My sharp tone brings Finley back from the kitchen and she stares at me, wide-eyed, the large spoon in her hand dripping sauce onto the floor.
“Your sister’s safe. Could you please answer the question?”
I sob, a single intake of breath to signal my relief. Then another flood of worry replaces the first. “We text sometimes. Is that what you mean?”
Oh, God. Did I get her in trouble? Carla needs to loosen her sphincter muscle if she thinks a phone is worth unleashing her flock of government workers.
“And you threatened a boy in Sierra’s class?”
My mind stutters over the new information, then I relax against the wall. “No, we talked about it at visitation. She said he pushed her over in the playground and I asked her if she needed me to beat him up for her, but it’s just…”
The silence is judgmental.
“It was just a joke!” I say, my voice rising sharply. “We were just talking. It didn’t mean anything.”
“You sent him a text asking to meet up?”
I laugh because the idea is too absurd to take seriously. “No, I didn’t send him any texts. How could I? I don’t even know Steven’s surname, let alone his phone number.” Another spurt of laughter erupts from me.
“Ms Tanner, this is a very serious situation, and I’d advise you to treat it as such.”
“I am,” I say, groaning in frustration this time. “Who accused me of this ridiculous thing? You can look at my phone if you like. You’ll see there’s no text on there.”
A cold chill runs along my spine as I realise whatison there. If they take me up on the offer, I might just have volunteered for far more trouble than a simple mix-up.
“We have the text message.”
“Then you know it wasn’t from me!” I bite down on my lip, not wanting to say anything more than I have to. I’ve been around these people for half my life, and I know the ways they like to trap you, to trick you into admitting things that never happened.
My floundering mind strikes upon another thought. These workers might be overprotective, but they’re not going to these lengths just to get their jollies.
“What happened? Did something happen to Steven? You must know I’d never ever hurt a child.”
“I’m not at liberty to reveal private information,” the woman says in the robotic voice of someone quoting scripture. Privacy conventions are probably the closest thing she has to a religion. “We’re just collecting statements at this stage, so if there’s anything you want me to know, now’s the time to say it.”
She sounds like a cop, but she’s something worse. Someone with the power to rip away the last shred of my family. Worse still, she’ll do it with a clean conscience because every cruel thing she does is in ‘Sierra’s best interests.’
“I don’t know what’s happened,” I say, trying to line up my thoughts since I’ll only get one shot to make this first impression and I’m pretty sure I’ve stuffed it up so far. “But the only thing that I’ve done is give my sister a phone so she could text me. Carla agreed. We all agreed that Sierra and I could have open communication. That’s all I know. I gave her a phone so she could text me.”
The repetition doesn’t impress the caller. She clicks her tongue for a second and I know she’s communicating with someone else in the room. Somebody higher up also listening to this call.
“Thanks for being open with me,” she says at last. “An incident has occurred that warrants further investigation. Until that’s complete, we’ll put your visitation with Sierra on hold.”
“No. No, you can’t do that.”
“Given the seriousness of the situation, we must act with caution. Once we know more, we’ll be able to review—”
“You can’t take it away. The court mandated it. What do you think is going to happen? There’s already one of your bloody gestapo agents stationed a metre away during every visit.”
“Nobody is taking your right to visitation away; we’re just suspending the visits until we resolve this matter.”
“This matter that you won’t tell me about.”
“I’ve disclosed as much as I can.”
“And how long will this take? Can you give me a ballpark?”
“I can’t answer that. We’ll be in touch as soon as—”
