“I don’t know,” she whispered.
The screen door squeaked as it opened. “Was that your caseworker on the phone?” Lia asked.
Tears flooded Sorrel’s eyes. “Yes.”
“Oh, honey.” Crouching, Lia gathered the girl into her arms. “It’s okay. You can tell me what you want to do.”
“I don’t know,” she wailed.
“Then we’ll think about it, as long as you want. And if you have to talk to your parents or anyone else and you want me to be there, I’ll go with you. Okay?”
Sorrel went still and tilted her head back. “You promise?”
Lia kissed her forehead then began to rock her gently. “I promise. Cross my heart.”
The thirteen-year-old laid her face against her foster mom’s shoulder and gave way to heartbroken sobs.
Conall grabbed his plate and soda and stood. “Later,” he mouthed, and Lia nodded. Her smile was shaky but real.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and he fled. No, beat a sensible retreat.
She caught up with him an hour later. The boys had decided to go “riding,” which meant Walker sat on the pony’s back and Brendan’s on the horse’s. With no bridles or saddles, the animals had continued to placidly graze, but the boys were clutching the manes and talking excitedly, seemingly feeling like knights of yore or some such thing. Since Lia’s one rule regarding the animals was that they couldn’t go into the pasture or get onto the horse or pony without an adult present, Conall had accompanied them. Now, he leaned his back against the fence and watched Lia cross the lawn to him. He loved the way she moved, her stride long and lithe, and he really loved the way her shorts bared her amazing legs.
“She okay?” he asked when Lia got close enough.
She sighed and propped her forearms on the top rail beside him. “Yeah. Telling you about it seems to have helped.”
“Me? Why?”
She laughed at his expression. “You obviously went into the wrong profession, Conall. You should be a therapist. Tell me, do all the crooks confess all whether you want to hear it or not?”
He grimaced. “If only it could be so easy.”
“She came on to you, didn’t she?”
He shuddered. “Yeah.”
“It sounds like you handled it amazingly well. That’s been one of her problems, you know. In her other school, she cornered a male teacher alone in his classroom and started to strip. She got lucky, like she did today, because he handled it appropriately and also because nobody walked in on them at the wrong moment. She swings wildly between scared little girl and promiscuous teenager.”
“Is it true that her parents didn’t believe her?” he asked in a hard voice.
“Yes. It sounds like her mother was positive Sorrel was lying. It was the mom’s younger brother who molested Sorrel.”
He nodded.
“My impression is that the dad was less sure. He admitted to the guardian ad litem that there were a few times he’d been uncomfortable with the way his brother-in-law watched Sorrel or hugged her. That kind of thing. But apparently he was too spineless to stand up to his wife and say, ‘We should listen to her.’ No surprise, Sorrel ran away. She got picked up by the police and returned home, at which point she was angrier than ever and things deteriorated. Gee, you think? The cycle continued until the parents and caseworker agreed she had to live somewhere else temporarily.”
“And she got lucky enough to come here.”
Lia’s smile was slightly shy. “A compliment. Thank you.”
“You know I mean it.”
She studied him for a moment, those extraordinary eyes seeing things he probably didn’t know about himself. After a moment she nodded. “I do believe you’re honest.”
Conall gave a bark of laughter. “Why do you sound so surprised?”
Creases formed between her eyebrows. “Because you work undercover. You must lie all the time.”
Put that on my tombstone, he thought dryly. I’m a hell of a liar.
“I prefer to think of it as acting,” he told her. “And when I do it I’m not Conall MacLachlan. I’m someone else.”
Again she looked at him, her eyes searching, and again she nodded.