The Daughter They Abandoned Twice novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Lawn

By one in the morning, forty people stood on the church lawn in coats over their pajamas.

Marlene had made three calls.

That was all it took.

The sheriff stood at the foot of the steps with his thumbs in his belt, a heavy man in a tan hat whose wife sang in the choir.

Two of his deputies held the double doors.

I stood in the open kitchen door with the little girl pressed against my leg and every light in the building shining on us.

Levi stood three steps in front of me, between me and the crowd.

He had come through the gravel at a run, and he had not drawn his weapon.

"Devaney," the sheriff said. "You're out of your county."

"I'm out of my county," Levi said, "and I'm in the middle of a crime scene."

"Is that so."

"There's a cot in the church supply closet and a padlock on the outside." His voice carried over the lawn. "Eight years old. Enrolled in school in September, pulled out on Saturday, no case file in the state system that I can find."

"She's a foster child in a licensed ministry," said a woman near the front. "We all know her."

"Then why's she locked in a closet?"

A murmur ran through the crowd.

Marlene stepped forward in her bathrobe, small and trembling, and put a hand on the sheriff's arm.

"Sheriff, he's confused," she said. "That woman is the one on the news. She's sick, and she's been feeding him her stories, and she broke into the church with a key."

"I had a key," I said.

"Hallie's lied about everything since she was six."

"She's lied about nothing," Levi said.

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