Family at Stake
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Molly O'Keefe
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CHAPTER ONE
Present day
OH, BOY, RACHEL FILMORE thought as she paused in the doorway and watched her friend Olivia Hernandez work herself right into a mental health crisis, it’s like watching a train wreck.
“Hello?” She knocked on the door as quietly as she could, but Olivia still jumped out of her seat.
“Stop doing that,” Olivia breathed, clutching the ruffled neck of her pink T-shirt.
“It’s knocking, sweetheart, and it’s polite.” Rachel smiled and leaned against the door frame of her boss’s office.
“Give me five more minutes,” Olivia said, then swiveled toward her computer screen.
“You said that twenty minutes ago,” Rachel reminded her.
“I know, I know, but I’m right in the middle—”
“Code red,” Rachel interrupted, and Olivia’s head snapped up.
“Realmente?” Olivia looked around at the towering stacks of files as if they had just appeared. “Code red?”
“Yep.”
Olivia knew better than to fight code red. Or at least Rachel hoped she did. In six years of working together, code red—their personal cue that one of them was close to burnout—was one thing that they never argued over.
“Your husband called and asked me to make sure his real wife came home, not the ghost he’s been living with for two weeks.” Rachel lifted an eyebrow, daring Olivia to deny that she’d been working like a woman possessed.
Olivia blew a black curl off her forehead. “It’s just been so crazy with Frank leaving.”
“I know, but you’re not doing any good working like this.” Rachel was sympathetic and had been helping as much as possible, but frankly she would rather eat the files than look at any more of them right now.
“Did Nick really call you or are you just making that up so I’ll go have lunch with you?” Olivia narrowed her eyes.
“He called three times.”
“You think you could have told me sooner?”
“You think I haven’t tried?”
“You’re right.” Olivia grabbed a plastic bag from the bottom drawer of her government-regulation metal desk. “I’ve been working too much.” She fished around for her shoes and finally stood, pulling down the hem of her T-shirt. “Let’s go have some lunch.”
Rachel swallowed a sigh of relief. Olivia could be stubborn, and the workload had been making her already fiery temper even hotter these days.
“But I am going to take a few of these.” Olivia grabbed the top five files from the stack on the corner of her desk and Rachel wasn’t all that surprised.
Rachel had one from her own stack under her arm as well.
Every day was a constant struggle to avoid code red.
“Just so long as you actually see daylight,” Rachel said. Rachel looked down at the stack Olivia had grabbed and her heart beat hard. The top folder had been flagged with an interoffice red arrow, indicating the child needed to be removed from the home.
What is Olivia trying to do? she wondered. Olivia, after a month of debating back and forth, had decided to take the promotion into administration that Frank Monroe’s retirement had created and leave behind the stress of fieldwork. Of the cases Olivia had already split up there had been no red arrows, and Rachel wondered if Olivia was going to try to take that family on as well as her increased administrative duties.
Not if I can help it. Those red arrows meant about forty percent more work and Liv had a family.
Rachel had an ex-boyfriend and a fish.
Rachel actually liked the red-arrow cases. Not their existence, of course. But they were a challenge to her, a call to arms. She felt as though she was really doing her job—catching bad guys and helping kids—when she took one on.
Olivia gave Rachel a hard hug. “Thanks, Rach,” she whispered into her hair.
“You’d do it for me.” Rachel hugged her friend back and followed Olivia through the maze of stuffy and small public offices toward the exit and sunshine.
They settled down onto their usual bench in one of the many manicured courtyards of the county government building compound.
Rachel rolled her shoulders and let the perfumed California sunshine melt away her tension. She hovered at about a code yellow these days. Frank’s sudden and disorganized departure had been tough on everyone in the office.
Olivia turned sideways on their bench and licked the residual yogurt from the aluminum cover she’d peeled off. “How are you handling the new cases?”
Rachel kicked off her black slides and crossed her legs at the ankle. “I am surviving,” she said honestly. “I mean, it’s a slog. Frank really got sloppy toward the end. He screwed up some names between files and he’s gotten a lot of dates wrong, but it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be.”
Olivia laughed, but it, too, sounded stressed. “I wish I could say the same. I feel like I am being chased by a million loose ends. I can’t even remember why I wanted Frank’s job.”
“Ten years in the field, you were ready to burn out, Liv.”
“Still, at least it was simpler. This management thing is making me crazy.”
Rachel forced her eyes not to roll. They’d discussed the pros and cons of this move to death, but she could hit the highlight reel.
“You were breaking the Golden Rule.”
“What Golden Rule?”
“Mine.”
“Rachel Filmore has a Golden Rule? This should be good,” Olivia hooted. “Is it never, ever pay full price for anything? Oh wait, never, ever talk about family or, God forbid, marriage—”
“The Golden Rule states,” Rachel interrupted, “thou shalt not become too involved.” She waved her fork with a little flair. “And you, my dear friend, were getting too involved all over the place.”
“Ha! Like I’ve never caught you crying under your desk. You’ve had your fair share of code red moments.”
She’d had two. In six years. Not a bad average. “You’re totally exaggerating.” Rachel would never in this lifetime cry at work, or in front of anyone, for that matter. Any crying she did was by herself. Alone. In a dark room. She was that kind of crier. “And you are missing the important part. Too. Don’t get too wrapped up in the cases.”
It’s not that she didn’t care, or cared less than Olivia, it’s that she had learned to care the smart way. The way that did good rather than made you crazy. Rachel cared with her head and tried very hard to keep her heart out of it.
It was the only way to stay sane.
“In the six years I’ve been here—”
“You’re still a child, a baby.” Olivia had celebrated her ten-year anniversary with the Department of Child and Family Services last month, which seemed to give her license to expunge Rachel’s years of service.
“The best thing Frank Monroe ever taught me is that a little detachment goes a long way in this business.”
“Well, maybe that explains the mistakes in the cases.”
“It explains how he was able to stay in the job for twenty-five years.”
Olivia scrutinized Rachel as if she was something between glass plates and under a microscope, and she grew uncomfortable. “You know, you might be one of the best counselors we’ve got,” Olivia said. “You’re smart, you’re quick. You work hard.”
Rachel was taken aback for a moment by the praise. “Thanks, Olivia.”
“But you’ve still got a lot to learn.” Olivia scooped another heap of pink yogurt into her mouth and winked.
I should have known there would be a catch.
“You got big plans for the weekend?” Rachel asked, quickly changing the subject, before Olivia launched into a monologue about all the things Rachel still had to learn.
“Everyone is coming to my house on Sunday.”
“What’s Sunday?” Rachel asked, a forkful of lettuce halfway to her mouth.
“Mother’s Day.”
Rachel stiffened as a cold chill slid along her spine.
“Rach?”
Rachel watched the sparrows at their feet, rooting for food in the green grass, instead of looking at the concern and pity that were no doubt on her friend’s face.
“Are you going to see your mom?”
“Nope.”
“But it’s Mother’s Day.”
“So you said.” Rachel fought to swallow another bite of salad and whatever emotion was stuck in her throat. Anger? Guilt? Indifference? Probably indifference, she decided. It was all the feeling she had left for her mother. “It’s just another day, Olivia. Just another day.”
“Not to your mom, who would probably give her right arm to hear from you. Come on, Rachel, she’s forty minutes away.”
Might as well be on the far side of the moon, Rachel thought, and chucked a piece of lettuce at the birds.
“Let’s not spoil your first hour back among the living with talk of my mother, okay?” she asked nicely. She was a pro at dodging the mom questions. And since her dad had died five years after she left New Springs, and no one even knew she had a brother, she didn’t have to answer those questions at all. She liked it that way.
“Fine,” Olivia huffed, and then muttered “obstinado idiota” under her breath.
Rachel smiled and watched the birds squabbling over the limp lettuce. She threw them a piece of cucumber, her appetite suddenly vanished. She wasn’t an idiot. Idiots were people who kept throwing themselves against the rocky shores of their dysfunctional family. Trying to make things right. Trying to fix the past. Well, if there was one thing Rachel knew, it was that there was no fixing the past. The future, sure. The past was better forgotten.
“We’re having Nick’s family and mine for a barbecue all day,” Olivia said.
“Wow, that should be quite a party.”
“Why don’t you and Will come over to my house?” Olivia asked, and Rachel winced. There was no more Will in her life and Olivia’s fuse was going to blow when Rachel told her.
“Your godchildren are dying to see you—”
“No fair using your girls as bait,” Rachel laughed, though she would like to see Ruby and Louisa. It had been a few weeks since their last trip to the beach.
“And you can protect me from my mother-in-law,” Olivia suggested. “You guys can talk about whatever it is you Anglo folks—”
“Tupperware and English muffins.”
“That’s what you talk about?”
Rachel nodded. “Most of the time.”
Olivia laughed and Rachel decided to stop the conversation before it even got started. “Will and I broke up.”
“What?” Olivia’s eyes were wide. “When?”
“Last weekend.”
“No del oh—”
“Oh, stop. It’s hardly the end of the world.” Will had wanted a family, children, a home and a dog of some kind, and Rachel wanted none of that. Had, in fact, made it clear since the second date, which was why, when he asked her to move in, she had been so stunned. Angry and stunned.
Why do they do that? Think that two months of dinners, sex and Sunday brunch will change my mind.
“What happened?” Olivia stroked Rachel’s arm, and she twitched. Rachel didn’t really want Olivia’s pity and she really didn’t want any of the pats on the back and hugs and offers of ice cream gluttony that usually came with breakups.
“We wanted different things, Liv.”
I want the works, Will had said, his eyes wet as he’d watched Rachel pack her overnight bag. Family. Kids. I want to be needed. I want you to need me. And that’s never going to happen, is it?
Rachel with dry eyes and a cold heart had said no. Don’t pretend to be betrayed, Will. You knew how I felt about marriage and kids from the beginning. And then she’d picked up the stash of things she’d kept in his apartment and never looked back.
“You know…” Olivia looked at Rachel with so much compassion that Rachel had to pretend sudden interest in the cuff of her green cardigan. “We are not destined to become our mothers. That’s a lie. You will not become your mother, or your father. You can create your own family and it can work.”
Rachel sighed and looked up at the big blue California sky as if the answers to all of Olivia’s comments might be there and Rachel could just point and say, “Look.” But they weren’t, so Rachel was left to her usual spiel.
“Why is it when a woman decides she doesn’t want a family it somehow all relates to her mother? I just don’t want a family. That’s all, nothing nefarious. Just no thanks. Is that so hard to understand?”
“No, but I understand you’re chickenshit, that’s for sure!”
Rachel turned on Olivia, only to find her friend laughing. “You’re hilarious,” she said.
“Yes, I am.” Olivia set her bag on the files between them and stretched out her legs. Rachel’s attention was caught by that red flag that sat on top like a loaded weapon. “You know, I never really liked Will.”
“What?”
“Yeah—” Olivia scrunched up her face “—he was just a little too…shiny. He used hair gel. Men shouldn’t use hair gel. Even if they are investment bankers.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” Rachel muttered. She turned her head so she could see the name on the file label. It started with an A.
“Yeah, he was too together, like he’s played it safe his whole life. You need a man who knows what it’s like to be a little out of control.”
“Your insights into my love life are spectacular, really, but—”
“You are not getting any younger.” Olivia crossed her legs, and the hem of her skirt lifted and settled around her knees. Her toenails, though chipped and faded, were painted pink to match almost the entirety of her wardrobe, but in the center of each was a red rose. Olivia called her homemade pedicures the ultimate accessory.
“I’m thirty, Liv. Hardly ready to pack it in.”
“I’m just saying…”
Rachel wiggled her pale naked toes and figured out the key to getting the red-arrow case and Olivia off her back without having to suffer through any more talk of mothers and men in one fell swoop.
“How about I come over on Saturday and let you do my toes.”
“Really?” Olivia lit up like a Christmas tree. “You haven’t let me at your toes in months, and frankly, sweetheart, they look like you’ve been taking care of them with your teeth.”
Rachel curled her feet under the bench. “I’ll come over on one condition.”
“I know, no dragons.” Olivia nodded, reiterating Rachel’s rule for whenever Olivia did her toes. Dragons looked good on some people, but Rachel believed she wasn’t one of them.
“I’ll take the red-arrow case,” Rachel said, and watched the pride ignite in Olivia’s eyes.
“You don’t have to do that,” Olivia said firmly. “I can handle the workload.”
“You shouldn’t even have it. You’re administration now.”
“Frank always kept his hand in. I can do it, too.”
“Sure, maybe after you’ve had some experience. This is a red arrow, Liv. Not a truancy or welfare fraud. Take the damn help.” Rachel urged. “Second Golden Rule—take help when you need it.”
Olivia was silent for a moment. “You think I need it?”
“I think you’re one week away from drooling in a straitjacket.”
Olivia’s laugh flooded Rachel with relief. “Okay.” She nodded. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Rachel flashed Olivia a smile, picked up the file and flipped through the paperwork. The nice steady hum of adrenaline entered her veins.
She scanned the information at the top of the page. “She’s from my old stomping grounds.”
Olivia’s face mirrored Rachel’s surprise. New Springs was a sleepy agricultural town on the edge of the desert. It was a medium-size town, quiet.
It was an eerie coincidence and the hair on her neck went stiff. She turned to the second page and the picture of the young girl with a sneer, tangled blond hair and eyes so angry and hurt at the same time that Rachel felt like she was looking at herself at that age.
“How old?”
Rachel went back to the first page. “Twelve.”
Olivia’s soft sigh was distressed. “They just keep getting younger.”
Rachel stopped listening. She actually, for a moment, couldn’t breathe. The girl’s name was Amanda Edwards. And she was from New Springs. It could just be a coincidence. Edwards, after all, was a common last name.
She flipped to the photo again. The blond hair, the eyes so blue, unlike most other blues. Like the color of the sky closest to the horizon on a clear day. Rachel knew that color like she knew the same muddy-green of her own eyes. It was a blue just like Mac Edwards’s eyes.
“Rachel?”
Please don’t let it be, she prayed, and turned to the third page with the names of the parents typed in black and white across the top of the page.
Mother—deceased.
Father—MacArthur Edwards.
All the blood in Rachel’s body fell to her feet and she saw stars, her skin crawled. Rachel fingered the red-arrow sticker on the front of the file that meant Frank thought Amanda should be removed from the home.
From Mac’s home.
Oh, Mac, what went wrong? She shook with a sudden chill that filled her bones.
“Rachel? You okay?” Olivia asked, her hand brushing Rachel’s shoulder.
Rachel took a deep, shuddery breath. “I’m fine,” she lied. “I need to get back into work.” She stood, ignoring Olivia’s protests. She scooped up the files and her half-eaten salad and ran back to her office like a possessed woman.
Mac Edwards had a daughter.
And she was in trouble.
Rachel shut her office door and sat at her desk, rolling her chair up tight so the edge of the desk bit into her stomach. She cleared a small space on her ink blotter and opened Amanda Edwards’s file. There was a shaking in her stomach, an awful quiver. A million thoughts buzzed and careened through her brain like bees.
Mac has a daughter and Frank thought she should be removed from the home.
There had to be some kind of mistake. The man she knew would have become a great father. He had been a caring, gentle boy with patience and kindness to spare.
Look at what your brother made me…
Rachel shook her head, pushing the memory to the black hole it came from.
But something had happened to Mac and his daughter. And when something happened to a twelve-year-old girl it was usually because of the parents.
Rachel touched the picture of Mac’s angry little girl, tracing the eyes that looked as if they had seen too much.
What went wrong?
Rachel dove into the file, tearing through pages, trying as best she could to gather the available information from the clues Frank had left behind.
Amanda Edwards, runaway age twelve. Amanda and a fourteen-year-old girl, Christie Alverez, were investigated six months ago in connection to a fire that burned down a barn and an acre of pasture on a horse farm ten miles away from New Springs.
The farm belonged to Gatan Meorte.
Wow. Gatan Meorte. Rachel wiped her hand down her face as memories assaulted her. She would have thought that old recluse was long dead.
Amanda and Christie had been missing for two days and were caught hitchhiking along Highway 13 the day after the fire.
Horrifying images of what could happen to two girls on the highway flooded Rachel’s imagination and cramped her stomach.
Frank’s notes, printed precisely in damning black and white, filled the last page.
Amanda is an angry young girl, with violent and suicidal tendencies. Her grades have dropped significantly in the past year since her mother’s death. It is my opinion that the mother was Amanda’s primary caregiver and when she died, the father did not pick up the slack. I recommend this child be removed from the home because Mac Edwards is in denial of his daughter’s behavior to the point of delusion.
He says he has never seen her act out and that his daughter’s running away was a complete shock to him. Amanda needs to live in a reality-based situation where her actions have consequences, as opposed to having her behavior excused or swept under the rug as is the case with her father. Even more disturbing, when told that Amanda could be removed from the home if he did not face the reality of his family, Mr. Edwards had a violent outburst. He broke a chair and a window and had to be physically restrained. It is my opinion that there is probably some underlying abuse between Mr. Edwards and his daughter. In light of this and Amanda’s growing criminal record, she needs to be removed from the home.
Rachel had to read the words five times before they sank in.
She leaned back and counted the ceiling-tile squares, a calming exercise that rarely worked, but that she tried with unwavering faith.
She couldn’t begin to picture the gentle, funny Mac she knew breaking a window or a chair in rage.
We could get married, that way you could stay.
She squeezed her eyes shut until the memory faded.
What happened to the mother? Rachel wondered. She went back through the file, but other than the note that the mother was deceased there was no mention of her.
How ironic that Rachel could have been the one with the twelve-year-old daughter—Mac’s daughter. That night at the quarry had been thirteen years ago almost to the day. A twist of fate and her life would have been completely different.
Rachel checked the date of the file. It was one of Frank’s last cases. The last time he’d interviewed Amanda was three weeks ago—the same time he’d told Mac that DCFS might take his daughter.
Mac might have run. Packed up and taken Amanda…where? The Mac she knew had no family outside of his mother and her series of husbands. Maybe he went to his wife’s family?
In any case, Amanda Edwards’s file needed to be updated.
Rachel should not take this case. She knew that. It was a conflict of interest if ever there was one. What she should do is march right back to Olivia and say, “I know this guy. Loved him, actually. I think. I definitely broke his heart. So, I can’t take the case.”
She should do that.
But she didn’t.
