The Foster Family by Jaime Samms

Author:Jaime Samms [Samms, Jaime]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Chapter 14

MALCOLM DID make Charlie move him to the chair where he could see into Kerry’s room as well supervise the goings-on in the kitchen. He couldn’t see the younger man the whole time, but he needed glimpses when he could get them to reassure himself Kerry was fine. Or at least reassure himself that he was working through toward fine.

“You’re worried about him,” Charlie said, settling on the arm of the chair after the forensics team had left and the kitchen had been cleaned. Kerry hadn’t emerged from his room to do the cleaning, but neither Charlie nor Malcolm had bothered to call him. Maybe they didn’t want to chance overbalancing whatever equilibrium he’d managed to find.

“You didn’t hear him, Charlie, calling like he was three. So scared.”

Charlie pulled in a deep breath and let it out. “Guess it was startling, the window shattering unexpectedly like that.”

“Yeah.” But Malcolm wasn’t convinced that startled was what Kerry had been feeling, crouched in that tiny ball under the table, back pressed tight to the wall.

He would have said more, but his phone rang, and Charlie got up to give him privacy to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Holmes.” Officer Karl’s voice was clear and crisp over the line.

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

“More like what I might be able to do for you. I did a little digging into our young man’s past.”

Malcolm’s hackles rose instantly. Not just at the unwarranted prying into Kerry’s life, but at his presumption to include himself in any way in Kerry’s ownership.

“Why?” he asked, stiff, carrying the anger like a weapon in his voice.

“Because of how shaken he was. I thought a reaction like that had more behind it than being startled by a rock through a window.”

Dammit that he was probably right and had come to the same conclusion Malcolm had. And double damn that he had gone and done something about his concerns while Malcolm pretended he was content to spy on Kerry through a half-open door.

“And?” he said at last.

“How much has Mr. Grey told you?”

“Not a lot. He was a foster kid. Charlie and I spent time in the system, so we know how it is. We don’t pry. Speaking from experience, most of those memories are best left where they lie.”

On the other end of the phone, Officer Steven Karl drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’ve got that right, Mr. Holmes. Did Kerry tell you how he ended up in the system?”

“I assume the same way most of us did. Deadbeat parents.”

“Sadly, not all kids end up in the system that way. According to his records, both his biological parents were only children. His mother was sixteen, his father a college student from out of state. The night he was born, February 13, a snowstorm whited out half of Washington. His mother was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. His father, paternal grandmother, and both maternal grandparents were killed in a crash on the way to meet her there.

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