What No One Else Can Hear (13 page)

“If this was just a ‘sensitive period’ and he’s done this before, why did you feel the need to take him into a room by yourself while he was naked?”

“I was trying to protect his privacy a little. While he’s in a crisis like that, he doesn’t care who sees him naked. Actually, he doesn’t much care any other time either. And that isn’t a trait of abused children… especially sexually abused kids. They are usually very cautious about showing their bodies and are very private. Stevie couldn’t care less. But I still didn’t want him on display like that, so I took him out of the hall.

“And while I have the floor, it’s not true that he won’t speak to anyone else. It started out that he was more comfortable talking to me or to others only if I was around, but even that was an improvement from not speaking at all. But over the last seven months or so, he’s started speaking to more people, whether or not I’m present. And as far as flinching from touches, no
way
. Stevie isn’t really into casual touch, but he needs touch to ground himself when he’s had a ‘sensitive period.’ And not just mine: Drew and Dottie can both calm him using touch—they always could to some degree. I’ve even seen Stevie initiate touch at other times. He holds Drew’s hand sometimes, especially when we’re out in the community, and he gives Dottie hugs every morning and before she leaves each day. I’ve even seen him roughhousing with Hank a couple of times, just for a minute or two. So he’s not opposed to all touch. He flinched from
Chuck’s
touches, but then, most of the kids did.”

“Are you finished?” Kyle didn’t seem quite as ticked off about my outburst as his words implied.

“Not really. I can refute all that stuff.” I waved my hands toward the junk on the table, and he nodded his permission to continue. “The picture was drawn before I even got here, and was during a difficult period for Stevie. That’s a really long story, and I’ll explain it all later, but it’s well documented that he’s been drawing pictures of me for years.

“Also, the tape has been chopped to bits—”

“I took that video,” Dottie interrupted. “I witnessed the whole scene. Stevie and his friend were playing blocks. The other boy fell on the blocks and started screaming, and that caused Stevie to have a sensitive period. Jesse talked him down from it using mental imagery that he’s been working on, quite successfully, with Stevie for some time now. Both the beginning and the end of that tape would show there was no abuse involved. Stevie took his own shirt off and scratched himself. Some of the pictures you have of Stevie with scratches are from this time, probably stills from the tape.”

Once Dottie got started, getting her to stop was damned near impossible.

Kyle was starting to see our side of it, though. He was a good bit calmer. “What about the fact that Jesse slept in Stevie’s room?”

“In a recliner. With the door open. Every single time,” Dottie added. “The first night everyone was so shocked by the story of Jesse’s arrival—which I will tell you in a little while, in great detail—that they kept looking into the room every five minutes. I stayed all night, and I checked in on them too. On other occasions when Jesse spent the night, staff members were up and down the hall all night and looked in to check on Stevie and Jesse. Jesse usually only stayed when Stevie was having a bad night, so the staff was always concerned enough to check.”

Sara took over. “And we did have the father’s permission for the field trips. In the beginning we would send permission forms in the mail for each upcoming field trip. He almost never sent them back, so poor Stevie never got to go anywhere. Finally, one time, when I called to check on whether or not he would be returning the latest one, he told us to stop bothering him with them. He had a blanket permission slip drawn up and notarized, saying Stevie could go on any outing the center felt might be beneficial to him and he could be with any personnel we deemed fit to care for him.”

“You have this on file?”

“Of course.”

“Everything the three of you have told me is documented, and you can produce that tape in its entirety?”

“Yes,” Sara said, and Dottie just nodded, as did I.

“If I interview staff, they will bear out what you said here?”

“Yes, Kyle. Have I ever lied to you?” Sara resorted to drawing on her personal friendship.

“No, Sara, you haven’t.”

“And I’m not lying now. Jesse is being framed by an ex-employee who is arguably the worst mistake the center’s personnel office has ever made.”

I thought it would be prudent to keep my opinions about Chuck to myself at this point, but Drew added his two cents for the first time.

“And he’s a total waste of skin.”

Drew could be a man of few words. If he’d felt he needed to come to my rescue, he would have, but he was also content to just sit back and let the ladies do it. He probably wouldn’t have been able to squeeze a word in anyway.

I was just glad these three were on my side.

T
HAT
NIGHT
I was relieved to see Stevie in the forest. He ran up to me almost immediately after I realized where I was. He jumped into my arms and I held on tight.

“Oh, Steve.” I tried hard not to cry into his hair as I kissed it. “How are you doing, big guy?”

“I miss you so much, Bear.” He squeezed me even tighter and talked into my shoulder.

“I know, bud. I miss you too.”

“So why don’t you come back? You said you’d be back.” He still showed no sign of loosening his hug.

“I said I’d be back as soon as I could, Steve. I can’t come back yet.”

“Why not?” He seemed puzzled enough to finally pull away from me just enough to look me in the eye. I set him down and we both sat under “our tree.”

“Drew didn’t explain it to you?” I knew he had.

“Well,” he said hesitantly. “Yeah. But I don’t know why you can’t come back.”

I supposed that statement made sense in Stevie logic, so I started my attempt to make him understand about restraining orders and trumped-up charges and misleading evidence. It seemed to take forever, and I still didn’t think he understood, which was okay, because I didn’t understand it much myself.

Finally it came time to tell him good-bye.

“You should go on back now, Steve. You don’t really rest when you’re in the forest and you need your sleep.”

“I don’t want to leave, Bear.” He had that expression on his face that seemed to melt everyone’s heart. The one that seemed to bend everyone at the center to his will.

“Cute is not going to work on me, Steve.” I took any possible sting out of the words by pulling him close and kissing his hair. “I love you, big guy. And I want you to stay healthy. And you can’t do that if you stay in the forest all night.”

“But—”

“Stevie, please, buddy. Go get some rest. Don’t make me worry about you any more than I already do.”

His eyes were sad, but he attempted a smile. “Okay, Bear. But we can meet here tomorrow?”

“We can try, Stevie. I never have understood how it works so I can’t promise.”

He seemed to be satisfied with that and we hugged and parted ways. I just slept the rest of the night. Drew told me the next morning that Stevie had only been in his “trance” about an hour, and then he got a good night’s sleep. So there was that little bit of good news in all of this.

T
HE
NEXT
day was pure hell. I woke up at the usual time, only because my body was conditioned to do so, and I met Dottie in the kitchen as always. It would have been rude not to. I grabbed a cup of coffee and sat in my typical chair.

I would have been scheduled to work, so the fact that Dottie was still going through the morning rituals without me made it clear things were different. So much of my time had been taken up with Stevie for so long, even before we met, that I didn’t know what to do with myself without him. And here I was only worried about
him
missing
me.

As she headed out the door, Dottie told me she’d take great care of him—which I knew already, but it was still nice to hear. Drew pulled in the drive right after Dottie pulled out. Apparently he had made the same promise to Stevie about me.

“Come on, lazy. Get dressed,” he said when he saw I was still in my pajamas.

“Why?” I wasn’t being sarcastic. I literally saw no reason I would need to be dressed.

“Because I’m not letting you mope around here all day. We’re going out.”

“Where? Why?” My voice sounded dead, even to me.

He sat down beside me and cupped my cheek with his hand. “Jess. You can’t get this depressed this early on.”

I grinned a little. “It’s okay if I get depressed later?”

He chuckled. “I’d be surprised if you didn’t. Anyone would in this situation. But you have to hang in there. Stevie needs you to stay strong.”

“I can’t be there for Stevie whether I’m strong or not, Drew. So what difference does it make?”

“It makes a big difference. I still say you’re empathic too, at least where Stevie is concerned. You send waves of calmness his way. And I know you can’t be at the center with him, but you can still meet in the forest, and he’s bound to read your moods, right?”

“I’m not sure how it works, but yeah, there’s emotional transfer or I wouldn’t be able to comfort him in the forest. And I did all those years,” I reminisced. “But it didn’t do any good in his real life, and now I’ll—”

“He’s got skills now he didn’t have then. You taught him a lot. Don’t sell him short.”

We sat in silence for a while, Drew still cupping my cheek. “We’ll pull through this together, Jess.” He finally broke the silence, running his hand through my long hair, moving it out of my face. “All of us.”

He moved his hand to the back of my head and pulled a little. I followed his lead and collapsed against him, my head on his shoulder. He scooted a little closer to me and enfolded me in a loose hug.

I mumbled a thank-you into his shoulder, and we just sat quietly. I didn’t actually break down and cry. I was afraid to. If I started, I’d likely never stop. So I just let my body ooze into his hug as he held me tighter. I thought I felt him kiss my hair a time or two, but I was too distraught to be sure.

D
REW
SPENT
the day with me. We went out to eat and took in an afternoon movie. I asked Drew to call the center every couple of hours and check on Stevie. Dottie said he was a little more sensitive than he’d been for a while and quieter, but he was doing okay. The last time Drew called, I asked to talk to Dottie. I hadn’t even registered that she’d said my name, but she must have because I heard Stevie in the background.

“Is that my Bear?” Then his voice got closer. “Bear. Bear!”

I heard Dottie’s voice answer, “Hey, big guy. Remember, we explained there’s a rule right now that Jesse can’t talk to you.”

“But he’s talking to you.” Stevie whined. “It’s not fair. He’s right there. I want to talk to him. Bear, why won’t you talk to me?”

I practically threw the phone at Drew and ran to my bedroom.

Drew came in a little later.

“We got him calmed down.” He sat on the edge of my bed and rubbed my back as I lay prone on the bed, my head buried under the pillow. “He just doesn’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” I all but whispered, and we stayed there in silence, Drew rubbing my back and me wondering where and why my life had taken a turn into hell.

I didn’t meet Stevie in the forest that night. I was so worked up, I couldn’t stay asleep long enough to dream. The more often I woke up and realized that, the more desperate I became to get to sleep, but it was a vicious cycle that just served to make it even harder to get to sleep, let alone stay asleep.

Drew called from the center the next morning. Stevie was inconsolable in the background.

“God, Drew, what’s going on?”

“He said you didn’t meet him in the forest. He tried all night. He’s exhausted and angry, and I think hurt,” Drew explained. “Can you tell him why, so he’ll calm down?”

“Drew, you know I can’t talk to him.” My voice sounded despondent even to my own ears. “God, you know I would if I could.”

I almost missed the fact that Stevie’s cries and screams were lessening.

“Well,” Drew said in that tone of voice he used when he was being sneaky. “Well, looky there. Now how did that happen? I seem to have hit the speaker button.” I could imagine the sweet and innocent look he used at times like this. “Oops.”

“Bear?” Stevie’s voice was tentative. He was still sniffling and sounded unsure. “Why didn’t you meet me? I can’t see you here, and I didn’t see you there. I miss you.”

“Well, Drew—” I played along. “—since I’m not allowed to talk to Stevie, you’ll have to tell him for me that I love him more than anything else in this world, and if I could be with him at the center, I’d give him such a big hug he’d think I really was a bear.” I heard Stevie chuckle at that. “But I’m not allowed to be, so we’re back to only meeting in the forest.

“If I was allowed to talk to him, I’d remind him that I can’t get to the forest, no matter how much I want to, unless I’m asleep, and I’d explain that I’m so upset at not being able to be with him I didn’t sleep much at all last night.”

“That’s why you weren’t in the forest?” Stevie’s voice was hopeful. “You wanted to be? You still love me?”

“Oh God, Steve, more than anything.” I slipped and said it directly to him, but then added, “That’s what I’d say if I was allowed to talk to Stevie.”

He chuckled again. I didn’t for a moment think this was really following the intent of the restraining order, but couldn’t think of anything else to do. I couldn’t make a habit of it, but maybe this one time might clear things up a little and make it easier for Stevie. I wasn’t sure.

I really didn’t know much of anything right then.

I
T
TOOK
Kyle about a week to round up most of the physical evidence we mentioned, and he took it all to the District Attorney. He came back from his meeting very excited.