Rhetta scurried down the steps after her. “I’m sorry,” she said uncomfortably. “She doesn’t like it when people leave. She never knows who’s coming back and who’s not.”

Christy-Lynn nodded, an ache suddenly clawing at her throat. What kind of future would this child ever have? With a caregiver in decline and an uncle who wanted nothing to do with her. One day Rhetta would fall ill, or worse, and the county would come for her. A woman with sensible shoes and a vague, practiced smile. And Iris would disappear, swallowed up by a system too flawed to protect her. It was too terrible to contemplate. But as Christy-Lynn backed out of Rhetta’s driveway, it was all she could contemplate.

TWENTY-SEVEN

Goose Creek, South Carolina

June 27, 1998

Christy-Lynn turns off the water and steps from the shower. Her reflection stares back at her from the steam-mottled mirror, dripping wet and unnaturally still. Her eyes are enormous in her face, great pools of bewilderment.

It’s been eight weeks.

Eight weeks since Charlene Parker was arrested. Eight weeks since the caseworker drove her back to the apartment she shared with her mother and told her to pack her things. Eight weeks since she had been shuffled off to a suitable foster home.

It isn’t a bad place, a two-story colonial out in the cookie-cutter suburbs, the kind of house she always wanted to go home to after school. The furniture is new, the phone works, and there’s plenty of food in the fridge. But it isn’t home. At least it’s not her home.

They call it a receiving home, a temporary place to stick new kids until they decide where to park them long term. The people who run the receiving home, Jean and Dennis Hawley, like to brag that they specialize in teens, but Christy-Lynn isn’t so sure.

There are two others kids living with the Hawleys now. There were three until last week, when the girl who shared Christy-Lynn’s room—a thirteen-year-old named Dana whose entire left arm was crisscrossed with a web of fine white scars—got hold of a razor blade and nearly bled out on the bathroom floor.

Christy-Lynn had watched from her bedroom window as they loaded the girl onto a stretcher and then into an ambulance, siren screaming as the flashing red lights sped away into the darkness. Even if she lived, she wouldn’t be coming back. Not to this house.

Down the hall there are two other residents, a pair of brothers, Terry and Todd Blevins, whose parents died when their trailer exploded while they were cooking up a batch of meth. They’re the thickset, sullen sort—mouth breathers, Dana called them—and Christy-Lynn is careful to give them a wide berth. She doesn’t like the way the oldest brother’s eyes follow her, lingering just a little too long for comfort.

The one thing they have in common is that none of them have any hope of finding a forever family. Forever family. It’s the stomach-turning term some caseworkers use for adoption, as if they’re corgis or cocker spaniels instead of human beings. Kids who end up in foster care already have two strikes against them, but toss in the potential for alcohol, drugs, and unwanted pregnancy, and a teen’s pretty much guaranteed to remain in the system until the clock runs out, and they’re finally kicked loose on their eighteenth birthday, often without a job or a cent to their name.

Not that Christy-Lynn wants a forever family. It’s too late for that. She only wants to be left alone, to finish school, then find a way to get into college so she can get a decent job and never have to depend on anyone but herself. But she’s in a holding pattern now, caught in a bureaucratic limbo where every kid is treated the same—a mouth to feed, a soul to save, a government check to collect.

But it’s how things are. Nothing to do but wait and wonder while her mother serves her time. Her lawyer—the one the court appointed—was saying three years, maybe eighteen months with time off for good behavior. And then what? Would she keep her promise when she got out? Or would it just be a repeat of the same old nightmare, like the movie Groundhog Day where Bill Murray wakes up every morning to the same old hell?

The thought of going back to that life sends a chill through her. Not that she’ll have much choice if it comes to that. Eighteen months from now, she’ll still be a minor. They’ll make her go back to her mother, and that will be that.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Sweetwater, Virginia

June 3, 2017

Wade pulled up Christy-Lynn’s number once more and hit “Send.” His last three calls had gone straight to voice mail, and he’d had to settle for leaving a message, asking only half jokingly if she was upside down in a ditch somewhere. He was surprised this time when she actually picked up.

“Hey, it’s Wade. I thought you were going to call me.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone.”

“You went back, I take it?”

“I had to.”

“If you say so.”

“Please don’t be snarky.”

Wade instantly regretted the remark. She sounded as if she’d been crying, her voice dull and ragged. “Sorry. Tell me what happened.”

“I don’t think I can. Not now. I just walked through the door, and I’ve been driving all day. I’m beat.”

“Sounds like you need a meal and a good night’s sleep.”

“There isn’t much in the house, and there’s no way I’m going back out. I’ll settle for a hot bath and good night’s sleep. That work for you?”