Chapter 5
They put me in Emily's room after dinner and it didn't feel like being saved. It felt like being moved from one box to another while the adults decided what to do with me.
Emily's carpet was pink and soft under my feet. She'd laid out her blankets by the closet and made a nest, not a bed. She patted it and said, "You can have the pillows." I sat on the edge and didn't lean back. My hair was still damp from the bath Sarah gave me in the kitchen sink, and I could smell the baby shampoo she'd used. My dress was in the laundry hamper downstairs, and I wore one of Emily's oversized t-shirts that hung to my knees. It said AUSTIN in glitter letters.
Downstairs, Mark and Sarah weren't talking to each other anymore. I heard Sarah say, "You need to figure this out, Mark," and then a door clicked shut. His office door. The one Emily told me was not for kids.
Emily turned on her little white sound machine, the one that made rain noises. She thought it would help me sleep. But the vent on her floor, the same kind of white louvered rectangle as the one in the hallway, was buzzing faintly. When the heat kicked on, I could hear everything.
The first call was to someone named David. I didn't know who David was, but Mark's voice came through that vent clear and tired.
"Dave, it's Mark. I need off-the-record advice," he said. I curled closer to the vent. Emily sat next to me and put her hand on my arm. "No, not a client. It's... Jessica's kid. Yes, Mia. She's here. Her grandmother can't keep her and I brought her here eleven days ago. Sarah didn't know."
There was a long pause on his end while the other man talked. Emily's eyes got wide.
"I know how it looks," Mark said, and his voice got lower. "If this goes formal, if there's a filing, the partnership vote is next month. You know how Henderson is about family optics. I need a quiet solution. A private placement, maybe? Can we do a temporary guardianship without CPS? She can't stay here."
The words landed hard in my chest. She can't stay here. I had heard adults say that before at my grandma's apartment when they talked about me while I pretended to be asleep on the couch. Emily squeezed my hand too hard.
"Don't listen," she whispered, but I had to.
Mark kept talking. "Her mother died, Dave. The grandmother is... she's not stable. Drinking. I have photos. But if Sarah—" He stopped. "I can't lose my family over this."
After he hung up, he dialed again right away. This time his voice was different, tighter.
"Helen? It's Mark Reeves." Helen was my grandma. I hadn't heard her voice in eleven days. "Yes, she's with me. Helen, you told me you couldn't do it. You told me to figure it out."
I couldn't hear her, just a thin, crackly voice through the phone. Mark rubbed his eyes, I could hear his chair squeak.
"I did not abandon her in a wall, Helen. I gave her blankets and food. Emily—" He cut himself off. "Don't threaten me with that. You left her alone for two nights to go to— I don't care where you went. She was eating crackers for dinner."
Emily looked at me and mouthed, "It's okay."
"No. No, I'm not bringing her back tonight," Mark said. "You need help before you can have her back. I need a few days." He hung up harder this time.
Footsteps came down the hallway before Mark could make a third call. Sarah's. She didn't knock. She opened his office door.
I heard it through the vent and also through Emily's bedroom door, which was cracked open an inch. Sarah's voice wasn't yelling. It was worse. It was quiet.
"I heard you, Mark," she said. "Both calls."
Mark tried to talk over her. "Sarah, I was just—"
"You told your law partner she can't stay here," she said. Her voice shook a little. "Like you were moving a piece of furniture. Like you were fixing a leak. That's a little girl in Emily's room. That's your daughter."
"She is, and that's why I need a plan that doesn't blow up our lives," he said. He sounded desperate now, not smooth like at the charity gala Emily had mentioned. "You think I want this? Henderson already asked me about stability at home. If this turns into a CPS case—"
"So you choose image over child?" Sarah cut in. "You already chose once. You put her behind a wall. Now you're shopping for someone else to make her disappear quietly so we can go back to being perfect?"
Silence. Then Mark said, very low, "What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to stop making phone calls behind closed doors and go look at her face and tell her the truth," Sarah said. "That she's not going back to a place where she's alone with an empty fridge. Not tonight."
I didn't hear what he said after that because Emily pulled me away from the vent. She'd started crying without making noise, the way kids do when they don't want to get in trouble.
"You're not going back there," she said to me, and she was holding both my shoulders now. She was eight but she tried to sound like a mom. "If they try to send you, I know another spot. Behind the coats in my closet. There's a big space. I can bring you bread again. I promise."
May you like
I nodded, but inside my chest the fear got sharp and clear. I had been hidden for eleven days and found for one afternoon, and already they were talking about where I couldn't stay. Emily's promise was the only thing that felt solid, and it was a promise to hide me again.
Downstairs, the office door stayed open. No one came to check on us for a long time.
