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She chewed at her bottom lip and avoided his gaze.
“Tell me the truth, please.”
“Yes, I was there,” she said. “I was in my room studying for my math test. I heard the first shot but didn’t realize it was gunfire. I thought maybe someone had set off a firecracker in our yard. Stupid, huh?”
“No.”
“Then there was the second shot, and I heard a thud from my parents’ room. I ran to their room. My dad was in bed, and there were blood and brains all over his pillow. My mom was lying on the floor at the end of the bed. She had shot herself in the temple and blown off most of her skull. The thud I heard was her body hitting the floor.”
He didn’t say anything, and without daring to look at him, she continued, “My mother left a note explaining that my dad tarnished their love with his affair, and he didn’t deserve to live but that she couldn’t live without him. I called 9-1-1, but they were both already dead. My mom had some mental health issues, I think. She often spent days in her bedroom and refused to eat or bathe. My dad called it her ‘moods’, but I think she might have had severe depression. Anyway, I didn’t have any other family, so the police called Child Services, and they put me in foster care.”
She finished her soup and resisted the urge to lick the Styrofoam container clean. Reliving her parents’ death hadn’t done anything to diminish her appetite. Of course, this was the first food she’d eaten in days that wasn’t a peanut butter sandwich or an orange.
“What happened then?” he asked quietly. Half his sandwich and most of his soup sat untouched in front of him, and she looked longingly at them for a moment before drinking the rest of her water. She should never have told him the truth, but it was too late to start lying now. He might as well hear the rest of her pathetic life story.
He’s your boss! Stop telling him how pathetic you are. You’ll get fired just for being so pitiful.
If he didn’t fire me when I stuck my tongue down his throat, he’s not going to fire me over my stupid life story.
Another wave of embarrassment went through her, and she could feel her cheeks reddening. Oh God, she had made out with her boss. Why the hell didn’t she learn her lesson the first time?
“Jane,” he prompted.
She took a deep breath. “I lived with my first foster home for about three months before my foster dad was arrested for child pornography.”
“Fuck,” he said. “Don’t they do some kind of interview process for foster homes?”
“Yes,” she said. “I guess he was good at hiding it. They moved me to a new foster home. They were an older couple, and they were nice. They had been trying to adopt a baby for years and fostered kids while they waited. I had my own room, and they treated me well. I lived with them for almost two years, but then they finally got the chance to adopt a baby. They needed my room for the nursery, so they asked my social worker to move me to a new home.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he said.
She glanced up at him. To her surprise, there was no pity in his eyes, just something that looked suspiciously like anger.
“You lived with them for two years, and they kicked you out?” he said.
She shrugged. “They needed the space for the baby.”
It surprised her how easy it was to share this part of her life’s story. At the time, it was a devastating loss. She had grown to love Judy and Karl and even thought they might adopt her. She had made sure to do well in school and help around the house with chores to make them want her permanently. The night Karl and Judy sat her down and told her she was moving to a different foster home was horrible. She had cried and begged them to keep her, promised to help with the baby, and offered to sleep on the couch in the basement. Judy and Karl cried with her, and she believed their tears were genuine, but the next day, the social worker came for her.
“Where did you go then?” Mr. Dawson asked.
“I went to another foster home, and it wasn’t very,” she paused, “nice.”
“What happened?”
“They had other foster kids, six in total. One of them was a sixteen-year-old boy named David. One night he snuck into the girls’ room and tried to rape me.”
She watched his hands clenched into fists, and another look of anger flitted across his face.
“He didn’t,” she said. “I fought back and managed to get his hand off my mouth long enough to scream. It woke up the other girls, and he ran back to his room. I told the foster parents what happened, but they didn’t want to lose the money either of us brought in, so they told me to keep quiet about it when the social worker came.”
“Did you?” Mr. Dawson asked.
“No. They’d put a lock on the girls’ room to keep David out, but he was angry, and he constantly threatened to try to rape me again or kill me. I was afraid that sooner or later, he’d get me alone and hurt me. The social worker came by about a week after his first attempt. I told her what happened, and one of the other girls was brave enough to back me up. They removed all of us from the home.”
“Where did you go then?”
“Well, I was seventeen by then and only had a year left in the foster system. An older lady had been a foster mom for a long time and was retiring. They asked her to foster me. They told her it would only be until I turned eighteen, so she agreed. That’s how I met Mama J.”
