,” Ella Dane said. “Sequins and sparkles. I found the pictures, I saw the dress, I remembered what Maureen said, and that was it. We had to go. You’ll do what you have to do, to keep that baby safe.” She put the pictures in their envelope and handed Lacey the orange shovel. “Bibbits is ready.”