Leaning his head back, Reed closed his eyes for a minute. I gave him the time he needed.
“So, you’ve seen them on the news?”
My brows bunched. “Yes. And so have you. Which is what brought it all back, I imagine?” I said, picking up the pen on my desk and opening my notebook.
Pulling his head off the rest: dark eyes roaming over my face, almost trying to predetermine my reaction. “As soon as I saw the house, I recognized it.”
My entire body felt like a thousand needles were being pushed into my skin.
“And how did that make you feel?”
Reed’s look was challenging.
“How do you think. Like shit. I left Storm, ran away, and saved myself. I never said anything to anyone. I could have shut that shit down then, and I didn’t.” My emotions started to play havoc in my chest at his tortured expression.
You can’t do this! You’re too close to him!My psyche screamed.
My body was shaking. It took me a moment, but I got myself under control and lifted my chin to meet his stare. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
And he did.
Reed reminded me of some facts I already knew, such as how he was fostered with Micah when he was five years old. He always explained that those memories of him and Micah living together were vague: fragments of good times. And I knew that Reed had no recollection before that age, or at least he didn’t four years ago. When he told me he’d discovered a few years ago that he was found outside a church behind a dumpster as a newborn, I almost snapped my pen. The fact that his face seemed so accepting of that information was my undoing, and a lump appeared in my throat.
Keeping it together, I encouraged him to talk about the happier memories he remembered, the ones with Micah before they were separated. Reed started to relax as he spoke about video games, Halloween, and the waterparks they visited on holiday. From his expression, although the memories were not clear, I could see how fond he was of those times.
And then, his situation with those foster parents went from bad to worse. Their foster mother became terminally ill and passed away within two short months, and the man who was their foster father suffered a nervous breakdown. He couldn’t cope with the loss of his wife and caring for two almost eight-year-old tearaways.
The social services team had to get involved, and both boys were temporarily admitted to a children’s home. I knew from my work experience at the local authority that foster kids who had been homed together usually stayed together. But from what Reed explained, he and Micah were separated: a huge failing of the system.
And that’s where Reed was introduced to the Palmers.
Fuck, I still couldn’t believe he was one of those kids.
Reed told me what it was really like as he went home with David Palmer. He said he remembered the car journey to the bungalow as all he could think about was Micah. “Part of me hoped that I’d see him at the same house, but of course he never showed.”
There were tears in my eyes, and we had to stop a couple of times. I couldn’t even write straight at one point; it was so upsetting to hear. I could see how painful it was for Reed to talk about.
There were some other kids at the time Reed was housed there, and the living conditions were disgusting. The children were split into two rooms, three in each. The bedding on the bunk beds was never changed the whole time Reed was there. All the kids lived in filth, and the house was cluttered with stuff that Louise Palmer would hoard. I had seen the pictures from a bodycam of one of the welfare officers who entered the property. The floors were full of junk, trash wrappers, and empty take-out boxes.
The children were starved for days and never got to use the bath or shower, and if they stole food, they were chained to their bunk beds for days on end.
Reed explained that he knew it was wrong but couldn’t do anything about it. The other kids he met there had lived under the Palmers’ roof for longer and believed those living conditions were normal.
And then finally, Reed told me the best part, the night he escaped.
“That night I left was hazy at best as I was only eight. I just remembered feeling that instinctive need to survive, and to do that, I knew I had to get the fuck out of there.
I tried to convince the others to come with me, but I was so young, and they didn’t listen. I didn’t understand how some of those children had been with the Palmers since infancy. Fuck knew how. If social services had ever visited the house, they would have seen what a shit hole it was. And that’s just it. No one ever came to callor check up on shit. Not even the pizza delivery guy on those rare occasions where the Palmers would buy us all takeout.”
“What about school?” I interjected.
“We were supposedly being homeschooled, but I never saw a textbook once. On a good week, we got to watch TV, but that was it, education-wise. Two of the other kids couldn’t even speak properly, and none of us could write.”
Clearing my throat, I pushed the lid of my laptop closed as I said, “I’m assuming that the neighbors were also unaware of what was going on there. I remember on the news one of the witnesses said they saw the kids in the yard sometimes, but apart from looking a little thin and pale, there was nothing to set any alarm bells ringing.”
Fuck, to think the Palmers ended up with a total of eight foster kids before the truth got out. I had also read that David Palmer had forged papers to make out he was a qualified teacher in a fake school. And yet it was never checked out?
“Do you think people in the community knew anything. From what I’ve seen so far, everyone appeared oblivious, and the Palmers were clearly very clever in hiding what was going on there.”
