Chapter 2 - WHAT OUR MOTHER CALLED PROTECTION
The deputy handed the folder to Detective Camille Brooks, who arrived just before sunrise with a child-protection investigator.
Mom tried to take it back.
“Those are private medical papers.”
“They were on the floor of a reported crime scene,” Detective Brooks said.
“There hasn’t been a crime.”
Dr. Ruiz stood at the foot of Lily’s bed.
“Both girls have injuries inconsistent with a fall. Several are older and untreated. I’m making a mandatory report.”
Grant pointed through the glass at me.
“Ask Nora. She’ll tell you Lily starts fights.”
I looked at my sister.
Her swollen mouth trembled, but she gave me the smallest nod.
Survive first.
Remember everything.
“He beat us,” I said.
Grant’s face remained still.
Mom’s did not.
“Nora,” she whispered, “think about what you’re saying.”
“I have.”
“You were unconscious.”
“Not every other time.”
Grant moved toward my bed. The security guard stepped between us, and a deputy caught Grant by the arm.
“Don’t touch me,” Grant snapped.
“Turn around.”
“This is my family.”
“Turn around.”
The handcuffs closed behind his back.
Mom covered her mouth.
“He was trying to discipline them.”
Detective Brooks looked at her.
“With a belt?”
“They get violent with each other. He separates them.”
“By hitting them in matching places?”
Mom had no answer.
Grant was arrested on suspicion of assault of a child and unlawful imprisonment. The prosecutor would decide the formal charges after reviewing the evidence.
Mom was not arrested that morning.
She kept repeating that she had been frightened of Grant too, that she had tried to protect us and that the guardianship petition was meant to help.
“They can’t manage money,” she told the child-protection investigator. “They’re emotionally delayed because of their father’s death.”
“What money?” I asked.
Mom looked at me too late.
Detective Brooks opened the folder.
The petition described Lily and me as incapable of independent living. It claimed we experienced shared delusions, injured ourselves and each other, and required lifelong supervision.
Attached were photographs of broken dishes, holes in drywall and bruises on Grant’s arms.
There were also letters from a counselor we had never met.
“Who is Dr. Warren?” Lily asked.
Mom pressed both hands together.
“A psychologist who reviewed your history.”
“He never spoke to us.”
“He spoke to me.”
The petition asked the court to appoint Mom and Grant as our joint guardians after we turned eighteen. It gave them authority over housing, medical decisions and finances.
“What finances?” I asked again.
Mom began crying harder.
“Your father wanted you taken care of.”
Detective Brooks separated us for interviews.
I told her about the music player in my backpack and Lily’s online folder. I gave her the password, the library branch and the fake project name.
“Why didn’t you tell a teacher?” she asked.
“Grant checked our school accounts. Mom read our mail. The hallway cameras showed when we left our rooms.”
“You could have called 911.”
“We tried once.”
Two years earlier, Lily had called from a gas-station bathroom. Mom told the responding deputy we had run away after being grounded. Grant showed him scratches on his neck.
We spent that night on the laundry-room floor as punishment.
Detective Brooks listened without interrupting.
“The backpack is at your house?”
“It should be in my room.”
“Grant had access to the house before his arrest?”
“So did Mom.”
She spoke quietly into her radio, asking officers to secure the property while she requested a search warrant.
Lily reached through the gap between our beds and touched my fingers.
“The red notebook,” she said.
“It’s a decoy.”
“I know.”
Her eyes filled.
“Mom doesn’t.”
An officer searching Grant’s coat found a message on his lock screen.
It had been sent by our mother twelve minutes after Dr. Ruiz called 911.
I’LL GET THE NOTEBOOK BEFORE THEY SEARCH THE HOUSE.
Detective Brooks turned the phone so we could see it.
May you like
Mom had spent the morning claiming she feared Grant.
While Lily and I lay beneath hospital blankets, she had been trying to destroy our evidence.
