Page 80 of The Intruder

He knows what Amara told him about what my life was like back in Medford. He sometimes tells me how sorry he is—he only walked away because he thought my mother was taking good care of me and he didn’t want to mess up my life. If only he had known, he would have fought to get custody of me. I’m so sorry I didn’t do more to help you, Ella. He also apologizes to me for the terrible thing he did that got him sent to prison in the first place.

Eventually, I open up to him about all the terrible things that happened in my mother’s house. At first, I just tell him a few details. The rotten food in the refrigerator. All the millions of papers in every corner of the house. Being locked in the closet for hours on end.

But over the years, as I grow to trust him more, I reveal more details about my life. And one night, when I am seventeen years old, I tell him about my last night living in that house. And how I burned it all down with my mother inside.

The second the words leave my mouth, I’m sorry I said it. My father and I have become very close, but it was too much to admit something like that. He won’t understand. He’ll think that I am sick, that I should be locked away. It’s a thought that even I myself have sometimes.

But when the truth comes out, he takes my hand in his and gives it a squeeze.

Good girl, Casey, he tells me. She deserved it.

I almost forgot that this was a man who beat another man badly enough to land him in the hospital. That’s why he went to prison in the first place. He admits to me that the man he assaulted was not just a random man in the bar. He had discovered this man was sleeping with his girlfriend—my mother.

When someone deserves bad things, he says, it’s sometimes up to you to dispense justice.

My father taught me a lot of things over the years. But this is one piece of wisdom I will never forget.

56

NOW

CASEY

Nell wrote down the directions to her house and gave me a key, both of which I am supposed to hand over to the police. I will not be doing that.

Instead, I drive past the police station and head in the direction of Massachusetts. If Lee knew what I was doing right now, he would lose his mind, but he doesn’t understand. He hasn’t been an educator for many years and seen the things that fall through the cracks when it comes to child abuse and neglect. He never lived with my mother.

That’s why I had to lie to him.

After the storm last night, I was worried I might get stuck on one of the smaller roads leading to the highway, but luck is with me, and it’s not as bad as I feared. The rain has completely stopped, and although there is some flooding, I haven’t run into any of it. This is going very smoothly.

I can’t wait to meet Nell’s mother.

While I skate along the highway toward my destination, I can’t help but think back to the day I lost my teaching job. Ever since I moved out here, I’ve done nothing but try not to think about it, but now I allow myself to relive the day it all went wrong.

It all started with Karisa Harrel.

Karisa was in my class for about a month when she bent over to pick up a colored pencil and I noticed the bruise on her back. It looked suspiciously like a belt buckle. Another bruise appeared shortly after and more on her little arms, and Karisa’s explanation never quite satisfied me, especially paired with the fact that the girl barely spoke. She flinched whenever I came near her. I reported the case to child protective services, of course, but nothing ever happened.

Then one day, Karisa came in with a bruise on her neck. A bruise that looked like someone had wrapped something around her neck and squeezed.

I told the principal about it. By then, I was frantic because I believed Karisa’s life to be in danger. I was furious when the principal reiterated that we had reported it to child protective services, who found no wrongdoing. It was their job to investigate, not ours.

Except Karisa’s father was a police officer. Obviously, he had some sort of pull and kept the girl from being removed from her dangerous home situation.

That day, when Karisa’s father waited at the drop-off location to pick her up, I refused to turn her over to him. I couldn’t do it—not with those terrifying bruises on her neck. Not when she clung to my legs. Again, the principal intervened and delivered Karisa to her father. And I suppose that could have been it. It might have been it. Except my father had just died two months earlier, and I was not handling it well.

That is to say I grabbed a baseball bat that was lying with other sports equipment in the field next to the school, and I went to town on Mr. Harrel’s car before anyone could stop me. Eventually, they did stop me, which might have been a good thing since the next thing I would have done was turn the bat on Mr. Harrel. If I’d done that, I might be living in a jail cell rather than a cabin in the woods.

The principal told me I was lucky he didn’t press charges. But I was obviously fired.

The worst part—the real kick in the teeth about all this—is that I didn’t help Karisa. I found out from a friend who is still at the school that she is still with her parents. That’s what keeps me awake at night.

My father would have been upset with me for what I did with that baseball bat, making a scene, because those are the kinds of things that get you in trouble. That’s what sent him to prison. But he believed in doling out justice. He never once judged me for what I did to my mother. He understood that it was what she deserved.

This time, I will be smarter.

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