Chapter 10 - The Chair Across From the Window
The family services office smelled like old carpet and coffee. The lights buzzed. My shoes were too big and they made a soft slap sound when I walked, so I tried not to move my feet.
The man sat next to me. Not too close. His suit jacket was folded over his arm now because the waiting room was warm. His white shirt had a wrinkle down the front from sitting all day. He had his hands together in his lap, his gold ring catching the light when he turned his thumb.
A woman came out with a clipboard and said our names. Not our names together. She said his last name first, then mine. “Emily?” she said, like she was checking I was real.
We followed her down a short hall to a small room with a window that looked out at a parking lot. Rain from last night was still in the puddles. There were plastic chairs, a low table with a box of tissues and some crayons in a cup. A sign on the wall said every child deserves safety in blue letters.
The caseworker sat across from us. She wasn’t old. She had short hair pulled back and a gray sweater with a badge clipped to it. She smiled at me first, then at him.
“Thanks for coming in,” she said. “I know yesterday was a lot.”
I looked at my hands. Yesterday was Grandpa’s apartment. The door with the notice on it. The empty kitchen. The man asking the manager if he could take the small wooden cross from the wall by the bed for me. I had it in my pocket now. I kept touching it through the fabric.
The caseworker opened a folder. “I have the report on your grandpa, Emily. And I’m very sorry. What you told us was right.”
I didn’t say anything. I’d known. I just nodded.
“And now I need to ask about your mom and dad, so we get it right,” she said. Her voice was low. “Can you tell me what happened?”
I glanced at the man. He didn’t jump in. He’d done that since the restaurant. Let me talk first. He just nodded once at me, small.
I breathed in. The air tasted like paper.
“My dad died first,” I said. “A long time ago. I was little.”
The caseworker wrote that down. “Do you remember how long ago?”
I shook my head. “Mom said he got sick in his chest. There’s a picture but we left it.” I swallowed. “That was before we lived with Grandpa. We lived in an apartment with a red door then.”
“Okay,” she said. “And after your dad died, you lived with your mom?”
“Yes.” My fingers pulled at the edge of my sleeve. “She worked at night cleaning offices. She’d leave soup in the microwave for me. She called to check.”
The man was very still beside me. I could hear his watch tick when the hall got quiet.
“What happened then?” the caseworker asked.
I looked at the window. A car backed out of a puddle. “She started crying a lot. She said the bills were too much since Dad. Then one morning she said she had to go fix something. She packed a bag. Just one.”
I stopped because my throat got tight. The caseworker waited. She didn’t reach for the tissues like people do on TV. She just waited.
“She said she’d call,” I said. “She called two times. Then her phone stopped working. Grandpa tried her number a bunch.”
The man’s hand moved a little on his knee, like he wanted to put it on my shoulder but didn’t. I was glad he didn’t. I didn’t want to cry in front of the crayons.
“How long did you live with your grandpa after that?” the caseworker asked.
“Since then,” I said. “He picked me up from school that day. He said Mom needed time. He never said she was bad. He said grown-ups get lost too.”
The caseworker wrote more. “Did your mom ever come back to visit?”
“No.” I shook my head fast. “But she didn’t die. People keep asking like that. She left. She just didn’t come back.”
There was a quiet in the room. The buzz of the lights got louder.
The caseworker looked up. “Thank you for telling it clear, Emily. I have to write down the difference between a parent who we know has passed and a parent we haven’t been able to find. Right now your mom is in the second group. That means we have to try to find her. That’s the rule.”
My stomach dropped. “Try to find her how?”
“We check phone records, last address, contacts, her work,” she said. “It doesn’t happen fast. But we have to do it before any long-term decision.”
I looked at the man. His face didn’t change, but his eyes went to the folder, then back to me. Solemn. Like at the restaurant.
“Did I do wrong telling?” I asked. My voice came out smaller than I wanted. I looked at the caseworker, then at him. “If I tell the truth, does that mean I can’t stay?”
The man spoke for the first time since we sat down. His voice was low and careful.
“No,” he said. “Telling the truth doesn’t get you in trouble.”
He didn’t say my mom would come. He didn’t say she wouldn’t. He didn’t fix it. He just said that part. I held onto it.
The caseworker nodded. “He’s right. Honesty helps us keep you safe. It doesn’t punish you.” She closed the folder halfway. “You’re not in trouble for what your mom did or didn’t do.”
I nodded, but my hands were shaking a little. I put them under my legs to stop it. The wooden cross pressed against my thigh through my pocket.
“Do you remember your mom’s full name? And where she worked cleaning?” she asked.
I told her what I could. Mom’s name. The office building with the shiny floors. The lady Mom rode with whose car smelled like oranges. The last phone number Grandpa had written on the fridge in black marker. The caseworker wrote it all without rushing me. When I couldn’t remember, she said that was okay.
When we were done, she stood and said someone would call us about next steps. That the search request was going in today. She walked us back to the waiting room where the chairs were all in a row and the coffee machine gurgled.
May you like
I sat down to wait for the papers she needed to copy. The man sat beside me. After a minute he took his folded jacket and laid it gently over my lap because I was cold. It was heavy and smelled like rain and soap.
I didn’t know if finding Mom would be good or bad. I just knew saying it out loud made it real in a new way. Gone, not dead. And now they were going to look.
