41.
“hammock county home for children,” said the pocked metal sign on the road, and in front of Ruby, shrouded in the misty hills, was the home. Ancient oaks draped
in moss lined the drive, and from their bark emanated the dusky roar of the cicadas.
She parked in the front. In the back, she could see, there were still pastures and pens, and a freshly painted barn.
She made her way up to the porch, thinking about how many doors she had knocked on over the years. Someday, maybe she would
knock on all of them, asking the question under her heart: Have you seen her?
A woman answered the door, and Ruby felt a strong sense of déjà vu, because she had visited hundreds of places like this in
her work. Orphanages, with modern-day names like “residential facilities.” Transitional housing—that’s what they called halfway
homes nowadays. Group homes—what were once called insane asylums. Different names, still the same. Places of exile.
Including for children. Like this home.
She could hear them, though, humming in the walls like the insects outside. After a brief explanation, she was admitted.
The current director was more than willing to have Ruby look over her place—once she signed a release to not divulge the names of any of the children currently in residence.
Ruby looked at their milky, pale skin and unfocused eyes and agreed.
She thought of her own years in foster care and was glad that at least she hadn’t been sent to a place like this.
She recalled a social worker saying it was hard to find foster homes for teenage girls, but at least she wasn’t a teenage boy, because they were the hardest of all to find homes for.
They were sent to institutions like this.
She studied the kids while on her tour. Many looked shrunken for their age, with hollow chests. Others were inflated with
medication, their skin puffy. Their hair looked clean, but it had the dull look she often saw in such places, from the industrial
shampoo. It was from despair, too, Ruby knew. There was no institution in the world that could feel like a family. In her
foster homes, at least she could walk to school. She could invite other kids over, and go into a kitchen where there was a
real parent, who sometimes smiled at you.
“What exactly would you like to know?” the director asked. They had ended the tour in the cafeteria, where the bell had rung
for lunch. The kids were sitting down at tables. Each carried their own tray, and they had been taught to not even touch elbows.
From the corners, armed guards watched.
“There were two kids here, a long time ago,” she said. “Frank and Willa Castle. I’d like their records, if I may.”
“This way,” the director said, leading her away from the cafeteria, and Ruby felt the eyes of some of the children surreptitiously
follow her.
“Are the kids here up for adoption?” Ruby asked.
“Most of the kids here are in what I call system limbo,” the director said as she led her down the cold hallways. “They were
removed from their parents, and the courts have never gotten around to terminating rights. Or they have such challenges, we
think it’s best they remain a ward of the state.”
“Why is that?”
The woman stopped. “Once they terminate rights, the child is free for adoption. But I’m sure you understand the problem. There
are over half a million kids in the foster system. People only want the babies. Maybe toddlers. They don’t want older kids
and adolescents. Especially kids who were molested and abused. So what happens to a kid like that who’s open for adoption?”
“What happens?” Ruby asked as the director resumed walking. They were heading toward the back of the building, where a small
room with a wooden door had a gold plaque that said Records.
“The state tries to place them. There are no takers. So they stay here. But the child knows they are free for adoption. They
know that in this entire county, no one wants them. What do you think that does to their psyche? It’s better that they stay
in the limbo. Trust me”—the woman unlocked the door—“I’ve seen what happens otherwise.”
A few hours later, Ruby had combed through all the records. In one file, she had found Frank and Willa Castle, their child
faces staring up from the paperwork.
There was little in the file, but what was there didn’t need to be expounded. She read the reasons for their removal and felt
the air leave her body. Poor Willa—and poor Frank. It gave her a new perspective on the man who had tried to kill her. Who
had once worked for Jerrod Tinsley at the courthouse.
There were no other relatives listed.
The siblings had left when Frank was eighteen. He had taken Willa with him, though she was younger. Asks if he can leave with his sister, said the file. Request granted. And a final note: Troubled young man, but he does care about his sister.
Ruby wandered outside and saw some of the kids throwing grain to a clucking cluster of chickens running madly underfoot.
The director joined her. She had put on a pair of muddy galoshes and looked much happier out here than she had inside. Her
face had relaxed, and she smiled at one of the boys, who couldn’t have been more than eight. He was young enough to still
have hope in his face.
“Good job, Grant,” she called, and the boy went back to shaking grain. The air was pungent with the smell of damp feathers.
“When I took this place over,” the director said, “the county was talking about getting rid of all the farm animals. They
were phasing out compulsory work. But I knew better.”
“Kids love animals.”
“Exactly! Kids love critters. They like being outside with the animals. More than once, we’ve caught them sleeping in the
sheep pen. They like the warmth. Animals accept you when no one else does.”
“What about slaughtering them?” Ruby asked.
“That part we definitely stopped. These animals stay. Well, the chickens, once they stop laying—some of them take a discreet
trip to the soup pot. But most of the animals here are lifers. It gives the kids hope. I don’t know if that makes sense.”
“It means they won’t be killed, either.”
“Yes—psychologically, they know they can stay. We even get kids who come back to visit the animals they’ve known. We harvest
the eggs and sell them at the farmer’s market. It’s a reward for good behavior—getting to be on the farmer’s market crew.”
Ruby was watching the chickens and thinking about all the times on a case when she had assumed one thing, and the opposite had been true.
There had been many times she’d thought the innocent were guilty, and others when she was so laser focused on one suspect, she missed everything else.
She tried to think about those times not as mistakes but as part of the process.
You don’t know until you know—you have to try all the roads.
“Do you still have pigs?” she asked.
“No.” The woman shook her head. “Just the chickens, a few sheep, some ducks and goats. We had some mini horses, but they cost
a fortune to keep up.”
The little boy had emptied his grain bin—an old plastic milk jug cut down into a scoop—and he looked forlorn.
“Get some more,” the director called. He trotted off happily.
“That one is still young enough,” the director said. “I think he’s got a fighting chance to find a home. But we have to act
quickly, because the longer a child stays in a place like this, the harder it gets for them to adapt to a normal family.”
“I was told that when the Castle kids were here,” Ruby said, holding up the old file, “it was hard for relatives who wanted
them to get them back.”
The director nodded. “That’s true. They used to think that one bad apple meant the whole family was rotten. If a child was
removed for a significant reason, like sexual abuse, they didn’t trust anyone in that clan. But now we know that’s not necessarily
true. We do family placements when we can. We call them kinship placements now.”
“If the Castle kids were here now, could they have gone to their cousin Betty?”
“If her home was safe.” The director lowered her voice. “I know this is no place for a child.”
Ruby left, but before she was even down the drive, she had to pull over, in a clearing under the trees, because she began to feel dizzy, even unwell. She felt her hands on the wheel and heard the bone, calling from far away. It was saying, Will you listen to me now?
Okay, she thought, opening her mind to the impossible. Tell me. I’m listening.
The sky split open for her then, and she was back in the woods outside Chinook, only now something terrible had occurred.
She was in the mind of something, something that was no longer with us, not in the same way. She was a set of dimly twinkling
stars. Ruby was at the stars, and she was looking down—on the poorhouse, once again. She saw through a hole in the roof into
a room back in time. The matron was there, writing in her ledgers. She was writing a name in the front of the book. She looked
up, into her doorway, and Ruby was in Georgia. She was in a car pulling up outside the factory where Mitchell had been transferred.
She was a set of hands on the wheel. She felt the sickness rise in her then, and she knew why most people didn’t want to listen
to the dead. It was miraculous and awful. Why, she might step through, herself, and—
She came to suddenly, her skin clammy and cold all over, and she could feel how hard it was for the bone, too. How much effort
it took to communicate from that place. She heard the bone faintly now, from a distance, pleading with her. Save him, the bone was saying.