“Let go, Mommy! You’re hurting me!” Harper howls at the top of her lungs.
But I can’t let her go. She’ll bolt if I do, and she’s too fast for me to catch. In one swift motion, I grab her arms and slip behind her, enveloping her body with mine and desperately trying to settle her. She flails and twists against me.
“Do you see what you’re doing? You’re upsetting her,” I growl at Genevieve. “Stop! Please. This isn’t her fault. She didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Genevieve gets in my face. Her nose inches from mine. Breath putrid. She stabs her finger in my chest while she talks. “Neither did mine.”
Harper is finally asleep. It took a bath, two episodes of Hero Elementary, and ten minutes rolling around in her sleeping bag, but she’s settled. I’ve never seen her that upset before. I don’t ever want to see it again. I step into the backyard to call Detective Layne. I’m glad it took so long to soothe her, because I needed the distraction to calm down after what happened too. He doesn’t answer but calls back just as I’m leaving a voice mail for him.
“What’s going on?” My fury ignites immediately at the sound of his voice.
“What are you talking about?” he asks like he has no idea why I’m upset.
“Genevieve completely lost it on me and my daughter tonight. I mean completely lost it. She cornered us in the parking lot at Walmart and went nuts. She kept screaming and asking how could I and telling my daughter that I tricked her. What is she talking about?” His plan hinges on me befriending Genevieve and getting her to trust me, so he might need to think about his plan B, because I’m not going anywhere near Genevieve for a while. Not after that.
“I’m sorry that happened to y’all, but she’s kind of on a rampage. She’s been down at the station carrying on too,” he says casually like it’s not a big deal, as if she didn’t just terrorize me and my daughter in a parking lot. “Guess her parents didn’t teach her not to throw temper tantrums when things don’t go her way.”
“You’re sorry it happened?” I can’t believe him. That was more than a temper tantrum. That was an all-out rage fit. “Care to fill me in on what’s going on?”
“I told you that we were going to have to look into the bruises on Mason’s arms . . . and so . . . we did.” I wait for him to explain further, but he doesn’t. A pregnant pause fills the space between us.
“You mean have a pediatrician examine him?” I ask after a few more beats pass and he still hasn’t spoken. I never stopped to consider the logistics of it when he said it. I didn’t know it was anything I needed to worry about.
“Yes, but we went about it in a bit of a nontraditional way,” he responds, and we’ve had enough conversations for me to recognize when he’s dodging the issue.
“What do you mean?” I wish he’d just get to the point.
“There was suspicious bruising on his arms, so I had to make a report to Tuscaloosa Family Services.”
“You made a report to family services? Like an official report?”
“I had to. I’m a mandated reporter.”
“So am I!” I shriek. “I wasn’t referring to child abuse when we were talking, and you know that. I never said anything about child abuse. It was all about whether or not he’d struggled with Annabelle or someone else down at the creek.” No wonder she said all those things. She must feel so betrayed. “I told you they might even be self-inflicted or unintentional.”
“We don’t know who put those bruises on Mason’s arms. That’s what we’ve got to find out.” I can hear the sound of a shrug in his voice.
“By filing a child abuse report?”
“You’re the one who said she might be training him to look like he was intellectually disabled on those tests and making him fake his autism. I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty abusive to me.”
But that’s not why he did it, and he knows it. He’s trying to shake things up. Separate Mason from Genevieve.
“How could you not tell me you were doing that?” I ask, but I should be used to this by now. I’m just his pawn. I’m not a player in this game. Not a real one, anyway.
“That’s how it goes sometimes,” he says, dismissing me that quickly. “I met with my team after we went over Mason’s test results, and we all felt the same way. It was a unanimous decision. Family services will look into it and make a determination.”
“What happened?” I’m still furious he didn’t warn me, but I want to know the story.
“A couple of my guys and I paid a visit to Genevieve this afternoon and brought along Patrisha Roberts from the Department of Family Services.” Ice clinks in a glass. A TV plays in the background. “Let’s just say Genevieve wasn’t too receptive to our arrival. She didn’t want to be cooperative, but she didn’t have any other choice. She had to let him go with us. She’s been pitching fits ever since.”
“Did they examine him yet?”
“They did. We don’t have anything official yet, but I’ve talked to the doctor.”
“And?”
“His arms are covered in what are pretty clearly fingertip bruises. They’re in various stages of healing. There’s other bruising on the back of his thighs. Don’t you worry—I made sure to tell them everything you said about them—how he might be bumping into things and putting them there himself. All that. Anyway, doesn’t really matter, because I’m pretty sure he’s not breaking his own bones.” That’s where he stops. He has to.
“What? Broken bones?”
“X-rays are pretty standard practice with multiple bruises on a child’s body like that and especially in those patterns. They found three old fractures on the CT scan. One on his shoulder. Two on the ribs.” He gives me a moment to let the information sink in. He doesn’t need to tell me that the shoulders and ribs are the most common spots for bone breaks in child abuse. “That’s not all they found, though. There’s also scarring on his upper thighs suggesting he might’ve been burned in some way. His body’s a pretty big mess. Genevieve’s insisting that all the injuries are self-inflicted and claims she had no idea about the broken bones, but family services launched an official investigation against her and placed Mason in emergency foster care until they figure it out.”
“They placed him in foster care?” I understand the investigation. That goes without saying, but usually kids are allowed to stay with another family member during it if at all possible.
“We didn’t have any other choice. Genevieve’s parents aren’t an option because her dad has dementia, and her mom provides round-the-clock care for him. John’s parents are out of the country and can’t even be reached.”
How did they remove him so quickly? Things never move that quickly with family services. “What about her siblings?”
“Both out of state.” He pauses, then adds, “And neither of them are willing to take him.”
“So where’d they place him?”