Little Mercies

“Their dad happened,” he said in that wry way I have grown to appreciate over the years. I swallowed back the bile that had collected in my throat, willing myself not to vomit. I knew this job would be difficult, even heartbreaking, but nothing, nothing, had prepared me for this. I felt the police officer’s gaze on me. He was massive. Six-three, two hundred and ten pounds of muscle, a thirty-six-year-old with a baby face and a sharp tongue. “You going to be okay?” he asked. We stood there for a moment. Me nodding my chin up and down like some maniacal bobblehead doll and the officer standing there uncomfortably. “You should probably call your supervisor,” he finally said as the second, third and fourth stretchers emerged, shrouded in black body bags, two of which were child-sized.

“Yeah,” I said, still nodding.

Every day I chronicle the monstrosities inflicted upon children in volumes of paperwork, in endless meetings, while testifying in court. I rarely talk to my husband about my clients anymore. He can see what kind of day I’ve had by the look on my face, the sag of my shoulders, how quickly I make a beeline to the bottle of pinot grigio I’ve reserved expressly for the more difficult days. On these days, Adam understands that there are no words and will gently replace my wineglass with our eleven-month-old daughter. Avery will wrap her chubby arms around my neck and press her petal-pink lips against my cheek so that I can smell the scent of apples on her breath. Whenever I come through the door it’s like Christmas, her birthday and the Fourth of July all at once, she is always so happy to see me. I could take comfort in this, and I do, but I see the same delight on the faces of the children I work with who are reunited with a mother or father. The same mothers or fathers who once slapped them so hard that teeth were loosened or grabbed them so roughly that bones were broken. In Avery I see the same spark that’s in their eyes, the eruption of the same joyful grin. I knew you’d come back to me, their faces say. I know the psychology behind this—why an abused child will run into the arms of their abuser—but it makes me sad.

There is one case I do not talk about anymore, one that I am not able to speak of, not to Adam, not even to Joe. It was a case that I knew would end badly... I felt it in my bones the moment I walked into the home, and I was right.

Madalyn Olmstead did not have an easy entrance into this world, nor did she have a gentle exit. Madalyn was born at Cedar City Hospital six years ago and spent the first ten days of her life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for respiratory issues. I became involved when Madalyn was one and a home health-care nurse called my supervisor at the Department of Human Services and asked if someone could check in with Madalyn and her mother at their home. I was assigned the case. When pressed for details, the nurse was vague. “Madalyn needs to use a nebulizer for her asthma, but her mother has a hard time remembering what I tell her. I think she might have trouble reading but is a quick learner when someone shows her what to do. She seems great with Madalyn.” The nurse was quiet for a moment. “Honestly, it’s the husband I’m worried about. It’s like when he comes into the room all the air is sucked out. She becomes tense and all her attention goes right to the husband. He acts like a jealous sibling or something. He has no interest in Madalyn but to complain about how much time his wife is spending with her. She seemed scared of him. Can’t you just go over there and check? I’d feel so much better.”

As a social worker, I was obligated to follow through, though based on what the nurse shared, I didn’t think I’d find anything that was actionable, but at least the father would know that someone was paying attention to the way he was interacting with his wife and his daughter. Three years later Madalyn was dead and I knew James Olmstead had killed her and he got away with it.

Most often Madalyn comes to me in the violet-tinged mornings. That middling space between night and day. She has the sweet, unformed features of a toddler and sparkling gray eyes recessed above full, pink cheeks. Surprisingly, considering the way she was found, it wasn’t the most gruesome of deaths—very little blood and only a few bruises marred her perfect little body. It was the hidden, internal injuries that killed Madalyn. Still Madalyn’s short time on earth began with the violent expulsion from her mother’s womb into the cold, unforgiving earthly air and ended in violence, as well. It just couldn’t be proved. I knew differently and I think her mother did, too. Though she was too blind, too scared, to say so.

When I wake up in the mornings, as the memory of Madalyn creeps beneath the covers with me and my snoring husband, my children sleeping soundly in the rooms down the hall, over and over I try to parse out just how her father, James Olmstead, got away with murder.

I’d been in and out of the Olmstead home for years because of suspected abuse by the father. Neighbors to the Olmsteads would call the police because of loud fighting coming from the house. Twice Madalyn had to be removed from the home because the father had beaten the mother so badly. Twice, the mother didn’t press charges. Twice, Madalyn was returned to the home. There were contusions on Madalyn, but the kind you find on all children: skinned knees, bruised elbows, purple knots on the forehead. All explained away by Madalyn’s mother. Such a busy little girl. You have children, right?

She was right, I do have children. Just before Madalyn died, Lucas was four and Leah was seven and they had the exact same kind of bruises. But as social workers, we know. We know which homes hold the addicts, the predators, the abusers. We just can’t always prove it.

Two years ago, on a beautiful May afternoon, Madalyn Olmstead tumbled out of the third-story window of her apartment building and fell to the concrete sidewalk below. The only other person in the apartment at the time was her father.

“She was out of my sight for only a second,” her father claimed. “She thought she could fly,” he cried convincingly to the news cameras. During the autopsy, besides the traumatic head injury, the medical examiner found suspicious bruising on Madalyn but not suspicious enough to call it murder. Because of his neglect, Madalyn’s father was arrested for child endangerment that resulted in the death of a child and was facing up to a fifty-year prison sentence.

Even though I was convinced this was no accident, at the time I was satisfied that James Olmstead was being tried for the lesser charge and would have been content just having him put in prison. I prepared to testify against James. Over and over I reviewed the documentation of my visits to the Olmstead home, practiced describing the injuries I saw on Madalyn’s mother, the suspicious bruises I saw on Madalyn. The jury never heard my testimony. It can be very difficult for the prosecution to get a defendant’s prior bad acts entered into evidence, and the judge in this case felt that the facts would prejudice the jury too much. Our only hope was that the defense would open the door by providing testimony that it was all a mistake, that James’s character was much different than what he was alleged to have done. That he just wasn’t capable of hurting his daughter. The defense didn’t open that door, didn’t bring James’s moral fiber into testimony, didn’t have his wife or his co-workers at the foundry where he worked, nor the parents of children he coached in Tiny Tot T-Ball, speak on his behalf. Didn’t have James testify on his own behalf. As a result, the jurors were not allowed to hear of James’s abusiveness. He was acquitted. Too much reasonable doubt, the jury foreperson explained after the trial was over.

Three months later, James and his wife sued the owner of the apartment building for not insuring that the window screens were safely installed. They won a tidy sum of money and were from then on known as the victims.

I just knew that James had beaten his daughter and then panicked. In my gut I knew he made it look like she had climbed onto the windowsill, fallen through the screen and tumbled three stories to the sidewalk below. Madalyn was a fear-filled little girl. She was afraid of water, was afraid of dogs, was afraid of strangers, and was, most likely, afraid of heights. There was no way that Madalyn Olmstead would climb onto a windowsill and press her little hands against the screen. Never once in all the time I spent with her did she ever tell me she wished she could be a bird, wished she could fly. One thing I knew of for sure was that Madalyn was afraid of her father.

Months after the trial, not Caren, my supervisor, not Joe, not even my husband would listen to me rant and rave about my suspicions anymore. “Didn’t the medical examiner say her injuries were consistent with an accidental fall?” Adam asked when I brought up my concerns for about the millionth time. I tried to explain that the medical examiner at the time was overworked and had a reputation of taking the lazy way out in determining his findings. Adam wasn’t sympathetic. “Ellen,” he said, “you’re making yourself sick over this. You need to stop worrying about this kid. No one else seems to be.”

Adam’s lack of concern irked me a bit, but Caren’s and Joe’s dismissal truly hurt. In social work and police work, too, we not only deal with facts but gut instinct often prods us into action. I thought they would listen to my worries and would back me up when I suggested another in-depth investigation into Madalyn’s death. They were sympathetic, made all the right noises when I made my case to them, but in the end they said they were satisfied with the jury’s decision and I needed to drop it.

In the end all that was left was the man who got away with murder, the woman who chose to protect him, and me, the social worker who was powerless to protect a four-year-old little girl named Madalyn Olmstead, who will forever be known as Little Bird, the little girl who thought she could fly.

Chapter 2 (#ulink_8932c327-3d20-545c-939a-894b4dd27be5)

In the evening’s fading sunshine, ten-year-old Jenny Briard, on her knees, sweating and scraping at the hardscrabble dirt, did not have a reliable lucky charm, but she was determined to find one the first chance she got. Maybe a four-leaf clover or a horseshoe. Even a dusty old penny would do. Her father, Billy, in one of his rare moments of clarity a week ago, gave her a rabbit’s-foot key chain for her tenth birthday. No matter that he gave it to her two weeks late, Jenny wanted to cherish the silky white limb. But try as she might, the thought of a rabbit relieved of its paw to enhance the good fortune of others made her stomach flip-flop dangerously.

“What the hell? What’re you doing out here?” her father mumbled when he came upon Jenny trying to bury the rabbit’s foot in the weedy area behind the motel where they were currently staying. Jenny tried to hide behind her back the pocketknife she had lifted from her father’s jeans for use as a shovel but it was too late. “That’s my pocketknife. Give it here!” Jenny quickly tried to brush away the dirt before sheepishly handing over the knife. Her father peered into the shallow hole. “Hey, that’s your birthday present! What are you doing that for?” he exclaimed, his hair still wild from sleep, his voice laced with cigarette smoke.

Jenny didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t wanted to hurt her father’s feelings, to seem ungrateful for the gift, but in the five whole days she’d been in possession of the charm her father had once again lost his job, they had been evicted from their apartment, their truck had broken down for good, and her father had succumbed to what he called his weakness—twice. “It just seemed like the right thing to do,” she finally said, not able to meet his gaze.

Her father stood there for a moment staring down at her, his shirttail flapping like a flag in the hot Nebraska wind, his jeans hanging low on his hips, the band of his boxers peeking out. “Guess I can’t argue with that line of thinking,” he said at last, lowering himself into a sitting position next to her. “I’m thinking that wasn’t the best birthday present for a little girl, was it? You probably wanted new shoes or your ears pierced. Something girlie like that.”

“No, no,” Jenny protested. “It was a great idea for a present. I just felt...sorry for it.”

They both looked down into the small trench. “Well, how about we commence with the ceremony and then go to the Happy Pancake for supper?” her father asked, looking at her with weary, bloodshot eyes. Together they filled in the tiny hole covering the white paw with dusty earth. “Would you like to say a few words?” her father asked solemnly.

“I’ve never been to a funeral before,” Jenny admitted. “I’m not sure what I should say.”

“Well, I’ve been to my share of funerals and mostly there’s a lot of praying and crying. You can say whatever comes to mind and it’s all right.”

Jenny thought this over for a moment. “Do I have to say it out loud?” she asked.

“Nope, some of the most powerful words ever spoken are said right here.” He tapped his tobacco-stained fingers sagely against his chest.

Jenny stood silently over the tiny grave for a moment and then her father took her by the hand and they walked the quarter mile to the Happy Pancake, both retreating to the restroom after the waitress raised her eyebrows at their dirt-encrusted fingernails.

“The Chocolate Chip Happy Stack is $4.99, if that’s not too much,” Jenny said hopefully, scanning the prices on the menu. “And you can have my bacon if you want it.”

“Get whatever you want, Peanut. We’re celebrating today,” her father said buoyantly. Jenny peeked skeptically at her father from behind the plastic folds of the menu. Usually, whenever her father announced a celebration, he said he was going to invite two friends over and two friends only. Brew and Ski. Her only consolation was that the Happy Pancake promised a strictly family atmosphere complete with thirty-seven kinds of pancakes and a man who dressed up in a smiling pancake costume and made balloon animals on Sundays. Beer and his problematic friends were nowhere to be found on the menu.

“I guess I’ll have the Happy Hawaiian Stack then,” Jenny decided. She had already tried three of the thirty-seven pancake varieties and was determined to try each.

“A fine, fine choice, madame,” her father said in his fake French waiter accent, causing her to giggle.

“So what are we celebrating?” Jenny asked in her most grown-up voice after their orders were placed and they were both sipping on tall frothy glasses of orange juice.

“Hold on to your hat...” he began, and Jenny indulgently clapped her hands atop her head. “We are going on a trip!” her father said, emphasizing each word with a hand slap to the Formica tabletop.

“What kind of trip?” Jenny asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously, thinking of their truck leaking dangerous black smoke from beneath the hood the last time her father tried to start it.

“I got a call from my old friend Matthew,” her father said, pausing when the waitress appeared with their plates and slid a pile of steaming pancakes topped with pineapples, whipped cream and a brightly colored umbrella in front of Jenny. He waited until the waitress retreated before continuing, “You wouldn’t remember him, you were just a baby the last time we saw him, but Matthew called and said they were looking for some workers at the John Deere plant over in Iowa.” He looked at his daughter hopefully.

“That doesn’t sound like a trip,” Jenny said miserably, staring down at her pancakes, the whipped cream already sliding from the stack in a buttery sludge. She pushed her plate to the middle of the table. “That sounds like moving.” She suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore.

“It’s right on the Mississippi River. We can go fishing, maybe even buy a boat someday. Imagine that, Peanut.” Her father stabbed his fork at a piece of sausage, a wide grin on his face. “We could live on a houseboat if we wanted to.”

This was an interesting thought. A houseboat. But Jenny pushed the thought aside. “What’s the name of this place,” Jenny asked grumpily, pulling her plate back and pinching off a piece of the pancake with her fingers.

“Dubuque. And besides the Mississippi River, there’s a dog track and a river museum with otters and alligators and all kinds of cool things.”

Silently, Jenny began eating—she wasn’t sure when she and her father would get their next decent meal. Eight hours from now they would most likely be splitting a bag of chips and a stick of beef jerky. Her belly felt uncomfortably full, her tongue thick with syrup. Her father was going on and on about how great Iowa was going to be, how the John Deere plant paid fifteen dollars an hour, how they’d move into an apartment, but just for a while. Once they were settled they could move into a house where she would have her own room and a backyard. Jenny wanted to ask him if there would be a breakfast nook. It sounded so cozy and comfortable, a small corner of the kitchen, surrounded by sun-filled windows. But her stomach hurt and she didn’t want him to think that she approved of his plan in any way. Jenny licked her syrupy fingers one by one. “When do we leave?” she asked in resignation.

“How ’bout tonight?” her father asked, smiling broadly, his right cheek collapsing into a deep dimple that women loved. Then, leaning in so closely that she could smell sausage intermingled with this afternoon’s beer, he lowered his voice. “You run on home and start packing. I’ll pay and catch up with you in a few minutes. We got a bus to catch at midnight.”

Jenny knew that her father wasn’t going to pay for their supper, but at least he was letting her get out of the restaurant before embarrassing her to death. He was thoughtful that way.

Chapter 3 (#ulink_77142852-ec83-53b0-92e6-342583e2b459)

I creep down the hallway, the wooden floor sighing creakily beneath my bare feet. I peek into the kids’ rooms. First Leah’s and then Lucas’s. Leah is tented beneath her thin white sheet, her bright pink comforter covered with multicolored peace symbols kicked to the end of the bed. A faint glow shines through the cotton and I’m hoping that she has a flashlight beneath the covers reading a book like I used to when I was little. But I know my daughter too well. It’s her handheld video game, one that Adam’s parents, Hank and Theresa, gave her a few months ago for her ninth birthday. A confusing game where the avatar goes back in time, trying to save the stolen prince and return him safely to the enchanted kingdom. It’s a lot like what you do for a living, El, Hank told me happily after Leah opened the brightly wrapped package, whooped with joy and called to thank her grandparents.

Now that would be a superpower, I think to myself. To be able to step into a time machine and travel back a week, an hour, a minute, a second before some indescribable thing happens to a child. To stand before a parent brandishing a cigarette, a stepparent with a lurid leer, a caregiver with a raised fist and say, “Do you really want to do this?”

“Hey, Leah,” I whisper, closing the bedroom door behind me and trying not to wake Lucas who, across the hall, is buried beneath his own blanket like a wooly bear caterpillar, even though it’s still eighty degrees outside and the air conditioner is less than reliable. Neither Adam nor I have had the time to call the repairman. I peer beneath her sheet and smile at my firstborn daughter. She looks up guiltily at me from beneath a forelock of dark hair damply pasted against her forehead.

“It’s nearly midnight, turn that thing off,” I chide, holding out my hand for the game. She presses a button and suddenly we’re plunged into darkness but for the star-shaped night-light plugged into the receptacle next to her bed.