had. Sam reached for the Froot Loops. Juno watched in amusement as he dropped to a knee and opened his backpack.
“Thanks for the snack, Juno!”
Juno thrilled. He was such a good boy.
She wanted to make the right decision. Sam did not belong to Winnie and Nigel; they’d taken him from a woman named Josalyn Russel. Her story was tragic: a runaway, young and afraid, got pregnant. She must have been terrified. But that meant Sam had a biological family somewhere: aunts and uncles and cousins, maybe even grandparents. Juno would never have the chance to be a grandmother to her grandchildren, and that cut at her heart. What these people had done was unthinkable.
In that moment, she made her decision: she would find these people, the Russels. She needed to see what type of people they were.
Running into Sam had thrown off the timing of her plan, so she spent the night on the west side of the park, too afraid to sleep, but tired all the way down to her joints. It was warmish outside, and from her bench she could see the Turlin Street house and that gave her some comfort. She considered taking something for her pain—the pills in her bag—but Juno preferred being alert in the park at night. As if emerging from some horror movie, an old drunk stumbled by. Juno knew him from the area; Vic, they called him. Angry guy, from what she recalled. She’d always steered clear. Some of them knew you were there and didn’t care to acknowledge it, but other guys—like Vic—they wanted to get right up in your face, make you uncomfortable. People were the same everywhere you went: the suburbs, prison, the gutters of Seattle: everyone was afraid of their own existence. Afraid they were getting it wrong...afraid of what would come after as a consequence. And in Juno’s opinion, that made people act like irrational assholes.
A dozen yards away, Vic tossed something into the lake. Juno thought she heard him yell “Fuck you, Howie!” What does it take to get some peace and quiet around here? she thought. There was one more anguished hail of “Howieee!” He settled down after that, probably to squirt something into his veins. Juno relaxed a little, fingering the pill in her pocket. She could think in peace. She had a view of Winnie and Nigel’s bedroom—and Sam’s, she thought, her eyes drifting to the window that belonged to the boy’s room.
For Juno, there was the matter of getting back into the house the next morning without triggering the alarm. Her plan was to go through the kitchen door with the key she’d borrowed from the ring of spares. She’d have to time it just right, so that she’d be walking in the back of the house while Sam was leaving through the front. She had a three-minute window to get inside without triggering the alarm. Everything had to be timed just so.
Just so what? she thought. You get back to your little hovel in the ground where you live like a mole. It was almost spring, she could return to the park, walk away from the Crouch house. It had done its job; sheltered her through winter. Juno was certain she would have died if not for the crawl space. And she wasn’t well—far from it.
But she’d chosen the wrong family to follow, a family with deep, dark secrets. No, she chided herself. There was no wrong in doing right. Juno, who’d never believed that there was a reason for everything, had never blamed God for the things that had happened to her—knew that people made their own fate. She was a walking testament to that. But Sam didn’t belong in this mess. On top of that, Juno knew that the Crouches’ marriage was falling apart. Where would Sam go if they got divorced? What would his life be like? He was entitled to a different life, one with his real family. The clock was ticking, and Juno wanted to make sure Sam was okay. Sam was her priority. Sam was caught up in all of this because they’d stolen him. She’d read the police report, seen the little swatches of blood. A baby had been taken. Like hers had been taken from her. And she’d had no rights, no legal standing to see them. Kregger had erased her from their lives.
Juno’s body rocked with a different type of pain. She moaned softly, a purring sound in the back of her