The Wrong Girl

21

Jane watched Maggie Gunnison tap a pass code on a number pad, heard the office door click. Maggie put a hand on the doorknob, but seemed reluctant to turn it.

Jane had to keep her talking. And she’d just thought of how. “Do you allow single parents to be fosters?”

“Well, sometimes we-”

“Hey, Maggie.” A young man approached, wearing pressed jeans, earbuds plugged into his ears and a white cord dangling down his fashionably untucked plaid shirt. He pushed a rickety metal cart stacked with file folders. A shock of dark hair curled under the bright green Celtics cap he wore backward, its plastic band making a green stripe across his forehead.

“Sorry, ladies. Comin’ through. Cool that we’re getting out at three for the snowstorm, right? Makes me proud to be nonessential.” His voice was too loud, as if he’d forgotten no one else could hear his music. He put a steadying hand on the files, then narrowed his eyes at Jane. “Hey. You’re Jane Ryland! I’m a big-”

“Hey, Finn.” Maggie shot him a look, then pointed down the hall. “Let’s go into my office, such as it is, Miss Ryland.”

Jane followed as she entered, turning to give the guy an apologetic what-can-you-do wave. Always nice to have fans.

“Sorry,” Maggie was saying. “Finn Eberhardt’s one of our newer caseworkers. He can be a bit of an oversharer. Forgive him. Anyway, you asked about caseworkers before-we’ve got five full-times. Me, Finn, three others. Five! And two thousand seven hundred fifty-eight children. The math stinks. It’s not that there aren’t families who might want them, it’s that we can’t do the home visit assessment paperwork fast enough to assure the kids are in safe places. So they wait. Even infants wait. You asked about parents. Yes, sometimes we use single mothers. It’s not ideal, I suppose, but what can we do? Too many kids need help.”

“And now there are two more.” Jane risked it. “What will happen to them?”

Maggie closed her office door behind her, pushing it shut with the flat of one running shoe. The windowless room was a nest of file folders, stacked against the walls, tipping next to a green four-drawer file cabinet, piled chest high on a wooden desk. A seemingly endless philodendron carefully coiled on plastic hooks garlanded the walls, glossy heart-shaped leaves snaking up to one corner, edging along the ceiling, then down the other side.

Maggie dumped her paperwork on top of an already precarious mountain of manila, a tiny cloud of dust puffing from the bottom.

“All these are children who need foster homes.” She patted the files. “Their parents are dead, or crackheads, or sick or crazy or basically defeated. Parental rights terminated. The children did nothing wrong, but they got dumped. One flutter of a butterfly wing-you know?-they could have been a Kennedy or a Saltonstall. But, little Phillip and Phoebe? They got dealt the shit hand. Sorry.”

Jane shrugged, Got it, eyed the one visitor’s chair. Stacked with files.

“So Phillip and Phoebe?” Jane began.

“Look. Eventually the two kids will be sent to another foster home. I’m hoping they can stay together. But there’s no guarantee.”

“But that’s…”

“Yeah. I know. I’ve only been in charge here a year. And I cry every night.”

“Your job is so difficult,” Jane said.

Maggie adjusted the leaves of the philodendron, carefully draping a loop across a beige metal bookshelf. “Well, we do what we can. I’ll be better after a week off, right?”

“Absolutely. But, um, their foster mother,” Jane kept her voice oh-so-casual, as if this were something that just crossed her mind. “Were these the first children she’d taken in? How do you spell her name again? I’m not sure I have it right.”

“Good try.” Maggie shook her head. “That, I can’t tell.”

With a rasp like an insistent wasp, the intercom on Maggie’s desk broke the silence.

“I told Vee to tell me when twenty minutes was up. Thanks, Vee,” Maggie said into the speaker. “I’m okay. We’re done.”

“It’s not the time,” Vee said. “I forgot about that, actually. It’s the police. They’re on their way here. To see you. They’re asking about Brie-”

Maggie lunged for the phone on her desk, grabbed the receiver, punched off the speaker button.

Brie? Jane didn’t want to write it down, but she’d remember it, because it was past lunchtime and she was starving. Brie? Maybe it was Bree. Part of a name. Part of a name Maggie definitely did not want her to hear.

Maggie turned her back, whispering into the phone.

Maybe “Bree” had nothing to do with the Callaberry Street kids. But judging by Maggie’s demeanor, and if the police were on the way, then Jane had overheard a pretty tantalizing tidbit.

Jane pretended interest in the framed photos of children on the office wall until she heard the click of Maggie hanging up. She waited a beat before turning around, so it wouldn’t look like she’d been listening.

“I should never have come in to the office today,” Maggie said.

“The police?” Might as well go for it. “Anything you can tell me?”

“Yes,” Maggie said. “Good-bye.”