Her Mother’s Grave

Chapter Thirty-Four

JOSIE – TEN YEARS OLD

Their steps echoed loudly in the halls of the county courthouse. Josie walked behind her mother, cold air flying up the stiff brown skirt her mother had made her wear. She stopped at a water fountain and gulped greedily before her mother could slap her and hiss at her to hurry up. But it didn’t come. They were in public, in the courthouse where things were formal and official, and everything was cold and grown-ups stared at you like you were a bug.

“JoJo,” her mother said sweetly, smiling. “Let’s go, hon.”

Josie knew she was the only person who could hear the edge beneath her mother’s words. Hanging her head, she followed her mother to a set of large, wooden doors that opened into a huge, shelf-lined room filled with more books than Josie had ever seen. A massive desk sat in the middle of it. In front of the desk, several chairs were lined up. They were divided into sides, and Josie’s gram sat in one of them, a man Josie didn’t recognize beside her.

Josie followed her mother deeper into the room. Her gram reached over and squeezed Josie in a hug while Josie’s mother glared. “Remember what I said,” Lisette whispered into her ear before releasing her.

A tiny pinprick of fear spiked Josie’s chest. How could she forget?

Her grandmother had decided months ago—after missing the skating party—that she would simply sue Josie’s mother for custody. There had been endless meetings and appointments and lots of stuffy grown-ups asking Josie all kinds of questions she knew she couldn’t answer honestly. She’d even had to meet with a psychologist. Of course, what none of them understood was that every time Josie was forced to talk to them, it made her mother more enraged and crueler than usual behind closed doors. She was careful not to leave any marks on Josie’s body, but she didn’t have to—she knew how much the closet terrified her daughter. The only reason Josie had coped with the increasingly long periods of time in the dark cell was the backpack Ray had given her to hide inside the closet. It contained a flashlight, extra batteries, a dog-eared copy of the first Harry Potter book, a Stretch Armstrong doll, and a couple of granola bars. As she waited out the endless nights, shivering in her nightdress from fear and cold, Josie liked to imagine that Ray was there with her.

The only good thing to come out of the custody battle was that Josie’s mother was forced to let her spend short periods of time with Lisette. It was purely strategic on her mother’s part. Josie had overheard her mother’s lawyer say that in her petition to the court, Lisette had painted her mother as unreasonable, mean-spirited, and spiteful. He said that allowing Josie to spend time with her grandmother would go a long way toward debunking Lisette’s claims. But Josie’s time with Lisette was mostly spent being grilled over what her mother did to her. When Lisette realized that Josie would never confess the things that her mother did, she spent the rest of their time together trying to convince Josie that if she told the truth, she would get to live with Lisette forever.

“Josie, this is very important,” she had said. “You have to tell the judge what your mother does to you. If you are very brave and tell the truth, your whole life will change. I know you’re scared of her, but I’m telling you that you don’t need to be. I can help you. I can protect you, but I can only do that if you tell the truth.”

But Josie knew that no one could help her. Not her father from heaven, not her grandmother, not the teachers at school or the psychologist she had seen, and certainly not the judge who swept into the room and started shaking everyone’s hands.

Josie sat beside her mother, her legs swinging nervously. She reached into the pocket of the cardigan she wore and felt for the Disney figurine Ray had given her. He had pressed the miniature fairy godmother from Sleeping Beauty into her hand the day before when they met in the woods between their houses. “Keep it,” he told her. “Maybe a real fairy godmother will come and save you.”

Now her fist closed around it, and she concentrated hard on the pain in her palm instead of the grown-ups all around her, talking in serious voices about her as though she wasn’t there. Nobody had any power over her mother. She may only be ten, but Josie wasn’t stupid.

“Miss Matson,” the judge said. “Josie Matson.”

Her mother leaned in and lightly touched Josie’s arm, her hissed threat ringing in Josie’s ears: “You be a good girl now, JoJo. Go on.”