Chapter 5 #2
We pack without further delay, grabbing essentials and helping Natalie with her things.
Rick hovers, restless, anger leaking out of him in sharp breaths and muttered curses.
Natalie is quiet and pensive. I worry that she’s set on returning to her foster family even though I know she values her own personal freedom.
***
Rick insists upon driving her in the truck. I follow them on my bike, keeping my eyes open for potential danger. We end up in Siege’s office with him, Rigs, Tank, and Dutch. It’s after dark by this time but all the club officers offered to meet with us to help unravel what’s going on.
Natalie sits in a chair in front of Siege’s desk with her hands folded in her lap. She looks dispirited.
When Rick or I don’t get the conversation ball rolling, Siege finally speaks up.
“Bear brought us up to speed during his initial call. Rigs mentioned how your sister showed up here looking for you. What I need is to hear your firsthand account of what went on in that foster home. You need to tell us everything,” he says, his voice rough.
“All of it. I don’t care how small you think it is.
If it’s anything odd, I want to judge for myself if it’s relevant. ”
She swallows and nods once. “Okay.”
Natalie starts with being placed there and taken care of mostly by older kids.
She launches into how many kids were in the house at any given time and how the foster parents rotated them in and out over the years, stating the foster home was always at maximum capacity, and how the foster parents were always chasing the next stipend.
She points out what she already told us about her being the oldest, which meant she was more useful.
Hearing all that makes me want to smash something.
“I handled most of the caretaking,” she explains. “I woke them up, fed them breakfast, made sure they were dressed properly for the day and took them to school and any appointments. If anything went wrong, it fell on me.”
Rigs asks, “Are you saying they turned you into a full-time childcare worker when you were just a child yourself?”
“I took over most of those duties when I was twelve. The driving had to wait until I was sixteen and got my license. They said helping out with the younger kids taught responsibility,” she continues, stone-faced. “They insisted I was mature for my age. That I had an obligation to help the family.”
I recognize the language they used on her immediately.
I’ve heard versions of it my whole life.
“One of my old foster parents had me chopping wood all day long, most days. He said idle hands were the devil’s workshop and a big strappin’ boy like me needed something to do to keep me out of trouble.
He sold many a load that I’d cut without offering me a dime for all my hard work. ”
Giving me a brief nod, she says, “They were careful. Everything they did lived in the gray areas. Nothing that looked illegal on paper. They called it chores, or volunteering as a family, or building character.”
Her mouth twists. “We weren’t just cleaning up after ourselves.
We maintained the house like unpaid staff.
Every day there was something—scrubbing floors, deep-cleaning bathrooms, laundry that wasn’t ours.
Saturdays were for the church. Top to bottom.
Pews, bathrooms, offices. No skipping, no breaks. ”
I glance over at my club brothers. Rick is shaking his head like he can’t believe it. Rigs looks just about ready to let loose some righteous anger on someone.
She exhales slowly. “We did yard work, sorted recycling for neighbors, washed cars. Sometimes our own, sometimes other people’s. They’d collect the money and tell us it was being saved for our future. College. Whatever sounded good that day.”
Rick’s hands curl into fists.
“If anyone questioned it,” she continues, “the punishments were framed as consequences. Privileges were taken away. Except they weren’t privileges.
Our social worker told us they were rights—meals, sleep, phone calls, visits with extended family.
” Her voice drops. “Not that I ever had any family to visit.”
Rick stammers, “They starved you?”
“No,” she says quickly. “Not in ways anyone would write up as abuse. Missing meals sometimes wasn’t considered a violation. Going to bed hungry was called discipline. They were very clear about one thing.”
She looks down at her hands. “Food was earned.”
A hard female voice comes from the doorway. “Then your case manager was in dereliction of her duty.”
Rigs murmurs, “This is my old lady, Mattie. She runs the local Child Protective Services office here in Las Salinas. I asked her to stop by to help us get our heads around your situation.”
Natalie reaches out to Mattie, saying, “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Rigs told me you were raised in care, and your foster family has been asking you to come back home. From what I heard coming in, they were violating department policies.”
Rigs runs through what Natalie told us so far to bring his wife up to speed. Then Natalie adds another piece of information that seems like a poor reflection on the former foster parents.
“They told me that none of the other kids could do what I did. That the younger ones wouldn’t make it without me,” she says. “That the system would split them up. That bad things happen to kids who don’t have someone watching out for them.”
Her eyes lift to mine again. They used her love for them and her own conscience against her.
“I wanted to leave when I turned eighteen, but they guilted me into staying. And if I’m honest it was all I’d known.
I had a payout to help me live independently but they took that.
And made me earn my keep. I was too scared to go, but in the end I ran.
Maybe that was a mistake, but I couldn’t take it anymore.
And now…” she pauses. “They’ve been sending me text messages calling me ungrateful.
Saying that I abandoned the other kids when they needed me the most. They’ve told me the kids are crying and asking for me.
That if something happens, it’ll be because I left. ”
Rick pushes back, “That’s manipulation. That’s mental abuse.”
She nods like she already knows. “I know what it is,” she says quietly. “Knowing doesn’t ease my guilt. It’s true that the kids are safer and happier when I’m taking care of them.”
The room falls silent as her words sink in.
Mattie speaks up. “If this family were located in my jurisdiction, I’d investigate them in a heartbeat.
Since they’re not, I’ll have to link with their local CPS office and ask them to look into the situation.
I might not be at liberty to talk to you about the case, but I’ll do my best to make sure those children are safe. ”
Natalie immediately tears up. “Anything that you can do for them, I’d really appreciate.”
“I’m glad this was brought to my attention. You said they texted you? We can use that as evidence.”
Natalie immediately reaches into her pocket, digs her phone out, and holds it out for Mattie to check.
“Can I take this?” Mattie asks.
“Sure,” Natalie says.
“We’ll get it back to you ASAP.”
“Thanks for helping. I reported this stuff to my case worker in the past, but nothing came of it, except me missing dinner for a week and not being able to go to the library for six months.”
Mattie frowns. “I’ll be sure to make a note of that. Are your social worker’s name and number in your phone?”
Natalie nods. “Yes. There are text messages between us as well. Pretty much, my whole life is in that phone. I even have a notes app where I documented a lot of things that bothered me. Things got a lot worse after my foster mother’s mother passed away last year.
We called her Granny Ellie. She was a sweet woman who didn’t approve of how the foster kids were punished. ”
“If I take the phone, everything on there will become evidence in this case.”
“I’m fine with that. I don’t have anything to hide. The unlock code is zero-seven-one-five.”
Finally, Rick stoops down in front of her like he did at the house and takes her hand in his. “You have to know I would do anything to help you. Why didn’t you tell me about all this?”
She hesitates for a moment and then answers honestly.
“Because I just found you and I didn’t want to be a burden.
Because every time I’ve ever told someone, it got worse for me but also for the kids.
I thought that if I left well enough alone, they’d get tired and stop bothering me.
I hoped that they wouldn’t do anything to the kids, that it was all just threats. But now I’m not so sure.”
Rick reaches for her without thinking, pulling her into a one-armed hug that she accepts gratefully. She presses her forehead into his shoulder, eyes closed, still trying hard not to cry.
I watch them and make a decision that has nothing to do with liking her as a woman. I don’t know why I feel so protective over her, but I do.
“She’s not going back there,” I state firmly.
Rick agrees without hesitation. “Never. I want Natalie out of that mess. We’ve reported the problem. Now CPS needs to do its job and protect those kids.”
Natalie pulls back, frowning. “I’m not trying to go back there. Even if it makes me a bad person for abandoning those kids.”
“You’re not the bad person here,” I say, horrified that she’d even think that.
“They’ll keep escalating,” Rick tells her. “They want what they want and clearly aren’t shy about harassing you to get you to do what they want. You’ve had years of their mind games.”
“Look, you’re not alone in this anymore,” I tell her. “You’ve got your brother, me, Mattie, and the Savage Legion MC brothers lookin’ out for you. That changes the equation dramatically in your favor.”
Something in her expression loosens. She reaches out to take my hand and draws me down beside Rick. Looking from one to the other of us, she says, “You’re both really good men. Promise me that if this gets to be too much you’ll speak up.”
I frown because this woman does not know me at all if she thinks for one second that I’d ever throw her to the wolves.
Rick uses humor, like always, to deflect serious emotions.
“When have I ever had a thought that didn’t come flying out of my mouth?
Trust me, me and Bear for this kind of shit.
Protecting the innocent and dealing out the kind of justice the system can’t is our specialty. ”
Mattie snorts a laugh. “Not on my watch you don’t. If you wanted to grab some vigilante justice, you shouldn’t have looped me in on the case.”
Rigs practically growls, “So don’t you two be running off half-cocked ripping a hole through the case my old lady’s gonna be building against them.
There’s more at stake there than just the handful of kids in the home.
If you give her a minute, my Mattie will make sure those kids are pulled out of the home and their foster privileges are pulled permanently. ”
Mattie reaches one hand over to smooth down the front of his cut. “You’re pretty articulate when you’re aggravated. You know that don’t you, babe?”
Rigs’ expression turns adoring in a heartbeat and that’s our cue to get the hell out of our club president’s office. I’ve seen the two of them get amorous before and I don’t think Natalie would want to be privy to what Rigs does with his straight-laced wife who likes to go wild every now and then.
Out in the main room, the clubhouse is life going on as usual.
Mostly people don’t know what we’re going through.
It makes me feel conflicted, like our problems don’t matter but also satisfied because I don’t like people knowing our business.
I seem to have two fuckin’ minds about everything these days.
We make our way to one of the suites upstairs, where we can get Natalie settled and get back to work, because those meds are not going to deliver themselves. It’s not like she can work with us right now. It’s too risky.