My Stepmother…

I blinked.

“What charges?”

“Aggravated child abuse. False imprisonment. Child endangerment. Obstruction. There may be more.”

My pulse slammed in my ears.

Darlene, in jail?

It didn’t feel real.

“She was arrested an hour ago.”

I stared at him.

He didn’t smile. Didn’t look triumphant. Just resolute.

“The sheriff called before breakfast,” he said. “Vanessa is on her way. There’s another matter we need to discuss when you feel up to it.”

My stomach dropped.

“The father?”

He hated that word as much as I did. I saw it in his face.

“The man responsible,” he corrected. “We may be able to identify him.”

All the air in the room changed.

I had spent months trying not to think about him, because thinking meant remembering the smell of wet leaves, the grip over my mouth, the feeling of the world ending under a sky that stayed annoyingly blue.

But now there was Grace.

Now there was DNA.

Now there were people with power who were asking what I wanted instead of telling me to shut up.

“I don’t know if I can do that,” I said.

“You don’t have to decide today.”

Yet I kept hearing myself say it anyway.

“He shouldn’t get to walk around like nothing happened.”