Chapter 27 Chloe
CHLOE
By the time Oliver and I get back to my house, it’s nearly lunchtime. I half-expect to find his parents waiting on my front porch, but there’s no sign of them
“They think I’m still in my room,” he tells me when I ask, once we’re inside. “They won’t check on me ’til dinner time.”
“No lunch?” I say quietly.
He shrugs, and I make a split-second decision. “How about you stay here for lunch? I can make you a grilled cheese. How’s that sound?”
Oliver nods, and I try to ignore the tight knot in my stomach as I head into the kitchen. He trails behind me and sets himself up at my kitchen table, pulling out the drawing he was working on at Theo’s house. He keeps his arm looped around it, like he wants to hide it from me.
I whip up the sandwich, although my mind’s distracted.
I don’t want to call CPS in front of Oliver, but I’m still nervous about sending him back home.
Honestly, it’d be easier if he could just stay on the peninsula with Theo, wouldn’t it?
I said that was the first place his parents would look, but it really isn’t. My house is.
My stomach twists into knots. God, I hope I’m doing the right thing. I don’t know. I really don’t.
I set Oliver’s sandwich down in front of him, and he finally moves his hand away from the drawing and pushes it across the table at me.
It’s me and Theo, sitting beside each other like we were during our campout.
It’s all done in a cheap ballpoint pen, but the lines are fine and delicate and capture our likenesses shockingly well, with dark crosshatching to represent the night sky and some artistic trickery to make it look like the fire is illuminating our faces.
In the drawing, Theo looks at me with a tenderness I don’t remember from that night. Or maybe I just didn’t see it.
“Wow,” I breathe, looking up at Oliver. “This is really, really good.”
“Thank you,” he signs. “It’s for you. Although you should show Theo when you can.”
Sadness pangs at my heart. “I will. I promise, okay?”
Theo just chews his sandwich and doesn’t say anything.
I let him eat, although I do put the drawing on my refrigerator with a magnet, beside the portrait of Theo that Oliver gave me the weekend of the campout. I bet there are some old frames in this house somewhere, something I can use to keep the drawings safe.
Even if I feel like I can’t keep Oliver safe. Not really.
He finishes quickly and brings his plate over to the dishwasher without me having to ask. As I watch him dutifully load it into place, that low-level sadness suddenly flares into something hot, like anger. His parents don’t deserve him.
“I’m going to go home now,” Oliver says. “Are you going to call the people you think will help?”
My throat feels too dry and scratchy to speak, so I nod instead.
Oliver scrunches up his brow. “It won’t help,” he says. “I know you think it will, but it won’t.”
“Why do you say that?”
He looks up at me. “You’ll see.”
And then he turns and marches out of my kitchen, back out the front door.
I follow him and watch him pick his way across the yard from my front porch.
It feels too hot out here, the sun too bright, like it can lay bare to all the secrets hidden in the darkness.
Not just those of Oliver’s family. But mine. Theo’s.
Still, I go inside and make the call.
The CPS social worker arrives faster than I expect, pulling up a little around 5:30. I hear the car door slam while I’m out on my back patio, reading the same sentence in my book over and over again. It’s easier to stare across the water at the peninsula. I wonder if Theo is watching us. Probably.
As soon as I hear the car, my heart leaps up in my chest, and I slip around the side of my house in time to see a woman walk up the sidewalk to Oliver’s house.
She has the look of an elementary school principal: older, her hair allowed to go grey, her A-line skirt crisp and professional.
If she sees me, she doesn’t acknowledge it.
I watch her ring the doorbell. A few minutes go by. The door opens. Her voice doesn’t carry enough for me to hear what she says, but she’s allowed inside.
For a moment, I just stare at the Jenkins’ house. There’s no sign of movement inside, although the trees rustle around me, having been disturbed by a hot, damp wind that nonetheless makes my skin crinkle with goosebumps.
I glance across the water, one last time. Then I go back inside and pace around my living room, my nails digging into my arms.
I’m not sure how long it is before I hear the slam of a car door again. Fifteen minutes, maybe. I rush over to my window and crack the blinds and watch the social worker’s sleek car slide back down the driveway.
A heavy sense of deflation crashes over me.
That’s it? Fifteen minutes? Was Oliver with her? I don’t know how any of this works. If she thought he was in serious danger, she would take him, wouldn’t she?
And then what? What happens to kids like Oliver when their parents don’t care enough for them? Surely he has other family: grandparents. An aunt or uncle. Someone who can take care of him.
It won’t help. I know you think it will, but it won’t.
Oliver’s been through this before.
Sickness fills my stomach. I step back from the window, my breath tight. If there’s no one for him, he’ll go into foster care. He’ll be taken away from here, possibly whisked off to someplace worse.
But his brother gave him a black eye, and his parents didn’t even fucking care. I had to do something. Didn’t I?
When my doorbell rings, I practically shriek with fear. It’s the last sound I’m expecting, and I whip my head around and stare for a few long minutes at the front door.
Whoever’s there is tall enough to be seen through the stained glass window.
I swallow. I wish, suddenly, that Theo was here with me. Maybe Oliver was right to want to go to him after all.
The doorbell rings again, followed by a heavy, urgent pounding.
“I know you're in there!” A woman’s voice. Oliver’s mom, I’m sure of it. What was her name again? Britney? No, Blaire. “I think we need to talk!”
I consider slipping out the back, diving into the lake, and swimming to the peninsula. But that would be cowardly, and Oliver deserves better.
So I answer the door.
Blaire Jenkins is waiting for me on the patio, that fake-looking smile plastered across her face. Her eyes, though, are cold and hard as steel.
“May I come in?” she asks.
“I’d rather you not.” I step out, easing the door shut behind me. I don’t know why I say that. Maybe I think if she tries something, my screams will carry enough for Theo to hear.
And then what? Anything he would do about it would only make the situation significantly worse.
Blaire scoffs a little and tugs down on her shirt. “Fine, we can sweat it out on your porch.” A long pause. “I assume you’re the one who called that social worker on me?”
Blood pounds in my ears. Blaire doesn’t break eye contact with me, her gaze cold and unbothered. I swallow.
“She didn’t find anything,” Blaire says with a sickening little smile.
“Oliver had a black eye,” I spit out.
Blaire tilts her head, her shimmery blonde hair puddling in the corner of her shoulder. “He fell,” she says coolly. “On the edge of the dock.”
Heat swells beneath my skin. And panic, too. I think of Oliver’s weary insistence that only Theo can help.
“Liar,” I whisper.
“Prove it,” she says.
“You’ve done this before,” I hiss. “Haven’t you?”
“Done what?” Blaire leans in close, and a real cruelty marches across her features. “Shut out some meddling bitch who thinks she knows what’s best for my son?”
I gape at her, and she smiles victoriously. “You don’t know what it’s like,” she says. “Attempting to raise a child who can’t even be normal. So keep your fucking nose out of my family’s business.”
I suck in a deep breath. “Oliver doesn’t deserve this.” It’s not even close to what I want to say, but it’s all that comes out.
Blaire rolls her eyes. “Oliver deserves far worse than what I’ve done, believe me.
And if you call CPS on me again, you’ll learn exactly what my husband and I do to people who try to interfere in our business.
” Her eyes narrow and then, to my horror, drop down to my neck.
I’m still wearing the bow collar shirt, but I can’t stop myself from jerking my hand to my throat. Blaire laughs.
“What were you getting up to over here?” she says mockingly.
“Who do you think they’re gonna believe?
I’m a devoted housewife. Everyone in Pinella knows that.
I’ve served on the PTA since we moved here.
And you—” She scoffs, flips her hand in my direction.
“You live alone and never leave your house. How are you affording lakeside property again?”
“I inherited this house,” I snap, but Blaire just laughs.
“A good cover story for a whore,” she says. “Is that what you’re doing? Whoring yourself out? What will the next social worker think about that, huh? A whore wanting to spend time with a ten-year-old boy with special needs.”
She says “special needs” in a tone dripping with mockery, and for a second, all I feel is a hot, blinding anger.
“Better a whore than an abuser,” I snarl. “If you let anything happen to Oliver, I’ll—”
“You won’t do shit,” she says, stepping backward off the porch. “He’s my son. I’ll raise him how I see fit. That’s not abuse. It’s showing him what the world is actually like. And you can stay the hell out of it.”
And then, in an instant, she transforms. The coldness goes out of her expression. She gives me a dazzling smile—the kind of smile you see on the head of the PTA, on the mother of the high school valedictorian. “It was so lovely talking to you,” she chimes out. “We’ll do it again soon, won’t we?”
I’m too stunned to react, which gives her just enough time to slip away, sashaying across the grass. As she does, she raises one hand in greeting and calls out, “Evening, Janet! I hope Robert is doing well!”
I jerk my gaze over to where Blaire is looking, and I see my other neighbor, an elderly woman I almost never speak to. She waves back at Blaire. “He’s doing just fine, honey! Thanks for asking.”
“That’s wonderful.” Blaire looks back over at me again, still holding that picture-perfect smile. “No one will believe you,” she says in a voice dripping with honey.
And then she cuts back across the grass, and all I can do is watch her go, my heart hammering in my ribs.