“Katie moved out the day she turned eighteen. I was twelve, and she took me with her. We honestly didn’t think Aunt Betsy would care. Boy, were we naive. We moved into a tiny apartment above a garage. There wasn’t even a wall to hide the toilet, but I loved it. I started painting the walls the very first day. Katie didn’t mind. On the third day, the cops arrived. Aunt Betsy had called them, and they had come to get me. Both Katie and I tried to describe what living with her was like, but Katie—according to the cops—didn’t have custody, or means to take care of me.”
“Why didn’t your aunt Betsy just let you go?”
“At first, Katie and I believed it was because my dad sent her money.”
“Then why didn’t you call your dad and tell him that she was mistreating you?”
“We quickly found out that money—Dad’s money, anyway—wasn’t the issue.”
“You still could have called your dad and told him how things were.”
“Katie tried to, right when we first moved in with Betsy. He screened his calls and never answered the phone, and after he died, we discovered that he’d never opened our letters, either. He didn’t want to know.”
Rafe had no idea what to say. As a cop, he’d witnessed all kinds of neglect. Dads who beat their kids for no reason, dads who spent grocery money on beer and dads who walked out without saying goodbye. He pitied them. But, he pitied the kids more.
“So why didn’t your aunt Betsy let you stay with Katie?”
“Because she didn’t want to be alone. She liked the attention I brought. And because she got more handouts. Can you believe it? I was an extra box of food to her. And if she had free food, she could spend the money she didn’t spend on food on beer. She made me miserable all for an extra box of food! Try telling that to a cop.”
“So you did try?”
“Yup.”
“And those cops pretty much ignored what you were saying.”
“Yes. And at least one of them knew how bad it was. He’d been called to Betsy’s apartment a time or two when one of her parties got out of hand.”
It wasn’t right, but Rafe understood what the cops had probably been thinking—there was a fine line between neglect and abuse. Neglect had to be pretty pronounced in order for the cops to intervene.
He left the highway and turned onto one of Scorpion Ridge’s main thoroughfares. The Corner Diner was still open. Inside he could see his mother as she wiped down a table. “But you were being fed.”
“Spaghetti and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, mostly.”
“And you went to school.”
“Perfect attendance until Katie moved out and they forced me back to Betsy’s.”
“And you were clean.”
“Katie made sure of that, and I prefer things neat, myself.”
“So the cops took you back.”
“And I started running away. I always ran to Katie. Every time, a cop found me and returned me to Betsy. They threatened Katie with kidnapping, with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, with harboring a fugitive.”