“No,” Jason said immediately.
“I didn’t say you’d be stuck there. I said we’re going in there together. Loreen’ll take pictures. And you’ll go back to your mom’s-if your dad’s in custody.” Griff fielded his dishes to the sink. Jason did the same.
“It sounds like we’re going to run some parallel paths,” Lily admitted. She was headed back to the B and B first for a change of clothes, then headed for social services herself, to see if there were records from twenty years ago on the disposition of her and her sisters. After that, she wanted to track down high school yearbooks for the two years before the fire.
“At soc services, ask for Loreen. She’s sharp, good lady. She’ll do you a favor if she can.”
They made a tentative plan to catch up predinner, but Lily wasn’t taking odds on that happening and told him so. “You’ve had days since you had a chance to get into your own office here. You need and have to get some time to yourself.”
“No, I don’t,” he argued.
“Well, we’ll see.” She wanted to be with him-more than he knew. But there was no guessing how long Jason would be with him, and no forecasting how long either of their days would be. “Call my cell if you want to cancel out-or if you have stuff to do and you just want me and Jason to hang out. At least, if that’s okay with Jason.”
It wasn’t quite. She could still see wariness in Jason’s eyes. There was only one person the child really trusted, and that was Griff. But he agreed-where Griff didn’t. Griff insisted on their catching up via cell several times during the day. And she couldn’t escape until she’d agreed to the tyrant’s demands.
Naturally though, nothing went as planned.
Chapter 11
It was almost noon before Lily located the old Department of Social Services building. Louella had held her up for the better part of an hour, wanting to gossip, hoping for more information. She’d changed clothes to a sleeveless shift, pale pink and white, as cool as anything she owned, and tried winding her hair with a clip on top of her head. The temperature by the time she returned to her rental car was the usual-hot, wet and steamy.
She’d have made it to the Department of Social Services building a good half hour earlier, if she didn’t make a couple wrong turns-and then had to fill up with gas. Finally, though, she located the flat-topped brick building on the far side of the railroad tracks. Once inside, everything got easier. She only had to ask for Loreen.
Griff’s contact had chocolate caramel skin, wore a print dress a size too small for her ample curves, and the tired face of a woman who’d seen it all. “Griff said you might stop. Heaven knows, I’ve been curious to lay eyes on you. Whole town’s talking about you and these fires. Come on back. I’ll get us both some sweet tea.”
“Oh, I don’t need-”
“I do. And from everything I’ve been hearing, you need all the sweet tea and sympathy you can get.”
Loreen’s office was jammed. File cabinets and desk overflowed with paper. The walls had pictures of missing kids, framed diplomas and credentials, schedules. One corner of the desk was reserved for a pitcher of sweet tea, cold and sweating on a tray with paper cups. “You just missed Griff by two shakes, was in here with the boy. Jason, his daddy’s bad to the bone. Got a nice smile, a nice look. It’s gonna kill me-and it’s gonna kill Griff worse-if the kid ends back in that house again.”
“I’m guessing you’ve tried to rescue him before.”
“So many times, I lost count. I guess I could send him to Alaska. But I swear, he’d run off and find his way back to his mama, no matter where I sent him. Has before. Three times. He thinks his daddy’s gonna kill his mama if he isn’t there. And I think he’s right.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Welcome to my world, honey. I can always get the dog put in jail. Just can’t get him sent up the river for good, when the only witnesses keep lying in court. Anyhow… That’s not what you’re here for.”
Lily admitted her visit was probably a lost cause. “I just wanted to ask if there was any chance the department kept records from twenty years ago.”
“Honey, there are probably records in this place from the beginning of time. I can’t give them to you without legal permission. But I can probably scare up what you want to know and then just tell you. What’s the name, and what exactly are you looking for?”
Lily ran through the whole Campbell history. “I don’t know if there’s anything else we can find about the fire for sure, but there’s been a question that has really troubled my sisters and me.”
“And that is?”
“Why we were separated. We were orphaned by the fire, obviously, but each of us was fostered to different families, in different states. Can you tell me why that happened? I assume no one could afford to take on three kids? I realize how expensive that would have been. But I’ve been led to believe that my dad had some savings, so it’s troubled all of us for a long time-why we were separated. And by such far distances.”
“It is odd,” Loreen agreed, and went on the hunt.
Old records and files had been computerized, but some of that historical data was saved on giant-sized floppies. Before reading them, they had to be converted and updated, which required a computer in a different room-which also required Loreen to order out for sandwiches, because she didn’t miss lunch, and that was that. The phone rang, interrupting her several times, but Loreen repeated, “Just stay. We’ll get our answers, and then we’ll be done. It’s not as if there’ll be more time another day. There won’t be. There never is.”
In the meantime, Loreen kept up a general patter about Jason and Steven and Walter-and a half-dozen other boys that Griff had taken on. “Under the covers, you understand. Always under the covers. Doesn’t foster. What he does is intervene, find some way for a boy in trouble to see another path. You can’t always fix what’s wrong. You can’t make bad people into good. But youngsters, if they can see a way out, they’re resilient. They’re…well, shoot, honey.”
“What?”
Loreen peered at the monitor, trying to read faded print on unclear copy. “I’ve got it. The report after your parents’ fire. It was the sheriff.”
“Pardon?”
“The sheriff was the one who advised the state that you three girls should be separated.”
Lily sank in the battered office chair. “Sheriff Conner? But I’ve talked to him a bunch of times. He never said. Does it say why he advised that?”
“Hmm.” Loreen scrolled through the document, which involved several pages of information. “Two families stepped up, said they’d take the three of you. But one was unsuitable-a farm. They really wanted child labor. Another, they only had a two-bedroom house, just wasn’t big enough to add three youngsters. But that wasn’t the problem. Apparently the social worker at the time-that’d be Samantha LaFitte, she retired around five years back, died last year-anyhow, she was the one who handled the case. Seems the sheriff’s opinion was the one that pulled the weight.”
“Why?” Lily repeated, feeling as if her world was being upended yet again.
All these years, her sisters could have been together? And Herman Conner, who she’d talked to over and over, had hidden that information all this time?”
Loreen finally looked up again with a frown. “You need to understand. I’m no mighty fan of the law. I see injustice done to women and children every day. But I do think a lot of Sheriff Conner. He’s never been the brightest knife in the drawer, but he had trouble with his own kids, never judged other people that I could see. He’ll turn his back if he thinks it’s the right thing. At least sometimes.”
“I hear you. I thought he was a good guy, too.”
“Apparently, he felt it was just the wrong thing for you three to stay in this town. He knew from personal experience that it was mighty hard for a child to live down a reputation. That an event or a problem could come back to haunt them. He thought it best if you three went somewhere where you’d make a completely clean start, forget about Pecan Valley altogether.”