Wild Dirty Secret(73)

I had. “I figured it was your cop prowess.”

He laughed shortly. “Not exactly. I grew up dirt-poor, in the scariest fucking neighborhood around. It’s gone now. They razed it down, built some fancy houses on top. It was for the best. That place needed to go.”

My hand found his.

“We lived in the basement of this house, renting, but my mom was a nurse, so she was gone for full days at a time. The guy who owned the house was a real jerk. It was worse when I got a job after school. Daisy would lock herself in her room until one of us got home.” He looked down at our linked fingers. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

I squeezed gently. “Because you can. Remember? You don’t have to pretend around me.”

A faint smile brushed his lips. “That was supposed to go the other way. So that you could relax.”

“I’m relaxed. And I don’t think less of you.”

“It got worse.” He grew grim. “My mom died when I was fifteen. Some lunatic came into the ER, waving a gun around. Shot her and three other people because his wife had died there. How does that make sense? What kind of logic is that?”

“I’m so sorry.” My heart ached for the grief on his face.

He shook his head as if to clear it. “Anyway, the guy who owned the house ransacked our rooms. He took the money, any documents, everything important. When the police came, they said Daisy and I should stay there, that he had allowed us to live there and continue going to school until they determined a permanent solution. I guess he was supposed to be our temporary guardian, but we knew it would be bad. Maybe if I had said something. If I had spoken out against him then, they might have removed us from the home.”

The way he spoke, it was clear he’d been down this line of questioning before, that the path was deeply rutted with guilt and what-ifs. I knew how dangerous that path could be. “You did what you thought was right at the time. You were a kid.”

“That night when he came for Daisy, I fought him. I punched him, and he went down, hitting his head on a table. There was blood everywhere. I thought I’d killed him.” He met my eyes, a little dark, a little rueful. “I was sure I had. Only years later I looked him up and found out he’d lived another six months before his liver gave out.”

“It was self-defense,” I said, stating the obvious, knowing it wouldn’t have mattered to a scared kid protecting his little sister.

He stood up and paced, as if unable to stay still. “We didn’t wait to see if they’d believe us or where they’d put us next. We ran. For a while it wasn’t too bad. I was motivated. I worked all day and all night instead of going to school. I made enough to buy food, and that was about it. I’d bring her library books to read, but she had all day to sit around in the abandoned house we were staying in. She was bored and restless, like any twelve-year-old girl would be day after day.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, heart heavy. After all, I already knew the ending to this story.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, but I knew he didn’t believe it. “She just wanted to make friends. But the only other street kids around stole shit and did drugs. She got caught up in it. We argued all the time, but I wasn’t there. I was out working for us so much of the time, and then when I was home, I was exhausted.” Regret stained his words. “I didn’t have enough patience with her, nor did I try to see her side of things. I just yelled at her to stop seeing them.”

“A fifteen-year-old boy is not ready to parent a teenage girl. He’s not supposed to be ready to do that. That’s what parents are for.” Although it seemed like we’d both got the shaft in the parental department.

“Then one day, she disappeared. She had gone missing a couple of nights and come back in the morning. The first few times, I had looked everywhere and given her a bunch of shit when she came back. This time I was going to be tough. I was going to tell her she had to shape up, or I wouldn’t help her anymore. No more giving money to her so-called friends for drugs. When she came back, I was going to cut her off. Only she never came back.”

I hugged him, and he wrapped his arms around me and rested his chin on the top of my head.

“I looked for her, of course. Beat the shit out of a few of her friends; they told me she’d started hooking. Didn’t get very far on my own. I got my GED and enrolled into the academy.”

“You’ve never stopped looking,” I said softly.

“I can’t,” he admitted. “Even when I tell myself I’m done, that I’ve moved on, I find myself pulling up Jane Doe records. I hadn’t even planned on asking about her last night. Or maybe I knew I would. I don’t know anymore. But the guy told me he’d been with Henri from the early days, and the timing was right. Next thing I know, I’m questioning him and risking the whole damn operation, risking your safety, on a lost cause.”