Chapter 7

The social worker came at nine.

Her name was Dana Whitfield, and she had the patient, neutral face of someone who had seen every kind of brokenness a home could hold. She sat at the kitchen table across from Riley, who was wrapped in a too-big sweatshirt and eating cereal out of a bowl, and she asked questions in a gentle voice: what is your name, how old are you, do you feel safe here, who was the person who kept you in the house?

Riley answered in a small flat voice. Her name. Her age. Yes, she was safe here. The lady who brought food was named Carol, from the yellow house on Maple Street. Carol said she was Dad's friend. Carol said Dad would come back if she told.

Dean stood by the window, his arms crossed, his face grey. Marisol stood behind Riley, a hand resting lightly on the girl's shoulder.

"Did Mr. Whitaker ever hurt you?" Dana asked.

Riley set down her spoon. "He grabbed my arm. The night he put me in the creek. I bit him and I ran. He tried to find me but I hid under the porch and I didn't come out."

"And after that, when he told you to stay hidden?"

"He said I was dead now. He said I had to stay in the house and not let anyone see me. He said if I came out, he'd put me in the water for real."

Dana wrote something in her notebook. "And the house you were in — the Whitaker house — was that the same house you lived in before?"

"It was our house. Me and Mom and Dean and Dad."

"But you didn't live there. You stayed hidden there."

"I stayed in the attic. There's a door in the ceiling of the hall closet. He made me go up there when anyone came. Carol brought food at night, when no one could see."

Dana looked at Marisol, then at Dean. "The property was condemned years ago. The county boarded it up. It's a miracle nobody found her."

"She was in the attic," Dean said hoarsely. "All that time. I was in that house a dozen times after she disappeared — I snuck in the back door to look at her room. I walked through that house, and she was in the attic, and I never looked up."