“ ‘Lack of personal hygiene’?”
The woman throws her husband an angry gaze for writing that.
“Ooh, I like this one!” Connor says. “ ‘Diminished prospects for future.’ Sounds like a stock report!”
At every rescue mission, Connor reads aloud the reasons, and each time he wonders if it’s the same list his parents would have written. This time, the last reason chokes Connor up a bit.
“ ‘Our own failure as parents.’ ”
And then he gets mad at himself. These parents haven’t earned his sympathy. If it’s their failure, then why should their son have to pay for it?
“Tomorrow, when the Juvey-rounders come for him, you’ll tell them that he ran away, and you don’t know where he went. You won’t talk about us, or what happened here today, because if you do, we’ll know. We monitor all the police frequencies.”
o;No. Let me see.”
Reluctantly Roberta takes her hand from the image. Cam drags it toward him, rotates it, and enlarges it. He can tell the picture was not taken with the girl’s permission. It’s framed at an odd angle. Perhaps taken secretly. A memory flashes. This same girl. On a bus.
“That picture is not supposed to be here,” Roberta says. “Can we move on now?”
“Not yet.”
Cam can’t quite tell where the picture was taken. It’s outdoors. Dusty. The girl plays a piano under something dark and metallic that shades her. The girl is beautiful.
“Clipped wings. Broken heaven.” Cam closes his eyes, remembering Roberta’s order that he find the proper words before he speaks. “She’s like . . . an angel damaged when she fell to earth. She plays music to heal herself, but nothing can heal her brokenness.”
“Very nice,” says Roberta unconvincingly. “On to the next one.”
Roberta reaches over and tries to drag the picture away again, but Cam slides it to his corner of the table, out of her reach. “No. Stays here.”
The fact that Roberta is bothered by this just makes Cam more curious. “Who is she?”
“Nobody important.” But clearly from Roberta’s reaction she is.
“I will meet her.”
Roberta chuckles bitterly. “Very unlikely.”
“We’ll see.”
They get on with their mental exercises, but Cam’s mind stays on the girl. Someday he will find out who she is and meet her. He will learn everything he needs to know, or more accurately, unify and organize all the things that are already there in his fragmented brain. Once he does, he’ll be able to speak to this girl with confidence—and then, in his own words, and in whatever language he needs to, he’ll be able to ask her why she looks so sad, and what unfortunate twist of fate has left her in a wheelchair.
Part Two
Whollies
34 CHILDREN ABANDONED UNDER NEBRASKA’S SAFE-HAVEN LAW
by Nate Jenkins, The Associated Press
Friday, November 14, 2008
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) Nebraska officials geared up Friday for a special legislative session designed to deal with a unique “safe haven” law whose unintended consequences have allowed parents to abandon nearly three dozen children as old as 17.
As the session to correct the law approached, a 5-year-old boy was dropped off at an Omaha hospital on Thursday night. Earlier in the day, a woman dropped off two teenagers at another Omaha hospital, but one of them, a 17-year-old girl, fled. Authorities have not found her yet.
As of Friday afternoon, 34 children had been abandoned under the Nebraska law, five of them from other states.
Nebraska was the last state to enact a safe-haven law, intended to take in unwanted newborns. But unlike laws in other states, Nebraska’s doesn’t include an age limit.