Chapter 6
The emergency foster home was clean.
Warm.
Full of toys.
Lucy still hid crackers under her pillow.
The foster mother, Mrs. Alvarez, called me after the first night.
“She keeps asking if the baby survived.”
I drove over after shift.
Lucy sat on the porch steps wearing pink socks someone had bought her.
She looked smaller without Leo in her arms.
“Is he okay?” she asked.
“He’s with his mom.”
“Did he cry?”
“A little.”
“For me?”
“Maybe.”
Her chin trembled.
“I didn’t mean to take him from his real mommy.”
I sat beside her.
“You took him to safety.”
She leaned against my arm.
“Will Mommy go to jail?”
“Your mom is helping the police.”
“Brent said she’s bad.”
“Brent said a lot of things that were not true.”
Lucy looked at the street.
“Can bad people be moms?”
The question hit deep.
“Yes,” I said carefully. “And scared people can be moms too.”
She thought about that.
“Mommy was scared.”
“I know.”
Sarah entered a treatment program while charges against her were reviewed.
She had not kidnapped Leo.
But she had waited too long to call for help.
That truth sat heavily on everyone.
Emily visited Lucy two days later.
She brought a small stuffed lion.
Lucy held it like it might vanish.
Emily sat on the porch floor in expensive jeans and no makeup.
“Leo is doing better,” she said.
Lucy whispered, “Does he remember me?”
“He smiles when I say your name.”
Lucy looked up.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Emily pulled out her phone and played a video.
Leo lying in a crib, kicking his feet, making soft baby sounds.
Emily said from behind the camera, “Can you say thank you, Lucy?”
Leo squealed.
Lucy burst into tears.
Emily cried too.
I stood near the porch rail, pretending to give them privacy.
But I heard Lucy whisper, “I miss him.”
Emily answered, “Then you’ll see him again.”
The case should have ended there for me.
But cases involving money never end clean.
Charles’s family filed motions claiming Emily was mentally unstable.
They claimed she staged Leo’s kidnapping for sympathy during divorce.
They claimed Lucy’s statement had been coached.
Then a private investigator followed Mrs. Alvarez’s house.
I caught him outside at 10 p.m.
He said he was checking addresses.
His camera was full of photos of Lucy.
I arrested him for trespassing.
The next morning, an envelope arrived at my precinct.
Inside was a photo of my little sister, Anna.
The sister I had lost twenty-two years ago.
May you like
On the back, someone had written:
You failed one girl already. Stay away from this one.
