“I have to admit, I saw red, but I couldn’t challenge you with it there and then. We had to get Riley to the doctor.”
“And then I made you drive,” she commented.
“Yeah.”
For an instant, that old shiver of apprehension rippled up his spine but he ignored it. He’d conquered that demon because she’d made him do it. If she hadn’t, he might never have driven again. After the accident, his license had been suspended for six months and his lawyer had negotiated a period of probation for him so he hadn’t served any time for his negligence. He’d never wanted to get behind the wheel again, ever. He’d wanted to continue to punish himself forever, if that was what it took to relieve the pain of what he’d done. And then he’d found Riley. Another human being who needed him and, in that moment, relied on him to do the right thing. It had changed everything.
Sam dragged in a deep breath before continuing. “While you were in with Riley I got another call from my investigator. One that told me about your life before you came to the lake.”
She paled visibly. “I guessed as much,” she said, wrapping her arms about her middle as if she could protect herself from what was to come. “I didn’t exactly lead an exemplary life.”
“You didn’t exactly have the care and protection a child should have in their home prior to that either. You had nowhere else to go, did you?”
“Lots of people leave home and still make a go of things without getting into the trouble I did.”
Sam felt the love in his heart swell even more when she didn’t allow herself any excuses, but wasn’t that part of the problem? That she was so hard on herself that she was prepared to give Riley up altogether?
“Can you tell me a bit about it?”
“What? My happy home life or what it was like living on the streets? To be honest with you, oblivion was better than either of them. You know it all anyway, why do you need to hear it from me?”
“Because I need to know it from your side.”
He waited, silently urging her to carry on. Her gaze was focused intently on Riley as he rolled again on his mat, his attention suddenly riveted on a toy just out of his reach. Erin bent down and shifted the toy closer, letting Riley reach for and grab it himself. Finally, she sat back in her chair and began to speak.
“My mother never wanted me. She blamed me, incessantly, for my father leaving before I was born. We didn’t have much while I was growing up and she liked to make sure that I knew that was my fault, too. At some point I realized that wasn’t normal. That her bitterness toward me wasn’t like what other kids’ mommies were like with their families. I learned to hide when she was on a bender, to duck when her fists were a little too free.”
Sam heard the understatement in her words. Fury against her mother fired to life inside him. If the woman couldn’t provide the very basics of human comfort to her child, why then didn’t she allow her to stay with someone who could? Every child deserved at least that, surely?
“As soon as I was old enough,” Erin continued, “I left. I ended up with a brief stay in a foster home with a great family, but my mother fought to get me back—even now I can’t understand why she did that unless it was to make sure my life was as utterly miserable as hers. I’d run away again, and got taken back a few times, but eventually I got smart enough not to be caught, and then my mother died and I somehow slipped off the radar.
“It was easier then, but I got into a few bad habits, made some bad choices.”
“Tell me about the baby that died,” he pressed.
She swallowed hard before speaking, her voice jerky as she recounted the story. “I didn’t know the couple well. We were staying in an abandoned building, a bunch of us. People came and went, you didn’t make friends. When a new couple showed up we were surprised they had a baby girl with them. She can’t have been much more than a few months old. Seemed to me that she was like the meat in the sandwich with her parents. If one was angry at the other they’d take it out on her. Nothing too obvious, like hitting her or anything like that—initially at least. It was more things like leaving her in a dirty diaper and blaming the other for not changing her or for not buying diapers. Pinching her to make her cry when the other was holding her. We all saw what was going on.” Erin’s voice began to quake. “I tried to help the mother when I could but he made me stop.”
“He?” Sam prompted.
“The father. He was small and wiry and liked to use his fists to prove he was just as good as anyone who was bigger than him. One night, he threatened me. Pushed me face-first up against a wall, with my arm twisted behind my back. He warned me not to interfere with his family again or he’d kill me. No one would care, he said. No one would know.