Little Mercies. Heather Gudenkauf

it’s Uncle Dave.” Jenny responded with a limp smile and returned her attention to the unopened envelope.

      She tried to imagine what could be inside. She often played this game with wrapped birthday and Christmas presents, with unopened doors. Maybe there was a treasure map in the envelope with clues to a buried treasure, but the chance of a pirate’s booty ending up in Iowa was not a good bet. Maybe there was a wad of money inside, enough for her to buy a bus ticket so that she could get back to Benton and get her father out of jail. Someone was always bailing someone out of jail on television. She could imagine herself walking into the police station, wearing her blue-jean skirt and her best polo shirt. Soft pink and sporting an alligator emblem, she saved this shirt for the most special of occasions: school concerts, holidays, and now for bailing her father out of jail. “Here,” she would say importantly as she slapped the money down on the counter. “Billy Briard is coming with me now.” The policeman behind the counter would be impressed and quickly bring her father to her.

      “If you just open it you’ll find out what’s inside,” the man in camouflage offered. Though Jenny saw the wisdom in this, she was undecided. Inside the envelope could be something awful, the evidence of a terrible crime, some apparently deadly powder that is always being sent in the mail to courthouses and important people. But, even worse, there could be nothing inside. Nothing of value anyway. Receipts or bills or boring clippings from the newspaper. She dared a look at her newly acquired Uncle Dave. He was staring expectantly at her as if saying, Just open it already. Jenny unwound the red string and pushed back the flap. Peering inside the envelope she could see that she was right on almost all counts. There was no toxic powder, but the envelope held a map, a wad of money and a stack of smaller envelopes held together with a thick rubber band.

      “You want me to call someone for you?” Uncle Dave asked, wagging a cell phone toward her.

      Jenny shook her head and held up her father’s phone. “I’m good. Thanks though.” Uncle Dave looked at her thoughtfully for a moment nodded and closed his eyes. Jenny pulled out the folded map of Iowa. It had been folded and unfolded so many times it looked as if it would disintegrate at any moment. “How far are we from Cedar City?” Jenny asked suddenly, struck with a wonderfully, startling idea.

      Uncle Dave opened one eye. “It’s the next stop, about an hour from here.” He sat up, the narrow space between his eyes creased with worry. “You getting off there? You sure you’ve got someone meeting you? What town are you getting off at?”

      “I’m getting off in Cedar City,” Jenny answered, hope rising in her chest as the bus lumbered onward.

      “Who’s meeting you at the station?” Dave asked, his steadfast gaze making Jenny uncomfortable. She didn’t like lying, especially to those who were nice to her, but it had never stopped her before.

      “My grandma,” Jenny said, pinning her eyes to Dave’s. The quickest way for someone to figure out you’re lying is if you look away when the hard questions are being asked. And, besides, she wasn’t really lying, not really, she rationalized, thinking of the letter from her grandmother in the lavender envelope inside her backpack.

      Dave didn’t look convinced, but Jenny continued looking him in the eye until he sighed and reached for the phone she held in her hand. “Give me your phone and I’ll put my number in. If you need something, give me a call and I’ll try and help if I can.” Jenny reluctantly handed him the phone and he began punching numbers. “Don’t try and get so good at it.” At Jenny’s confused look, he went on. “Lying. Don’t get so good at it that you forget what’s real.” Dave handed Jenny the phone and slumped back in his seat and closed his eyes.

       Chapter 7

      When I arrive at the familiarly ramshackle neighborhood, I am struck at how depressingly run-down it has gotten through the years. Burnt yellow lawns are edged with rusty metal fences, windows are boarded up and the ones that are intact are covered with grungy sheets or threadbare blankets.

      Before I even turn onto Madison Street, I hear the sirens behind me. I pull to the side of the road to let a police car pass. Please just be precautionary, I say to myself, hoping that help hasn’t arrived too late. I drive the final four blocks as people in the neighboring houses peek out screened windows and step out onto crumbling front steps to see what’s happening. I stop three houses away, throw the van into Park and leap out and hit Lock on my key fob. The temperature has risen in just the few minutes I’ve been driving; the oppressive air crawls heavily into my nostrils and sits like sludge in my chest. Two police cars are idling in front of the house and I rush up to the nearest officer, who has emerged from his squad car and is calmly surveying the house that looks eerily quiet, empty.

      Without looking at me, the officer holds up his hand to silence me before I even speak.

      “Please stay back,” he says.

      “I’m Ellen Moore, the social worker. I called 911,” I say, as if this explains everything.

      He raises his eyebrows, finally looking me in the face. Sweat glistens on his bald forehead, his uniform already darkened with perspiration. “Officer Stamm,” he introduces himself. “Then you probably know a lot more about what’s going on in there than I do. What’s the situation?”

      I try to keep my voice composed, level, but it still shakes with fear. “Manda Haskins lives here with her two children, Kylie who is seven and Krissie is four. Kylie called me a few minutes ago and said that her mom’s boyfriend, whom Manda has a temporary restraining order against, came over last night. Kylie said that this morning he started beating up their mother, so she and her little sister locked themselves in the bathroom and called me. We got disconnected and then I called you. I’m afraid the boyfriend is done with the mom and now is going after the girls.”

      I don’t have time to go into the entire all-too-familiar story of Manda Haskins’s life with Officer Stamm. That Manda is twenty-five years old but still seems to always choose the wrong man. She may have been pretty once, but now Manda looks closer to forty than twenty-five—a meth addiction will do that to you. Her face is set in a permanent scowl. Manda lost custody of Kylie and Krissie two years ago when the police stopped her van and found that she was housing a mobile meth lab inside. She swore that her boyfriend was the one who placed all the drug paraphernalia in the back. In return for testifying against the boyfriend and admitting herself into an inpatient drug treatment center, Manda avoided jail time. In foster care the two children did well and all thought that Manda had done the work. Gotten clean, gotten a job. I’d hoped for so much more for Manda and her girls, but apparently her self-improvement didn’t extend to her choice in men.

      “Any weapons in the house that you know about?” Officer Stamm asks.

      I shake my head. “No. I mean I don’t know. Have you been able find out what’s going on inside?”

      “Not yet. We’re going to walk around the house, take a look in the windows, see if we can hear anything. Have you tried to call the kids back?” Stamm asks.

      “No,” I say. “I was afraid if the phone started ringing it might lead the boyfriend to where Kylie and Krissie are hiding. Should I call now?”

      “Yeah, go ahead. We’ll walk around the perimeter and see if we can hear a phone ringing. That might give us an idea of where the kids are. If the kids or the mom answer, try to find out the status of the situation and keep them on the line.” Stamm and the other officer begin to make their way around the house and I scroll through my received calls to find the number that Kylie called me from, hit Send and the phone goes directly to voice mail. Stamm looks at me over his shoulder and I shake my head in disappointment. He rotates his hand in a keep-trying gesture. I scan my phone looking for Manda’s contact information. In the back of my mind I remember that at one time she had a landline number as well as a cell phone. I locate the number, press Send and an instant later I can hear the faint trill of a phone ringing from within the house.

      A woman, a neighbor I presume, sidles up next to me. “What’s