Chapter 16 - What Accountability Looks Like
The next weeks changed the city more quietly than a dramatic courtroom speech ever could. Investigators reviewed more families' cases. Horizon lost its emergency placement contract pending proceedings. The county set up independent checks so no child's transfer could be marked complete without confirmation from the receiving home.
Gordon Pike was charged in connection with falsified records and misuse of public funds. He denied wrongdoing and retained a lawyer. Vivian stepped down from the charity board while auditors examined her oversight failures. I stopped hoping a public humiliation would make her understand what she'd done.
I wanted Eli to sleep in a room where the door stayed his choice to open.
Our supervised visits grew longer. Sometimes he laughed. Sometimes he wouldn't speak. Once he accused me of showing up only because I'd seen him getting bullied.
“Maybe I would still be invisible if those boys left me alone,” he said.
I took the accusation without defending myself. “Maybe,” I answered. “I didn't know where you were. I should have made sure I could find out if you ever needed me.”
His eyes filled. “June never forgot.”
“I know she didn't.”
For a while we just sat there.
One afternoon he pulled the hospital band from his wrist and showed me the crooked J. The black cord was fraying.
“Was that really you?” he asked.
“Yes. I wrote it.”
“Did it stand for Jonah?”
I nodded.
“June said Jonah was my first name, but she called me Eli because it means lifted up.”
He closed his hand around the band. “Which one am I?”
I looked at him, at the child who had belonged to June in all the daily ways I hadn't been there for.
May you like
“You get to decide,” I said.
He stared at me for a long time. “Then I want both.”
