Chapter 8 - NOAH’S DECISIONThree days after the emergency-room visit, Andrea sat beside Noah in a small interview room at the county office.
His guardian ad litem sat across from him.
Nobody asked him to choose where he wanted to live.
They asked something narrower.
“Do you feel safe returning to Aunt Lorna’s house right now?”
Noah looked at his shoes.
He knew what saying no could mean.
A foster home.
Another school.
People asking questions.
Mason being angry.
Grandma Carol calling him ungrateful.
Lorna crying and saying he had destroyed the family.
“I don’t know.”
His guardian waited.
Noah rubbed his palms against his jeans.
“If I say no, does she lose her house?”
“No,” Andrea said. “Your answer does not decide what happens to her house.”
“Does she lose the check?”
“The payments connected to your care may change if you aren’t living there.”
Noah understood more than the adults wished he did.
“That’s why she wants me back.”
Andrea did not answer for him.
Noah looked through the window into the hallway.
Marcus was waiting there.
Not because he was allowed to take Noah home.
He was not.
He and his wife, Tessa, had started the background checks required to be considered as a placement.
It could take time.
Noah turned back.
“I don’t want to go back.”
The guardian ad litem wrote the statement down.
Noah continued.
“She counts food.”
Andrea looked up.
“She writes our names on stuff. Mason gets his snacks. Mine go on the top shelf.”
“Why?”
“She says mine cost money.”
“What happens if you take something?”
“Sometimes I lose dinner.”
That answer changed the investigation more than the coins had.
The coins could be dismissed as one chaotic incident.
The food could not.
A temporary court order kept Noah outside Lorna’s home while the county investigation continued.
Lorna’s kinship subsidy was suspended because Noah was no longer placed with her.
Her attorney explained it in the courthouse hallway.
Lorna went very still.
“What about Social Security?”
“That will require a separate representative-payee review.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
Lorna looked past her attorney and saw Noah walking with Andrea.
She did not call his name.
She called Marcus’s.
“You wanted this.”
Marcus stopped.
“No.”
“You think you get to play Daniel now?”
“No.”
“You get the kid without the debt. That’s convenient.”
Noah turned around.
Lorna realized he had heard her.
For a moment, regret crossed her face.
Then fear overwhelmed it.
She stepped toward him.
“Noah, listen to me. Whatever you’ve told them about your father’s money—”
Cynthia caught her arm.
“Lorna.”
But the damage was done.
Andrea had heard it.
So had Noah’s guardian ad litem.
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And Noah finally understood that his aunt was afraid of something larger than losing a monthly benefit.
She was afraid someone would examine everything that had happened to his father’s money after his father died.
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