Chapter 1 - THE KNOCK THAT CALLED ME A RUNAWAY
The pounding on Aunt Helena’s front door made every muscle in my body lock.
It came hard and fast, three blows that shook the framed pictures in the hallway. My aunt set down her coffee and looked at me across the living room.
I sat curled against the couch, still wearing yesterday’s pink T-shirt, my backpack wedged between my knees.
“Stay here,” she said.
But I followed her.
Two uniformed officers stood on the porch. The man was broad-shouldered and tired-looking. The woman held a small notebook but had not opened it yet.
“Is Savannah Miller here?” the male officer asked.
“I’m Savannah.”
The female officer studied me. “Your mother reported you missing. She says you left without permission and may be a danger to yourself.”
I almost laughed, but my throat hurt too much.
“I didn’t disappear. I texted her that I was coming to my aunt’s house.”
“She showed us a different message,” the male officer said.
Before I could answer, tires scraped against the curb.
My mother’s minivan stopped crookedly behind the police cruiser. Mom climbed out with one hand beneath her pregnant stomach and the other wrapped around my six-year-old brother Mateo’s arm.
His face was dirty. His cheeks were wet.
“Savannah!” Mom cried as she hurried toward us. “Thank God you’re alive.”
She pulled me into a tight hug.
To the officers, it looked loving.
To me, it felt like a lock clicking shut.
“You embarrassed me,” she whispered against my hair. “You’re coming home.”
Mateo started crying harder.
Mom tightened her fingers on his shoulder until he winced.
“Tell her,” she ordered quietly.
“Savannah, please come back,” Mateo sobbed. “Momma said we don’t eat if you go.”
The female officer’s expression changed.
Mom released me immediately. “He’s confused. All the children are upset because their sister abandoned them.”
“I didn’t abandon them,” I said. “I’m sixteen. I’m not their parent.”
Mom’s face hardened for half a second. Then the tears returned.
“She’s been unstable since her father died,” she told the officers. “I found disturbing things in her room.”
She opened her purse and pulled out my blue spiral notebook.
My private journal.
She held it against her chest like a wounded mother carrying evidence of a tragedy.
“She wrote that she wanted to disappear,” Mom said. “She wrote that the children would be better off without her.”
My stomach dropped.
Those words were in the journal, but not the way she was using them. I had written them three years earlier after missing a school dance because Mom left me alone with four sick children.
The female officer turned to me. “Savannah, is that your handwriting?”
Mom smiled faintly.
She thought she had me.
I reached into my backpack and removed my phone.
“Yes,” I said. “But before you read it, you should hear what she recorded last night.”
Mom’s smile vanished.
May you like
I raised the phone toward the officers.
“Play the rest,” I said.
