By the time I’m home, the file Connor sent is waiting in my inbox. I download it from the link he sent with the password he provided and settle in to learn everything I can about Fox.
He wasn’t kidding, there really isn’t much to go through. But what is there makes my breath catch. I rub the stones in my bracelet.
The first thing I read is the incident report from the accident, which is littered with bold black lines hiding vital information. It’s hard to believe that mere days before this horrible thing happened Fox and I were playing with Holden and making one of my happiest memories in the field by our tree.
My brow furrows. Dad’s signature is on the report, but I don’t remember him being on duty that night. The harder I rack my brain, the clearer it becomes. We were out for dinner, which wasn’t out of the ordinary for us. It was at the hibachi restaurant Holden and I loved so much. I think…we were celebrating Mom’s promotion, but it wasn’t officially announced until a couple of weeks after everything happened. How could Dad be at dinner with us, but sign off as the officer in charge of the case?
“Why don’t the page numbers line up?” I murmur to myself in confusion as I realize I’m reading page 8 after page 3. “Where’s the rest of it?”
It doesn’t seem right for pages to be missing. For a fatal car accident, there should be a coroner report and an analysis of what remained of the car after the fire was put out. A scanned handwritten note attached to the last page declaring the crash an accident states the rest of the file is sealed and the case is closed—signed Chief Richard Landry. I press my lips together.
I wonder if half of what’s in the report are lies given what Fox said to Lana and what my friends told me about Dad taking bribes. I want to know why most of the report is missing, some parts redacted by thick black lines. What are they hiding if it was an accident?
There’s another related document from the Ridgeview Police Department in the same file releasing Fox into the state’s foster care system. This is signed by Dad, too. My stomach flips unpleasantly. Dad is the one who sent him away. How could he do that to his friends’ son? We could’ve taken him in if he didn’t have any other local family.
After the first placement, it looks like there was a trail of foster homes. The dates hurt my heart. Six months. A month and a half. Three weeks. Two days. One after the other, an endless revolving door kicked him out, mixed with two short stints in a detention center, painting a bleak picture of what an unstable upbringing he experienced after he lost his parents.
A letter catches my eye from one of the shortest times spent in a home. As I read, everything blurs from the tears filling my eyes. A few lines stand out.
Fox is a danger to himself and others…can’t get along with the other children…extreme grief and anger. He is a troubled child beyond help…getting into fights…the violence is too much to have in my home, so I unfortunately can no longer act as his state-appointed guardian.
After that it cuts off, leaving a weird gap between when he was fifteen and now. It’s like someone wiped him clean out of the system.
This wasn’t the life Fox was supposed to have.
All of this is heartbreaking to look at. I rub my forehead as I click through, wishing there was more and glad that there isn’t because this is already a lot to handle. My heart sits in my throat, aching as I think of what he went through.
He was all alone. He had no siblings or other family to take him in.
A tear streaks down my cheek. It always used to be me, him, and Holden against the world. Holden was the brother he never had. I was…
You’re my daisy.
My chest constricts at his voice in my head, but instead of the way it sounded when we were younger, his deep, raspy voice whispers to me.
That was torn away when he lost his parents. Everything he had was taken from him.
Guilt twinges in my stomach for reading this about him without him telling me directly, but I know from where we stand right now he’d never let me in to tell me this on his own. He’s guarded now in a way he never was before tragedy tore through his world. I had to know this. It’s one more thing I can add to my list of apologies he’s holding over my head.
With some of the answers in front of me, I finally understand enough to fit the jagged pieces of the new Fox into the shape of the one I used to know so well. Of course he’s angry. I get it now. Who wouldn’t be when faced with so much grief and countless people who are meant to protect him gave up on him, labeling him troubled and dangerous?
What he told me about calling a boy a monster enough times making it stick carries a heavier, depressing weight to it now that I know.
Taking a shuddering breath, I scrub my hands over my puffy cheeks. I wish he would’ve opened up to me instead of shutting me out when he came back. He didn’t have to be alone anymore, but I understand. He’s been alone for so long that he’s learned to only rely on himself. What’s the point in trusting the world around you when he has so much experience of it shitting on him to prove he’s the only one who can look out for himself.
I jump when my door flies open, scrambling to open the window with a yoga YouTube video I had waiting to hide what I was looking at. Mom barges in without asking and I ignore her, throwing all my focus into the instructor stretching her body at sunrise on a beach in California.
“Deep breath in, feel that energy filling your heart chakra, and let it out,” the instructor narrates while she moves to the next pose in the flow.
“Maisy.”
Releasing a small aggravated breath at the interruption, I flick my gaze to her.
“Mom.”
Jailer. I keep that to myself, not wanting to give her incentive to slap me with a freaking bodyguard to babysit me.
She narrows her eyes. “Why do you look like you were crying?”