Chapter 1
1
BEVERLY, 1993
11 years old
It was Wednesday, March 3rd, and I was on the phone with my best friend, Tiffany, giggling about boys—something we had only recently decided were interesting rather than gross. I sat at the bottom of the staircase, twirling the phone cord in my fingers, when I saw my father coming down the walkway. My heart leaped with relief, as it always did when he returned safe.
“I think Caleb likes you,” Tiffany teased. It was our favorite pastime—talking about the boys in our school, the ones we used to think had cooties but were suddenly worth our attention.
“Do you think so?” I grinned. “Because—” I was about to finish my sentence when the door creaked open, cutting me off mid-thought.
For the first time, Dad wasn’t alone. There was a boy trailing behind him, small and thin, his head bowed low. It wasn’t cold that day, but something about the way he stood there, his face half-hidden behind my father’s broad frame, made the hairs on my arms stand on end.
His frail frame was swallowed by oversized clothes, and his long, unkempt blond hair fell into his face like a curtain meant to shield him from the world. He lifted his eyes just long enough for me to catch their color. Green. Strikingly so.
Green like the last stubborn leaves clinging to autumn branches, filled with something I couldn’t place.
Not at the time.
Later, I would understand it was emptiness.
“I have to go,” I told Tiffany, cutting her off mid-sentence.
“But we have to talk about Cal?—”
I hung up and stared as my father kept the door open long enough for the boy to hesitate, to glance up at the threshold as if it were an invisible wall he wasn’t sure he was allowed to cross.
“Jenna!” he called out, his voice carrying through the house.
I blinked, confused. Where was the familiar routine of my dad coming home after a long day?
Mom came rushing from the kitchen, drying her hands on a dish towel. She saw Dad, then the boy, and her face softened, though her eyes flickered with quiet questions.
The boy flinched when my father placed a hand on his shoulder, and I watched as Dad’s eyes misted over.
I had never seen him cry. Not once. Not when he was tired, not when he was angry, not even when his own father was taken from him in the line of duty. But in that moment, he did.
A single tear escaped, trailing down his cheek before he quickly wiped it away. “I want you to meet Blake,” he said, his voice cracking as if the words had splintered on their way out.
Blake.
The name meant nothing to me then, but it would come to mean everything.
* * *
Blake McHayes had been a foster child since he was six years old, when his father took a kitchen knife and erased his mother and younger sister from existence during a rage-filled night that left Los Angeles shaken.
It was a story so gruesome and unfathomable that it haunted even the most seasoned police officers.
He was found beneath his mother’s body, drenched in both her blood and his own, barely clinging to life. The doctors called it a miracle. The town called it a tragedy. He survived when he shouldn’t have, lived while the rest of his family didn’t. For weeks, people spoke about it. They mourned, pitied, and whispered how awful, how sad . But as quickly as the story spread, it was forgotten; the world moved on without a second glance.
Blake was left behind, at the mercy of people who failed him. He became another child shuffled through the foster care system, passed from house to house, never staying long.
They labeled him a problem. A difficult child. No one saw how badly he was suffering, except for my father, who found him alone in a basement, starving and broken. His foster home had been a drug den, a place no child should ever be forced to endure. And yet, he had. Neglected. Beaten. Forgotten.
And now, he was in our house, sitting at our dinner table, trembling when he reached for his fork. He didn’t know how to use it.
Blake was one year older than me, but in that moment, he looked so much younger.
His hand shook harder with each passing second, and I watched in silence as spaghetti slipped off his plate and fell onto the table. His entire body tensed, and he glanced up at my father with fear in his eyes; the same fear I imagined he had felt many times before—fear of punishment, fear of rejection, fear of being unwanted.
“Use your hands if you need to,” Mom said, her voice soft and calm, almost like she was speaking to a wounded animal she was trying to coax into trusting her. “Don’t worry about the mess.”
My jaw nearly dropped.
If I had used my hands, she would have scolded me for days.
Blake hesitated, looking at her as if she had just spoken in an unknown language, then carefully picked up a handful of spaghetti with his fingers and stuffed it into his mouth.
I watched in horrified fascination. Not because it was gross, but because this boy—who was older than me—didn’t know how to use a fork .
His eyes flickered up to my father now and then, as if checking for signs of disapproval.
Dad just smiled at him, scratching his chin thoughtfully.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It was a smile that spoke of something that made me question my own place at the table.
Part of me wanted to resent this boy. This was my house. My family. My life. And now, suddenly, he was here, this broken boy with sad eyes and a past too heavy for him to carry alone.
I watched him that whole night.
Watched the way his eyes darted around the room, memorizing exits. Watched the way he ate—fast, like someone might take his plate away at any moment. Watched the way he glanced at my father like a stray dog unsure if it could trust the hand offering food.
Watched the way he never once met my gaze.
Not once did his eyes find mine. Not in the moments when he nervously glanced up at my father. Not when my mother offered him a reassuring smile.
I couldn’t blame him.
Who would want to look someone in the eye when they felt like they were nothing but a burden, a mistake?
This boy had been through hell and come back from it.
Blake finished the food in record time, but when the last bit of spaghetti was gone, a pained expression settled over his face, his hands clutching his stomach.
I watched him in silence, my own meal forgotten, the weight of the moment pressing down on me like something thick and suffocating.
“Are you okay?” Mom asked, her voice laced with concern.
The first words I ever heard him speak came from his lips then, soft and small, like a sound barely formed. “My stomach hurts.”
Mom’s gaze softened, but Dad gave a small chuckle. “You’re just full,” he said, offering a smile that didn’t match the tension in his voice. “You haven’t eaten this much in a long time, Blake. You’ll get used to the feeling.”
After a long silence, Blake finally met my gaze. Haunted green eyes locked onto my blue ones with a look of surrender.
I offered him a smile, hoping it might bring him some comfort.
His gaze dropped, settling on my lips. He seemed both fascinated and confused by the way my lips moved when I smiled. It was as if he didn’t understand the gesture and didn’t know what to do with it.
How could anyone not know what it meant to be smiled at ?
Did he know what cartoons were? Had he ever eaten a grilled cheese sandwich? The questions were endless.
The moment passed, and after dinner, Mom took him upstairs to show him the guest room and settle him in for the night. Dad stayed seated, his face turned away, eyes fixed on some distant point on the wall over my head. I could tell something had shifted in him—his breathing had deepened, and there was a tremor in his jaw. He was holding back tears.
“Are you okay, Dad?” I asked him, worried.
He blinked, as though he’d forgotten I was there. Then he turned to me with a smile. “I’m okay,” he replied, his voice thick, as if the words were hard to form. “Just a long day.”
That wasn’t convincing at all.
Mom called out to him from upstairs, and he stood quickly, hurrying to her side. There was a brief exchange in the hallway, followed by a soft murmur. “He wants you, Arthur.” Mom’s voice was a quiet plea. “He won’t talk to me. He said he wants you.”
“Alright,” Dad responded, and I imagined him kissing her forehead. “Go ahead and put Beverly to bed. I’ll take care of him.”
I froze, a strange heaviness pressing down on me.
My mother never put me to bed. That was always Dad’s job. Those moments had always been ours, something constant, something mine. But now Blake was here, taking up space in ways I couldn’t quite understand. A sharp pang of jealousy flared inside me, deep and unsettling, mixing with a sense of loss.
By the time Mom came back down, I had already withdrawn into myself. I kept my eyes on the floor, swallowing the sharp edge of anger I couldn’t shake. Mom spoke to me, but I ignored her. The world had shifted too fast, too abruptly, and I felt…displaced.
Upstairs, I paused outside the guest room, staring at the tightly shut door. I strained to hear something—any sign of movement, a voice—but the silence felt impenetrable. What were they doing in there ? Why didn’t Dad want to be with me tonight?
I brushed my teeth mechanically, climbed into bed, and pulled the covers tightly around me. Mom tucked me in with a soft kiss on the forehead and a gentle “Goodnight,” but I didn’t respond. Instead, I turned my back to her and stared at the wall, an empty ache settling deep in my chest.
“Beverly,” she said, her voice a soft whisper that cut through the stillness. I felt her weight on the bed beside me, and I knew she was looking at me, waiting for me to speak, waiting for me to open up. But I didn’t. “Don’t… Don’t be upset, sweetie.” Her hand brushed through my hair, a comforting touch that never failed to calm me. “Your father loves you just the same.”
I didn’t answer immediately. I wasn’t sure how. All I could feel was the pressure building in my chest.
“Why is that boy here?” The bitterness in my voice surprised even me. I hadn’t meant for it to come out like that, but I couldn’t help it. The words spilled out, sharp and resentful.
“That boy has been through a lot,” she replied, her voice measured, careful. “He’s here because he needs a place to stay.”
I could feel the knot in my stomach tighten, my confusion growing with every second. “But why here?” I asked, my mind struggling to make sense of it all. “Why our house?”
She exhaled softly. “Your father has been working on his case for a while now,” she said. “And he’s decided to take him in.”
“Forever?” I blurted out before I could stop myself, the question hanging in the air like an unspoken truth.
Mom was silent for a moment, and I could hear her breathing steady as she searched for the right words. “There are children, Beverly, who don’t have parents to put them to bed. Who don’t have someone to kiss them good night or tell them they’re safe. Who don’t have food to eat. They go to bed hungry, scared, and alone. They don’t have anyone who cares for them. No one looks at them. No one notices their pain.” Her voice faltered, and I could hear the tremor in it. “Do you think that’s right?”
My heart squeezed painfully. “No,” I whispered. “No, Mom.”
“Now you know why he’s here. He’s not just a boy , Beverly. He’s a child who needs a home, who needs the things we take for granted,” she said, then walked out of my room, leaving me alone with my thoughts.
I swallowed hard, staring up at the dark ceiling, wondering about the boy sleeping next door. My mind wouldn’t stop racing, and the questions came flooding in, relentless and impossible to ignore. What must it feel like to be him? To be that boy next door, lying in a bed that wasn’t his own, in a house that didn’t feel like a home? What would it be like to go to bed hungry, to wake up with nothing but the sound of my own empty belly? To face abuse and neglect, never knowing the comfort of kind words or a gentle touch? I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to imagine it, trying to put myself in his shoes.
I ended up crying into my pillow.
The shame was suffocating, pressing down on me from all sides. It washed over me in waves, one after another, until I couldn’t tell where the shame ended and the tears began.
I realized, with a sickening clarity, how privileged I’d been, how cruel my jealousy seemed in the face of his suffering.
I squeezed my eyes shut even tighter, trying to block out the remorse, trying to muffle the sobs that racked my body.
I cried until there were no more tears left to shed, until my body felt numb and exhausted, and my throat was raw, like I’d been screaming for hours. Every inch of me felt drained, empty, and yet still full of so much regret that I could hardly bear it.
At some point, the sound of Dad’s voice reached me from the hallway, rough and hoarse. “It was awful, Jenna. You wouldn’t believe it. The house was in ruins. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen. The walls were cracked, the windows shattered, the air thick with the smell of decay. He was sleeping in a pillowcase, trying to get warm. Can you imagine that? A damn pillowcase. For days, he was left there, on the concrete floor, surrounded by cockroaches. And when he saw me…” His voice cracked, and I could hear him take a shaky breath. “He was terrified, Jenna. He knelt down and begged me not to hurt him. And when I told him he was safe, that he didn’t have to be afraid anymore, he collapsed into me. I could feel his whole body shaking, like he was holding onto me for dear life. And then he cried. He cried like I’ve never seen anyone cry.”
The tears that had dried on my face were replaced by fresh ones, burning streaks down my cheeks.
That night, I woke up twice to the sound of Blake screaming, quickly followed by the hurried footsteps of my father running down the hall. A mix of panic and helplessness crashed over me as I lay there, unable to move, forced to listen.
I could picture it so clearly in my mind: Dad holding Blake close, pulling him into the safety of his chest as he whispered soothing words and gently rubbed his back to calm him.
The muffled sobs that followed were heart-wrenching—desperate, broken sounds of a boy trapped in nightmares he couldn’t escape.
Struggling to swallow the emotions that had lodged themselves stubbornly in my throat, I tossed and turned, my body contorting in a futile attempt to escape the weight of it all.
Maybe Blake wasn’t taking my place.
Maybe he was just finding his own.
Maybe this boy needed this home more than I ever did.