Page 78 of The Intruder

“Nell—” Lee begins, but before he can say whatever he was going to say, I cut him off.

“Since the phone lines are down, I’ll go to the police station myself,” I volunteer. “I’ll tell them everything that happened, and I’ll make sure they know you’re safe with family. I’ll make sure they won’t hurt you or take you away.”

“You can’t promise that,” Nell sniffles.

“I do promise.” I lay a hand on my chest. “I infinity promise, Nell. Let me handle this, and it will be all right. I’m a teacher, and it’s my job to protect children.”

“Casey.” Lee frowns, like he doesn’t entirely trust me either. “Maybe I should go talk to the police.”

“No,” I say calmly. “You should stay here with your niece. I will deal with it.”

God knows, I’ve done it before.

Lee lets out a long sigh. He knows he has a long road ahead of him. If Jolene Kettering is dead and so is the girl’s father, he might be the next of kin. She is his responsibility if he is willing. And he may not be willing.

“Nell,” he says quietly, “do you have any aunts or uncles or grandparents you can stay with?”

Slowly, she shakes her head. It all feels painfully familiar.

But Lee doesn’t miss a beat. “I need you to know then that if your mother and father are both gone, I will be there for you. I will be your guardian, if that’s what you want. I promise you that.”

I look at Lee with a newfound respect. He seemed like a decent enough guy, but I always suspected there were things about him that he wasn’t telling me, and it made me want to stay away from him. But now he’s offering to step up for a child who isn’t even his, and I can see in his eyes that he means it. Lee is a good man.

“Casey is going to have the police check on your mom,” he says. “In the meantime, do you want to look at some pictures of your dad? I’ve got lots of them.”

Nell nods slowly. She is still tearful, but she doesn’t look like she’s about to hyperventilate. Maybe she’ll be okay after all.

Lee doesn’t know it, but I’m going to make sure of that.

Because I’m not driving to the police station. I have very different plans to ensure that Nell doesn’t have to suffer one more day at the hands of that miserable woman. It’s time for the misery to end.

55

BEFORE

ELLA

I am strapped into the passenger’s seat of my social worker’s SUV, traveling sixty miles per hour in the direction of New Hampshire.

My social worker is named Amara. She is a big woman with close-cropped curly black hair and lots of comfy padding who likes to envelope me in great big hugs. When we first met, that was the first thing she did. She hugged me for, like, five straight minutes. At first, I didn’t like it, but then by the time she let me go, I wished I could have stayed in the hug longer, and there were tears running down my cheeks.

You poor thing, Amara said to me. You have been through so much.

She wasn’t just talking about losing my mother in the fire. She knew about the hoarding. She knew that I was “dangerously underweight.” She knew about the cigarette burns on my arms. She didn’t know everything, or else I’d probably be wherever Anton is right now, but she knew a lot.

Anton is doing okay. Not great, but good enough. I haven’t seen him since that awful day, and I’m not sure I ever will again because he’ll be in juvenile detention for a very long time, but he wrote me a letter telling me he was surviving. I wrote a long letter back to him, and Amara swore she would get it to him. I told him that even if we couldn’t see each other, we would be pen pals. I really, really miss him.

“We’re almost there,” Amara informs me as we turn off the highway.

My stomach clenches. We have been driving for over an hour now, and I have been dreading this moment the whole time. But unless Amara crashes this car, which I don’t think is very likely, we are going to be at our destination any moment.

The town looks quiet. Quieter than Medford. I see a couple of kids riding their bicycles and a handful of people driving by in cars, but the whole place has a small-town kind of vibe. I decide it wouldn’t be a terrible place to finish growing up.

Although a lot depends on the person I’ll be living with.

Amara finally parks in front of a small apartment building. She kills the engine and turns to look at me, her dimples popping as she smiles. “So, Ella,” she says. “Are you ready to meet your father?”

Am I? I smooth out the pink skirt that Amara helped me pick out for this occasion, and I adjust the headband that is holding back my red-brown hair, which becomes more brown than red every day. I offer her what I’m sure is a super weak smile, but I’m trying.