Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Madison
Phelps found me outside her office at seven fifty-eight, which was two minutes before she was due in and probably said something about me that I wasn't going to examine too closely.
She came down the corridor with coffee and a tote bag, not rushing. She looked at me once, didn't seem surprised, and unlocked the door.
"Dr. Clarke," she said. "Come in."
Her office was small and practical, a desk and two chairs and a window looking out over the parking lot. She dropped her bag, shrugged off her coat, and sat. I sat across from her.
"I didn't realise you knew the Henleys," she said.
"The brother," I said. "And Cassie—we grew up in the same town. We stayed in touch for a while after I left."
Phelps nodded. "How well did you know him?"
"Well enough," I said. "We were together. Three years."
She nodded slowly and picked up her pen.
"Okay," she said. "Let me tell you what this is and what it isn't." She set the pen down again, which I hadn't expected.
"This isn't a deposition. Nothing you say here is going to be quoted back to Mr. Henley or used against him in any formal proceeding.
What I'm doing is building a picture. The file I have tells me facts: address history, employment, the record.
What it doesn't tell me is whether there's a person behind those facts who can raise a child.
" She looked at me steadily. "That's what I'm asking you for.
Your honest read. Not a character reference you'd sign your name to, not a recommendation. Just what you know."
I nodded.
"And if what you know is limited," she said, "that's fine too. Tell me that and we'll work with what we've got."
I looked at my hands for a moment.
What I knew was not limited. That was the thing.
Twelve years of distance and I could still have told Phelps what he took in his coffee, which side of the bed he slept on, the exact way his jaw tightened when he was trying not to say something.
I knew him the way you know a place you'd grown up in—not always accurately, not always fairly, but in the bone.
The question was how much of that was still true, and how much of it was just me, preserved in amber, knowing a twenty-four year old who no longer existed.
"What I can tell you," I said, "is twelve years out of date."
Phelps nodded. "That's a fair place to start." She picked up her pen. "Tell me about his relationship with Lily."
"I can't speak to that directly," I said. "Lily was born after I left. I know he saw her. Cassie mentioned it when we were in touch. But the specifics, how often, what it looked like… I don't have that."
Phelps wrote something. "So you're not able to speak to his capacity with children."
"Not from observation, no."
"What can you speak to?"
I looked at the window. The parking lot, the grey morning, a man in a high-vis jacket crossing toward the entrance with his head down.
The honest answer was that I didn't know what I was doing here.
I'd come because Jack had asked and I hadn't been able to think of a good reason to say no.
And now I was sitting across from Karen Phelps at eight in the morning, trying to figure out what twelve-year-old information was actually worth in a room like this.
"Was he reliable?" Phelps said. "When you knew him."
"Yes," I said. "Very."
"Can you give me an example?"
I could.
"Our landlord was useless. Heat would go out and he'd just… not fix it. Jack would handle it. Not make a big deal about it, just sort it." I paused. "That was kind of how he was with everything. You didn't have to ask twice. You didn't really have to ask once."
"What about stability? Employment, that kind of thing."
"He'd been working since he was sixteen," I said. "Left his dad's when he could, kept himself going. Never missed rent, never missed a shift as far as I knew." I paused. "He just… got on with things. Didn't need anyone chasing him."
Phelps wrote something, then looked up. "What do you know about his family background?"
And there it was.
I took a breath. "His dad drank. Wasn't violent, not that I saw, but he was… well, it wasn't a good house to grow up in. Jack didn't talk about it much." I hesitated. "But you could tell."
"Did it affect him?"
"He was careful," I said. "Like, with people. Always aware of… I don't know. Of how much space he was taking up." I took a deep breath, thinking back through the years. "I thought that was a good thing, when I knew him."
Phelps looked at me for a moment. Her pen was still.
I kept my face where it was.
There was something I wasn't saying, and it had nothing to do with Lily.
It had to do with me—with a night a long time ago that had ended one way and not another.
But whatever had broken between us was between us.
It wasn't a safeguarding issue. It wasn't a reason to keep a five year old out of her uncle's house.
It was just a thing that had happened, personal and old, and not relevant to anything in this room.
That's what I told myself.
Lily needed someone. He was here.
Phelps put the pen’s ballpoint to the paper. "Any bad habits? Tendencies you were concerned about?"
"Not really," I said. "He wasn't much of a drinker. A beer with the guys from work maybe, once a month." I paused. "He wasn't his father in that way."
There was one night where I'd seen him drunk, yes. But that wasn't Phelps's to know.
"Did you ever see him be violent?"
"No. Never."
"Temper?"
"Not really. He'd go quiet, when things got hard." I shifted in my seat. "That was more his thing."
Phelps nodded and set her pen down. She looked at the file for a moment, then back at me.
"Dr. Clarke. I'm going to be straight with you.
" She put her hand flat on the folder. "I have a man here who's been moving from state to state for twelve years.
No fixed address, no roots, limited contact with the child.
Troubled background." She pursed her lips.
"And a misdemeanor too, a bar fight. He apparently stepped in when a woman was being harassed, which tells me something, but…
it's still there." She held my gaze. "I have a five year old girl who just lost her mother and I have to make a decision about where she goes next. "
She sat back.
"You knew him. Long time ago, I understand that. But you knew him." She tilted her head slightly. "Can he do this?"
I opened my mouth, but she continued before I could answer.
"And more importantly," she said. "Should he?"
I looked at the folder on her desk for a moment.
"He got on a plane the same night he got the call," I said. "Went to the medical examiner before he came here. Sat with her until he had to be chased out." I paused. "She's five years old and she gave him the thing she sleeps with. Kids don't do that for strangers."
Phelps waited.
"Can he do it?" I said. "I don't know. Honestly. But should he? She needs someone who knew her mom. Who'll tell her about her when she's older." I looked at Phelps and nodded. "There's nobody else."