Chapter 7 - THE ROUTE DREW HAD MEMORIZED
Drew started physical therapy the following week.
His fracture would heal.
The therapist was cautiously optimistic.
But Drew hated being praised for bravery.
Whenever someone called him brave, his face closed.
One evening Peter finally understood why.
“You don’t have to be brave here,” he said.
Drew stared at his cereal.
“Dad said I did.”
Peter waited.
Drew pushed one oat around the bowl.
“Dad said if stuff got scary, I had to get Lily somewhere safe.”
Peter leaned forward.
“Where?”
Drew pointed toward the front of the house.
“Here.”
Peter felt cold move through him.
“You mean Dad told you to come to my house?”
Drew nodded.
“He showed me when we rode bikes.”
That explained the seven blocks.
Drew had not chosen Peter’s porch randomly.
Mark had given him a destination.
Peter informed Tasha the next morning.
The detail mattered because it contradicted Reena’s version of Mark’s final months.
She had described a man completely aligned with her parenting decisions and determined to keep Peter away.
Yet Mark had privately taught his son how to reach Peter’s house in an emergency.
CPS checked with the school counselor again.
Another note surfaced—not dramatic, not secret, simply overlooked because its meaning had been unclear at the time.
Mark had asked the counselor whether children could confuse “discipline” with being frightened of a parent.
He had also asked how to add a second emergency contact without changing the primary household information.
The meeting happened nineteen days before his death.
Peter was not told what Mark planned to do.
No one could know now.
But Mark had been questioning something.
That same week police obtained statements from the children’s former babysitter, a Johnson County Community College student named Kayla.
Reena had stopped using her shortly after Mark died.
Kayla remembered Drew being blamed for things that made no sense.
A broken lamp when Drew was at school.
Lily’s missing medication when Reena had been carrying the pharmacy bag.
Mud on the back steps when both children had been inside all afternoon.
“Mark would get frustrated with Drew,” Kayla said.
“But Reena was always the one explaining what Drew supposedly did.”
Three different sources now showed the same pattern.
Reena did not merely punish Drew.
She supplied the story first.
Then everyone else reacted to it.
Peter looked at Tasha.
“So she taught Mark to distrust his own kid.”
Tasha answered carefully.
“It appears she worked very hard to control what everyone knew about everyone else.”
Peter thought of unanswered texts.
Cropped messages.
May you like
A locked door.
And a six-year-old who had memorized the road to an uncle he believed no longer wanted him.
