His First Choice

“What did you do with your fish?”

“Daddy and me goed fishing on a boat and I got to pick out goldfish for my pond we builded.”

“You have a pond?” She’d missed that the night before.

He nodded and pushed the car in his left hand for the first time.

“Where?”

“With the stuff outside.”

“What stuff?”

“Chairs and cooking and stuff.”

Lacey would have picked up a little car, too, if she’d felt herself welcome. Instead, she watched the adorable little boy pushing his miniature vehicles with such precision while she leaned back against the wall.

“And you went fishing for goldfish?”

“No!” His giggle slipped inside her, lightening the weight she carried. “You buy them in the store, where they dunk that thing in for ’em.”

She smiled then, liking this child—a lot—and knowing that, regardless of what she found out, he was going to be one of those she never forgot.

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_708a5a55-bfd7-510f-ab06-53d7087e001a)

THRUMMING HIS FINGERS on the arm of the chair, Jem stared at the magazines on the table beside him. He stared at his phone, too, scrolling through his favorite news site, but seeing nothing. He reholstered his phone.

What in the hell was taking so long?

Was it possible that someone really was hurting his son?

Impossible.

He’d know.

But one thing he’d learned since Levi had come into the world, turning his life upside down—kids had incredible imaginations.

They were apt to say anything that came into their heads. Fabrication or not. To a kid Levi’s age, everything seemed real. From cartoons, dreams he’d had and stories he’d imagined.

Jem had always encouraged his son’s free thinking. And when Levi came up with outlandish stories, he’d asked questions to play along. Because to Levi, in those moments, they were real.

He’d also taught his son never to lie. He could imagine. He could make up. But he could not change facts that he knew to be true.

But Lacey Hamilton, her crew at social services, whatever other professionals she might have involved in their lives—none of them knew that.

Shooting up out of the scarred wooden chair, he strode to the door, opened it and caught a woman’s questioning look as she passed by the room on her way down the hall. She probably knew who he was. Why he was there.

Obviously she’d know in whose office he’d been waiting.

Back inside, he closed the door and sat down. What was taking them so long?

Pulling his phone back off the holster at his waist, Jem started making calls to his site bosses. He fielded problems and offered solutions, helping those who worked for him to do their best work.

All the while trying to ignore the fact that he’d never felt so helpless in his life.

* * *

“SO THE NEXT part of this game is, I tell you my worst memory.” Lacey felt like a creep as she sat there in the small playroom with a little boy who had no good reason to trust her. Pumping him for information that could make a drastic change in his life. If his life needed a drastic change.

Fully knowing that for most kids, even when the change was needed, it wasn’t welcome. The devil you knew was much better than facing the fear of the unknown. And being ripped away from those you loved—even if they weren’t good to you—was the worst.

“It was when I was little and had to be in the hospital and I was really scared.”

She had to make it bad enough that he wouldn’t feel intimidated talking about his, no matter how bad it was.

And yet not so bad as to give him nightmares.

It also had to be true. Her rule. The kids in her life generally had major trust issues. She was not going to add to them by lying.

He looked up at her. “Were you sick?”

“I had to stay overnight,” she said. “I thought I’d done something really bad and that I was being punished.”

Levi shifted, sitting on one foot, with his chin resting on his upraised knee. He grabbed a new car—a pickup truck—and ran it around the track, crashing it into the smaller white car he’d left there.

“What’s your worst memory?” she asked, knowing full well that a child his age would most likely access only the past couple of weeks.

“I dunno.”

Not an atypical response, even from a well-adjusted, happy four-year-old.

“Levi, I’m going to ask you something. And I need you to be completely honest with me. Do you understand?”

He backed the truck up.

“Levi? Look at me a second.”

Without lifting his chin, he glanced in her direction.

“Will you be honest with me and answer my question?”

“I don’t tell lies.”

A prevarication. At four. She almost smiled.

“Has anyone ever told you not to tell something?” A leading question if ever there was one.

She was counting on the fact that he wouldn’t be savvy enough, at four, even four going on forty, to see that.