Chapter 2 - THE STORY REENA NEEDED THEM TO BELIEVE
At Overland Park Regional Medical Center, the emergency department separated the adults almost immediately.
Reena hated that.
Peter could see it every time she tried to step around the social worker and get closer to Drew’s bed.
A nurse stopped her.
“Mrs. Mercer, we need to finish talking with him.”
“He’s six.”
“Exactly.”
Peter sat with Lily two rooms away while she ate applesauce too quickly from a plastic cup.
When he slowed her hand, she guarded the cup against her chest.
That frightened him almost as much as Drew’s leg.
A pediatric physician finally came out shortly after midnight.
“The fracture didn’t happen today.”
Peter stood.
“How old?”
“I can’t give you an exact time from imaging alone. But several days is more consistent with what we’re seeing than several hours.”
Peter looked through the glass toward Reena.
She had told the paramedics Drew fell that morning.
The doctor continued carefully.
“Both children are dehydrated. Drew is underweight. We’ve made the appropriate report.”
Child Protective Services had already been notified.
So had police.
Nothing happened instantly. No one marched Reena away in handcuffs. Instead, professionals began asking repetitive, careful questions and documenting answers.
That made Reena angrier.
She told an officer the basement was a finished recreation room.
She said Drew had tantrums.
She said Lily followed him everywhere.
She said Peter had disliked her since she married Mark.
That last part was true.
Peter had never trusted Reena’s way of turning every disagreement into a loyalty test.
But he had also made his own mistake.
A year earlier, after Mark accused him of interfering in his marriage, Peter had stopped showing up.
He told himself he was respecting a boundary.
Then Mark died in a highway collision while driving home from a night shift at the Lenexa distribution center.
Reena told Peter that Mark had spent his final months furious with him.
Peter believed her.
At the funeral, she had said, “He kept waiting for you to apologize.”
Peter had gone home carrying that sentence like a stone.
Now a CPS investigator named Tasha Greene sat opposite him in a family consultation room.
“When did you last speak directly with your brother?”
“About eleven months before he died.”
Tasha looked up.
“You had no contact after that?”
“I texted him.”
“Did he respond?”
Peter shook his head.
Tasha turned one page in her notes.
“That’s interesting.”
“Why?”
“Because Mrs. Mercer says Mark repeatedly tried to contact you and you refused to answer.”
Peter felt the old grief shift inside him.
Not disappear.
Change shape.
“That never happened.”
Tasha didn’t accuse him of lying.
May you like
She simply asked:
“Can you prove it?”
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