My Three Girls

“I’m going to keep knocking until you open this door.” Mrs. Moore was sounding rattled and the knocking changed to pounding.

Dana popped to her feet, angrier than she remembered being in a long time. She crossed to the door with several impatient steps. This was her private time. “I told you—”

Mrs. Moore stood on the concrete entryway, this time with her daughters, Karen, Jean and little Ollie, positioned in front of her, all clutching small backpacks.

“Hi, Miss Ritchie.” Karen spoke first, her voice uncertain as she glanced up at her mother.

“Mrs. Moore.” Dana frowned.

“Bev. Call me Bev.” She waved her hand toward her daughters. “The girls want to thank you for agreeing to take them this weekend. They like you so much.”

Dana doubted that. The girls interacted as little as possible with the other children and her. The eleven-year-old, Karen, seemed to take exception to any attention that was paid to the younger girls, Jean, six, and Ollie, just five. They were well mannered, although Jean retreated so often to lengthy silences it was easy to forget that she spoke at all. Dana also noticed both Jean and Ollie had the curious habit of kicking the supply closet every time they passed by. The third time Dana had to wash off the scuff marks, she’d asked them not to do it. Jean had answered with a staring silence, and Ollie’s eyes had filled with tears. The brief discussion hadn’t saved her cabinet, though. The two girls simply kicked with more stealth.

“Uh, thank you, Miss Ritchie,” Karen blurted, nudged by her mother. “We’ll be very good.”

“This is blackmail,” Dana said to Mrs. Moore.

“I’m desperate or I wouldn’t put you in this position,” she said. From her voice and the way she glanced over her shoulder, it seemed to be the first truthful statement Beverly Moore had made.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t take the girls.” Dana was firm. She wasn’t going to be railroaded into this duty. She wasn’t the only option that Mrs. Moore had. She was just convenient. “You might consider taking them with you.” With that, Dana shut the door and tried to lock it, but her hand was shaking so badly she couldn’t turn the dead bolt properly. The knocking started again.

“Go away!” Dana muttered under her breath, eventually managing to lock the door. “Leave me alone.” She put her hands over her ears and walked back to her office, then turned on her small radio to drown out the knocking. After a while, it stopped, but Dana’s heart still kept pounding. She worked for two more futile hours, not really accomplishing anything.

She stared at the pile of work on her desk. Nothing said she had to finish it tonight. She would spend tomorrow morning making the repairs and reattack the pile in the afternoon. She had no other plans. She walked around the perimeter of the schoolroom, checking to make sure she’d turned off the computers. If she had her way, she’d never leave the schoolhouse. It gave her the comfort that her home didn’t. Finally, she unlocked the front door and opened it. The air was cool, pleasant, a significant difference between summer and fall. In fact, Dana shivered in her sleeveless dress as she closed up. Movement caught her eye, and the motion sensor turned on a bright light.

Dana whirled. Surely the cattle hadn’t pushed through the fence again. She’d have to call the rancher who owned them before they trampled the students’ agriculture projects. She tried to focus on the movement in the deepening dusk. Since she was standing in the light, it was hard to see what was out there.

“Hi, Miss Ritchie,” a small voice called.

“Karen?” Dana walked toward the voice.

“Yes, Miss Ritchie?” The voice was still uncertain, and Dana could swear she was holding back tears.

“What are you girls doing here?” Dana’s eyes were becoming accustomed to the dark. She could make out three figures at the picnic table where the children ate lunch on nice days. Ollie was standing on the table, swaying from foot to foot. Karen and Jean huddled together on the bench.

“Momma said to wait and you’d take care of us,” Ollie told her.

“Where is your mother?”

There was a long silence. Then Karen said, her voice brave, “She went to a conference. She said to tell you that we promise to be very good and that she’d be back Sunday afternoon.”

Dana inhaled, warning bells going off in her head. This had to be against school policy. There had to be some rule about keeping students at her personal residence. If there wasn’t, there should be. If Beverly Moore was going to leave her children, then she deserved to have the authorities called in.

“I’m hungry,” Ollie said, hopping from the table to the bench and then the ground. “Momma said if we asked nice, you might give us some supper.”

“You don’t have to feed us,” Karen interjected. “I made us sandwiches.”

Ollie started to whine. “But I don’t like—”

“Hush. She might let us spend the weekend if she doesn’t have to feed us.”

Dana felt more emotion pulse through her in sixty seconds than she’d allowed in the past five years. She’d chosen this job in the middle of nowhere to avoid feeling anything. Now white, scalding anger was directed at Beverly Moore, wherever she was. How dare she abandon her children as if they were overgrown vegetables easily left on the doorstep of unwary neighbors. But the tearstains on Karen’s face had her fighting for control.

“I don’t mind feeding you. Then I’ll call some nice people to give you a place to stay.” She tried to smile, but her face felt like it was cracking in half.

FRIDAY NIGHT was generally busy, but tonight, Brady Moore’s usual rounds were quiet. He didn’t know how many miles he’d driven that night along the county roads that wound from the Gabilan Mountains to the Diablo Range without seeing anything worrisome. No drunk drivers. No speeders. Always a bad sign. In his fifteen years as a sheriff’s deputy for San Benito County, the quiet evenings were the ones that ended in something bad.

The dispatcher came over the radio. “There’s a call from the Panoche School. Three juveniles abandoned.”

“I’m in the south county,” he replied. “Is there someone closer? Or maybe CPS?”

“You’re going to want to take this one, Brady,” the dispatcher said, her voice terse.

“Why?”

“Three girls,” she emphasized. “Last name Moore.”

Brady felt himself stiffen.

“Thought you might want to check it out before we call in CPS.”

His brother Carson had three little girls whose last name was Moore.

Brady didn’t carry around a lot of guilt. He didn’t give a second thought to lying to drug dealers or unbalancing suspects, if it meant that he could clean up his little section of the universe. But it didn’t take much soul-searching for him to realize that he’d been a bit too eager, nearly five years before, to oblige his sister-in-law when she’d told him to never contact her and the girls again.

Only fifteen months apart, he and his brother had grown up together, but even though Carson was older, he’d always been just a little too intellectual, too bookish to fit in well with his peers. That meant Brady had been the one who sold all of his brother’s raffle tickets, fought his battles at school and introduced him to the world of girls.

It was no surprise when they grew up that they’d choose different career paths. Brady went into law enforcement, Carson into accounting. But the differences in their temperament only strengthened the bond between the brothers. Maybe that’s why Brady had been so hurt when Carson had introduced him to his new wife, Beverly. Brady would never have dreamed Carson would give in to the impulse to marry a woman he’d only known twelve hours.

Even though Karen had been born ten months into their marriage, Bev hadn’t seemed happy. But Carson’s loyalty to his wife put an enormous amount of pressure on Brady and his mother, Edie, to accept her. And they’d tried. Since they’d left home, the brothers had always visited their mother once or twice a week. When Carson’s visits dropped to once or twice a month, then eventually only on major holidays, it was hard for Brady not to blame his sister-in-law. Especially once the reason for her unhappiness became clear.

Bev had thought Carson was a lot more successful than he actually was. Carson’s accounting firm had a few good clients and was growing steadily, but the family lived on commissions and the small salary that Carson allowed himself, investing any other profit into the business or Karen’s college fund. Bev wasn’t content being a stay-at-home mom who needed to budget carefully. She wanted more—designer clothes for her and Karen. A nice car and house and furniture. She couldn’t understand why Carson wouldn’t move to the city and work in a big firm with big clients.

In spite of these differences, Brady believed Carson and Bev cared enough about each other to work out their problems. That was confirmed when the joyful pair announced they were expecting a second baby. Jean’s birth was followed almost immediately by the conception of their third, and then all hell broke loose.

Edie—who’d never remarried after the death of her husband—had become sick and four terrible months later died. During those long days and endless nights of treatment and pain and sadness, Carson had managed only two short and awkward visits. In his grief, Brady’s anger and resentment at his brother grew. It would have been nice if just once Brady could have relied on Carson. A month or two later, when Carson was arrested, Brady pretended not to care. His brother had completely changed. The irrefutable evidence showed this once honest and sensitive man had become an embezzler to further his wife’s ambitions. Rather than help his brother through the complex legal system, Brady had turned his back. In what seemed to be just days, Carson accepted the court-appointed lawyer, took a plea and was sentenced to a minimum-security state penitentiary.

Bev, of course, blamed Brady, refusing to see how her own behavior had corrupted Carson. If it hadn’t been for the girls, Brady would have gladly washed his hands of her. She wouldn’t let him see the girls, so his only option was to deposit money directly into her account every month. It assured him that Bev wouldn’t have to work and would maybe compensate for the fact that the children didn’t have a father. It didn’t help the guilt, though, and it didn’t change the reality that his brother was a criminal. More than anything, it made Brady never want to get close enough to anyone to be that disappointed again.

“You still there?” the voice crackled over the radio.

“Yes.”

“Are you going?”

“Yes.”

“Should I notify CPS?”