When She Regretted Her Lies novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Everything She Said Was True

The caseworker asks the same questions three ways and gets three true answers that sound worse, then asks for a safety plan, and Inez is already in the driveway with Birdie's bag.

"Mrs. Kimball, I can speak with her here at the school or at your home," the woman in the gray blazer said.

"Which do you prefer?"

I kept my hand flat on the door.

"Home," I said. "With me in the room."

"A child is usually more honest at home," she said.

I wanted to tell her that was exactly the problem.

I said, "Three o'clock," and wrote my address on a sticky note, even though she already had it.

At three o'clock she sat at my kitchen table with a notepad and her lanyard turned backward, and Birdie sat across from her on a booster seat, swinging both feet.

I stood by the sink with the Out Loud Card in my pocket and my fingers on its corner.

"Birdie, I'm going to ask you some questions," the caseworker said. "You can't give a wrong answer."

"Good," said Birdie. "I only know the right ones."

The caseworker's mouth did not move, but her pen did.

"Does anyone at home ever hurt you?"

Birdie thought hard.

"The dentist hurt me. A boy bit me at preschool. Daddy pinched my finger in the car door once, but he cried more than I did."

The pen scratched.

"At home," the caseworker said again, "does anyone hurt you?"

"Oh. Mommy puts the cold stuff on my knee when I fall, and it hurts a lot, but then it doesn't."

"That's ice," I said.

I realized I had said it out loud, and checked the card in my head.

Ice was fine. I would have said that to a judge.

"Do you feel safe in your house?" the caseworker asked.

"Safe from what?"

"From anything."

"Daddy put a gate at the top of the stairs," Birdie said. "So I don't fall down. And so I can't leave."

"Leave?"

"At night. To look for Daddy's chocolate."

The pen stopped.

Then it started again, slowly, and wrote a good deal more than I would have liked.

"Does your mother ever say things that scare you?"

"Mm." Birdie looked at me, then at the ceiling.

"Last week she said if I didn't put on my shoes she would give me to the bus driver."

I felt the whole kitchen go still.

"I said it to get her shoes on," I said. "Every parent says that."

"I wouldn't know," said the caseworker.

"And the bus driver doesn't even want me," Birdie went on. "He said so. He said, 'Not me, kid, I've got three.'"

"That sounds like a normal bus driver," I said.

"It sounds like a normal answer to a question I didn't ask," the caseworker said.

She turned a page.

I took a breath and said the only thing I'd be glad to hear read back.

"I love her more than anything, and I'm not going to say anything clever, because it would only sound worse."

The caseworker looked up at me.

For one second I thought her face might move.

Then the front door banged, and Gil came in from school with a bag of ungraded shop projects under one arm.

"Honey, I got your text, I'm here," he said.

He stopped when he saw the notepad.

His face did what it always does when he is nervous, which is brighten.

"Hi! I'm Gil, the dad. Don't worry, we keep her in a cage, it's called a crib."

Nobody laughed.

Birdie said, "That's not true, I'm in a bed. The crib is for Mommy's laundry."

The caseworker wrote down the word "crib" and drew a line under it.

Gil looked at me, and I looked at the floor.

"It was a joke," he said.

"I understand," she said. "I'm going to write down that it was a joke."

"Please do."

"I'll write it exactly as you said it."

Gil sat down in the chair next to me and stayed very quiet, which was a first.

Twenty minutes later the caseworker closed her folder.

"I don't think Birdie is in danger," she said, and I started to cry from relief before she was done. "But there's a stated threat in the file, and an officer's report, and a note about a locked car and a gate. I'm required to ask for a safety plan while I complete my assessment."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means it's better if Birdie spends a few days with a relative while I work. It's voluntary. If you decline, I write that you declined."

"I won't decline," I said, before Gil could say anything. "But I'll be at that table every day."

"Supervised visits are allowed," she said.

"Then I'll be supervised every day."

"Your mother-in-law has already offered to host," she said to Gil.

He sat up.

"Mom? Oh, that's perfect, Rena, that's great. She's amazing with Birdie."

"She offered before you called me?" I asked him.

"She's like that," Gil said, smiling. "She just knows."

Out in the driveway a car door shut.

Through the kitchen window I saw Gil's mother coming up the walk in her quilted vest and her pearl earrings, with a little pink suitcase in one hand and a plastic tin in the other.

She had on her warm face, the one she wears at funerals and baptisms.

She came in without knocking, as she always does.

"Rena, sweetheart," Inez said, and put the suitcase down. "I brought her unicorn pajamas. I packed it this morning, just in case."

Birdie slid off her booster.

"Grandma! Did you bring the cookies?"

"I always bring the cookies."

She opened the tin, and Birdie took one, and the caseworker wrote something down.

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