His First Choice. Tara Quinn Taylor

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

       CHAPTER NINETEEN

       CHAPTER TWENTY

       CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

       CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

       CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

       CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

       CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

       CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

       CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

       CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

       CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

       CHAPTER THIRTY

       CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

       CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

       Extract

       Copyright

       CHAPTER ONE

      “MS. HAMILTON? THIS is Mara Noble calling from Busy Little Minds preschool...”

      “Yes, Mara.” As a social worker employed by California Social Services in the child welfare department, Lacey Hamilton had familiarized herself with the reputations and locations of all of the child care facilities and schools in her district of Santa Raquel. Busy Little Minds was one of the best rated for both intellectual and emotional development. “What can I do for you?” While there was kindness in her words, there was no smile attached. If Busy Little Minds was calling her, chances were a serious issue was at hand.

      With her phone on speaker behind the closed door of her private office, she opened a new document on her word-processing program.

      “I have a little boy,” Mara said. “He’s four, and I suspect abuse...”

      The woman knew her stuff. Issuing silent points to Little Minds for employee training, Lacey asked, “Is he there with you now?”

      “Yes, ma’am.”

      “Is he in need of medical attention?”

      “No. He’s already had medical attention. His father took him to the emergency room at the Santa Raquel Children’s Hospital over the weekend.”

      Call the hospital. And Ella. Ella Ackerman was the hospital’s representative to the High Risk Team, a group comprised of professionals from various fields that fought to prevent domestic violence deaths. Lacey was the team’s child protective services member.

      “So right now he’s not in any immediate danger.” She went back to the checklist she knew by heart. Determine the immediate safety and medical condition of the child first.

      “Not at the moment.”

      Could the child be in imminent danger?

      “Do you suspect the abuse took place in or outside the home?”

      “It’s not here,” Mara said, her voice solemn and low, as though making sure she wasn’t overheard. “And as far as I can tell, he doesn’t have babysitters and is not in any other activities outside of ours.”

      Parents? Lacey typed onto the blank page. Many of her colleagues still took notes by hand. She always took them electronically, even if she had only her smartphone with her at the time. As if engaging with technology gave her a tiny bit of the distance she had to maintain to be emotionally capable of doing her job.

      “What about siblings?” she asked. “Are you aware of anyone in the home other than his parents?”

      She had to assess the situation to determine which course of action to take: an immediate trip to Little Minds to secure the child within her care while she investigated, or the more preferred, less harsh approach of a call to his parents.

      “No. He’s an only child. And...his parents are divorced.”

      She wrote that word with a capital D. Sadly it showed up in more than 50 percent of her reports.

      “Who has custody?”

      “Our records indicate that they have shared parenting. Dad is the one who always drops him off and picks him up.”

      She typed Father controlling? and then a few notes to herself, to be used later when she made an official report.

      Now for the hardest part.

      “Why do you suspect abuse?” Thousands of kids went to emergency rooms every day, because kids were naturally inquisitive, adventurous, without the wherewithal to calculate danger, making them prone to accidents.

      “This morning he showed up with a cast on his arm. He says he fell, but he mumbles and looks down when he says it. We asked him what he was doing when he fell. He shrugged. No matter what we ask, he shrugs.”

      “What did his father have to say when he dropped him off?”

      “That he fell down.”

      “That’s all?”

      “That’s it. Mr. Bridges isn’t the chatty sort.”

      More typing, ending with Father evasive?

      Still, kids and broken arms went hand in hand. This one could have fallen off a bike, or from a tree. Not that many four-year-olds were climbing trees or riding bikes. But some did. And some fell from bunk beds, too.

      “Anything else?” she asked, wanting to know why the woman thought this broken arm was different from the norm. A kid not talking about the incident wasn’t all that unusual. He very likely could have been into some kind of mischief and knew he was in trouble. If he’d climbed on a cupboard to sneak a cookie, for instance, or...

      “Yes, Ms. Hamilton, I’m sorry. This is very difficult for me. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to make a call like this and...”

      “I understand,” Lacey filled in, softening her tone, when the woman paused. Abused children were her business. Sometimes she lost sight of the world outside of her small circle, where coming face-to-face with the monstrous fact that heinous people abused children was an anomaly.

      “We’ve had Levi since he was three months old. He started out in day care and then moved to preschool when he was two, which is a year earlier than we usually move them. He’s a precocious little guy. What I’m trying to say is that we know him. And in the past six months, he’s changed. A lot.”

      She needed to know if there were other signs of physical abuse. But listened patiently. She didn’t want to lead her caller into saying something she might not have mentioned, giving it more weight than it deserved.

      Lacey had been at this awhile. Going on ten years. She knew her business. And had given up hoping it would ever get any easier.

      “He’s withdrawn, to the point of not playing well with others. He cries easily, rarely smiles. I can’t