“Good,” she says, falsely bright. “Great. What can I do for you?”
Andrea and I dated briefly. It ended badly, like all my relationships seem to. I wouldn’t have called her, except that she’s my last resort for finding out about Angel’s former foster parents. I tell Andrea about Angel’s claims, give her the relevant names and details. She’s quiet when I’m done, and I hear her tapping on the keyboard.
“It looks like these allegations were investigated,” she says after a pause. “No wrongdoing on the part of the foster parents was discovered.”
“Yes,” I say. “I know.”
“But?”
“I can’t shake it,” I say. “She’s a deeply traumatized kid. Has a history of lying. There’s just something about her story I can’t let go. She says there was a boy there, someone they had locked in a cellar.”
“According to what I see here—and the system is slow to update—there hasn’t been anyone placed with them since Angel. They’ve had fifteen children cycle through their home over the last three years, no allegation of abuse. Looks like they have refused placements since Angel.”
Andrea is a child advocacy lawyer. It’s gritty work with few untethered successes and some bone-crushing, nightmare-inducing loses. She’s a passionate, determined, dogged champion of kids who have fallen through the cracks of a system that doesn’t always work to protect them. She’s the person you call when everyone else has given up.
“I’ll look into it a little more closely,” she says. “Is that what you’re asking?”
“Yes,” I say. “Not a favor. I’ll pay your rate, of course.”
“That’s not necessary,” she says. “But you’re aware that the incidence of false abuse allegations in the foster care system is high. There’s a one-in-four chance that foster parents will face one type of accusation or another.”
“I’m aware,” I say. “I just want to do my due diligence for this kid. And for any other kid who might wind up there.”
She’s gone quiet again; I hear her tapping on the keyboard. “Okay,” she says. “Give me a couple of days. I’ll call you.”
She hangs up, and I’m left holding the phone. I’ll cop to a familiar sense of mystification I have when it comes to relationships. Doctor-patient, fine. I get it; there are clear rules and standards of behavior. But friendships, romantic relationships, even family—I’m a bull in a china shop.
I don’t know exactly why Andrea distanced herself from me. It was never a clear break. To be honest, it wasn’t a clear beginning. We just had a little too much to drink one night after an especially brutal court loss—a kid going back to an abusive father—and she wound up back at my place. There were a couple of dinners, a few more pleasant—I thought—sexual encounters. Then she basically ghosted me—isn’t that what “they” call it now? Stopped answering calls and texts. I didn’t pursue because—why? Maybe it’s respect for boundaries, but maybe a big part of me didn’t want to know why someone so smart, sensitive, attractive felt like she wanted to put space between us.
It’s not just what happened with Kreskey.
I was awkward before—only you and Tess ever made sense. I was okay with my mom; still am. She’s in Florida now, a yoga instructor with a new boyfriend who is good to her. She and my father divorced after Kreskey and our move away. She asks about you sometimes, Lara.
I don’t talk to my dad as much. I always had the vague sense that my jock, engineer father was a little embarrassed by his skinny, uncoordinated, brainiac kid. Straight As, test scores off the charts, and you can’t hit a ball with a bat? As if one thing had anything to do with the other. Even now, my degrees, books, television appearances seem to unsettle him a bit, like I am an equation that he just can’t solve. In our awkward monthly phone calls, he’ll bring up some team or another that’s going to some playoff or another. I’ll remind him gently that I don’t follow sports. And it’s as if that’s a fresh disappointment to him every time. Chemistry. Sometimes it’s just not there, even between parent and child.
If I could go back and heal my inner child, which frankly is the least of my problems, I’d tell him what I tell my troubled patients: just be yourself. It’s perfectly okay to be the flawed, quirky, awkward, unique individual you are. No matter what you think, or how things appear on the surface, everyone around is grappling with similar