Ridgefield

I wasn't trying to eavesdrop. I just happened to be sitting on the stairs, in the dark, when Vesta's phone rang late that night and she answered it in the hallway thinking everyone was asleep.

"No, it's fine, it's handled," she said. "The caseworker's sniffing around, but she's got nothing. Paperwork's clean on this end."

A pause. Someone on the other end talking.

"Ridgefield's done, that house is closed, don't worry about Ridgefield." Another pause. "I'm not moving again this fast, it draws attention. We wait it out here another few months, let the file go cold, then we talk about a new spot."

She said a word then that I didn't understand at the time — a county name, not this one, not Ridgefield either. A third name. She said it the way you'd say an address you'd used before and might use again.

Then, quieter: "The boy's the problem. He's too old, too sharp, he's the one that talks to teachers. If Sundar comes back, I want him somewhere else before she does. Understood?"

My whole chest went cold.

Somewhere else. The same words she used for kids like Dot. The same words that meant a kid vanished from the house for good, and nobody — not the school, not the caseworker, not the county — ever thought to ask exactly where that turned out to be.

She was going to get rid of me. Not because I'd done anything wrong. Because I was starting to see too clearly, and clear-eyed kids were bad for business.

I sat frozen on the stairs until her bedroom door clicked shut, and then I didn't move for a long time after that either, because my legs weren't entirely sure they still worked.

When they finally did, I didn't go back to my room. I went to her closet — the one she kept locked, the one where I'd once seen her slide a floor panel back into place so fast I'd almost convinced myself I'd imagined it.

I hadn't imagined it.