2. Brooke
brOOKE
“I’m not asking to remove him,” I argued, doing my best to keep my frustration at bay. “I’m just asking for a little more time.”
“I hear you.” Lisa, my supervisor, sighed and leaned back in her chair. “But this is the third time you’ve asked for more time in the past month.”
“Because something isn’t right.”
“Suspecting something is wrong and being able to prove it are two different things.”
I hated it when she said things like that.
Not because she was wrong. She wasn’t. Far from it.
The system wasn’t built on gut feelings.
It was built on facts, evidence, and paperwork, mountains and mountains of paperwork.
But every instinct I had was screaming at me that ten-year-old Dylan Mercer was in some kind of trouble.
I just couldn’t prove it.
I’d seen the bruises, I’d heard the fear in his voice when he spoke about his father, and I’d felt the tension radiating off of both his parents whenever I did a wellness check. But there was always an excuse for everything.
Except for the time when he whispered, “I don’t want to go back to the basement.”
They didn’t have a basement. I’d checked three times. I’d even gone to the courthouse and looked over the property records. I’d pressed him to tell me what he was talking about, but he refused. So, I was stuck. I knew something was wrong, but I had no real evidence.
“He’s had two school transfers in two years,” I pleaded. “His attendance is getting worse, his grades have dropped, and every time I talk to him, he is more and more withdrawn.”
“Every welfare check has come back clean. You’ve said that yourself.”
“Yes, his parents seem great, especially his mother, but that doesn’t mean something isn’t wrong.”
Her expression softened as she muttered, “I know.”
That simple acknowledgment took some of the fight out of me.
She knew, and that’s what made this job so damn hard.
Most people thought social workers saw an abused or neglected child and swooped in to save the day.
They didn’t see the impossible balancing act behind every decision we made.
If you removed a child too quickly, without being positively sure, then you could destroy a family.
If you wait too long, you could fail the very person you were trying to protect.
There was no perfect answer.
Only the one you could make with the information you had.
“We could’ve missed something.”
For a moment, neither of us spoke. I looked down at the file in my lap and sighed.
I’d worked so hard to be sitting in this office.
Years of classes, months and months of long nights studying, internships, and volunteer hours.
An endless stream of professors, supervisors, and exams. I wanted this.
I wanted to make a difference. To do that, I had to put in the work.
Then and now.
So many people slipped through the cracks because nobody bothered to look twice. I wanted to be the person who looked twice, the person who paid attention, and maybe, just maybe, it would be enough.
Sometimes it was.
Sometimes it wasn’t.
“Okay,” Lisa sighed. “We’ll give it another week. One week. That’s it. If nothing more comes up, we move forward.”
“Understood.”
“Let me know if you need any help with anything.”
“I will.”
I stood and started for the door, but stopped when she said, “Brooke… carrying every kid in this county on your shoulders isn’t part of your job description.”
“Yeah, I have a tough time remembering that.”
“Try harder.”
I nodded, then slipped out of her office. I went straight to my desk and started sifting through Dylan’s file. I had to make sure I hadn’t missed something. A comment or a detail buried somewhere in the notes. Something that would help me figure out what was going on with him.
I was completely absorbed in reading when a steaming cup of coffee appeared next to my keyboard. I looked up and found Gloria with one hand on her hip and the other wrapped around a cup of her own. “Looks like you could use one.”
“You have no idea.”
“That bad?”
“No. I’m just being whiny.”
“Girl, you can whine all you want. You deserve it after the week you’ve had.”
I laughed and took a sip of my coffee. I don’t know how she did it, but Gloria always made my worst days easier to stomach.
I needed that, and I think she knew it. She was fifteen years older than me and had this uncanny ability to know everybody’s business, even if that meant stalking our social media accounts or peeping into our work files.
She didn’t mean any harm. She had three kids who were now grown and on their own.
She didn’t feel as needed as she once was, so she took the role of office mother, and I, for one, didn’t mind.
I actually liked that she was always there looking out for me, and she’d quickly become one of my favorite people in the building.
I sighed and eased back in my chair. “You’re officially the best.”
“Only because I brought you caffeine.”
“Much-needed caffeine. I’d say that’s a pretty solid reason.”
She sat in the chair next to my desk and smiled. “So…”
There it was.
Gloria had a way of turning the one-syllable word into an interrogation without even blinking. I took a cautious sip of coffee before answering, “She’s giving me a few more days.”
“Of course she is.” Gloria smiled as she teased, “She knows you’d just ride her ass until she changed her mind.”
“I most certainly would. He deserves that much.”
“You really like this kid, huh?”
“I care about all my kids.”
“You know what I mean.”
Unfortunately, I did. Some cases had a way of getting under your skin; they stayed with you long after work, and you couldn’t shake them, no matter how hard you tried.
Dylan was like that for me. It didn’t help matters that he reminded me of someone I once knew.
His story didn’t turn out so well, and I didn’t want the same for Dylan.
“I just don’t want to be wrong.”
“About what?”
“Any of it,” I admitted. “I don’t want to accuse someone of something they didn’t do, but at the same time, I don’t want to ignore something because I was afraid to push.”
“The fact that you worry like you do is why you’re so good at this.”
I stared down at my coffee as I told her, “It doesn’t feel that way… It feels like I am one bad decision away from ruining somebody’s life.”
“Well, now you have time to make sure you’re making the right one, and I’ll be here to help you any way I can.” She thought for a moment, then asked, “What about the neighbors? Have you had any luck with them?”
“You know how it is with neighborhoods like these. No one wants to get involved.”
“True, but all it would take is one person willing to talk.”
“This is true.”
“Worth a shot.” She stood and propped her hand on her hip. “Just promise that you won’t sit here staring at the same eight pages all afternoon.”
“I wouldn’t want to lie to you.”
“I don’t know why I bother.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. There was a reason why I loved her the way I did. “Because you love me.”
“You’re right. I do.” Gloria waited a moment, then added, “Don’t forget about Saturday.”
“Oh, about that…”
“You’re not backing out.”
“Of course not.”
“You’ve already bailed on me three times.”
“It was once, and Anslee had a fever.”
“Don’t forget about the flat tire.”
“Oh, yeah, but that wasn’t my fault.” I felt guilty lying, yet again, but I couldn’t back down now. “There was a nail and a screw, and it took the guy over an hour to find the hole.”
“Yeah, yeah. I remember all about the nail and the screw.”
Gloria had it in her head that she and I should start playing tennis. She decided I needed a hobby that didn’t involve paperwork or worrying, and she was right. I did need a hobby, but Saturdays were hard to work around, especially with all I had going on.
But I’d made her a promise, so I asked, “What time do you want to meet?”
“Seven or eight, but no later than that.”
“In the morning?” I whined.
“It’s going to be hot, and it’ll only get hotter the longer we wait.”
“Okay. Okay. Let’s do seven-thirty.”
“And no tire issues or babies with fevers.”
“Nope. I’ll be there.”
“You’d better be, or no more surprise coffees for you.”
“Understood.”
“Good.” Her warm smile turned into a cocky smirk. “Winner buys coffee.”
“You got yourself a deal.”
With that, she turned and went back to her office. I sat there smiling at my now-empty doorway. Gloria was a good friend, even if she was going to force me to play tennis bright and early on a Saturday morning.
I glanced back down at the file and began the tedious task of trying to figure out what I might’ve missed or who I might need to talk to in order to finally close the case on Dylan Mercer.
By the time I shut down my computer, the office had cleared out, and the cleaning crew was rolling in, which meant I was even later than I thought.
I gathered my things and left the file sitting on the corner of my desk.
I hated leaving questions unanswered, but there wasn’t anything more I could do tonight.
Besides, I had to get to the daycare before six, or I’d get another fine. That was the last thing I needed, so I rushed outside and wasted no time getting across town. Forty-five minutes later, I was parked at the front door of Anslee’s daycare.
I rushed inside, and to no surprise, the room was much quieter than it had been early that morning when I dropped her off. Most of the kids had already been picked up, and the ones remaining were sitting on the floor, their eyes glued to a movie the daycare was playing on the TV.
Anslee was sitting in the back, twirling one of her long curls around her little finger, like she always did whenever she was tired or bored.
She was an adorable eighteen-month-old with chubby cheeks, tiny freckles on her nose, and a round middle.
She also had the most precious smile, but it was her beautiful blue eyes that stood out the most.
They were endlessly blue, bright, and full of innocence.