The Intruder - 55

56

CASEY

Nell wrote down the directions to her house and gave me a key, both of which I am supposed to hand over to the police. I will not be doing that.

Instead, I drive past the police station and head in the direction of Massachusetts. If Lee knew what I was doing right now, he would lose his mind, but he doesn’t understand. He hasn’t been an educator for many years and seen the things that fall through the cracks when it comes to child abuse and neglect. He never lived with my mother.

That’s why I had to lie to him.

After the storm last night, I was worried I might get stuck on one of the smaller roads leading to the highway, but luck is with me, and it’s not as bad as I feared. The rain has completely stopped, and although there is some flooding, I haven’t run into any of it. This is going very smoothly.

I can’t wait to meet Nell’s mother.

While I skate along the highway toward my destination, I can’t help but think back to the day I lost my teaching job. Ever since I moved out here, I’ve done nothing but try not to think about it, but now I allow myself to relive the day it all went wrong.

It all started with Karisa Harrel.

Karisa was in my class for about a month when she bent over to pick up a colored pencil and I noticed the bruise on her back. It looked suspiciously like a belt buckle. Another bruise appeared shortly after and more on her little arms, and Karisa’s explanation never quite satisfied me, especially paired with the fact that the girl barely spoke. She flinched whenever I came near her. I reported the case to child protective services, of course, but nothing ever happened.

Then one day, Karisa came in with a bruise on her neck. A bruise that looked like someone had wrapped something around her neck and squeezed.

I told the principal about it. By then, I was frantic because I believed Karisa’s life to be in danger. I was furious when the principal reiterated that we had reported it to child protective services, who found no wrongdoing. It was their job to investigate, not ours.

Except Karisa’s father was a police officer. Obviously, he had some sort of pull and kept the girl from being removed from her dangerous home situation.

That day, when Karisa’s father waited at the drop-off location to pick her up, I refused to turn her over to him. I couldn’t do it—not with those terrifying bruises on her neck. Not when she clung to my legs. Again, the principal intervened and delivered Karisa to her father. And I suppose that could have been it. It might have been it. Except my father had just died two months earlier, and I was not handling it well.

That is to say I grabbed a baseball bat that was lying with other sports equipment in the field next to the school, and I went to town on Mr. Harrel’s car before anyone could stop me. Eventually, they did stop me, which might have been a good thing since the next thing I would have done was turn the bat on Mr. Harrel. If I’d done that, I might be living in a jail cell rather than a cabin in the woods.

The principal told me I was lucky he didn’t press charges. But I was obviously fired.

The worst part—the real kick in the teeth about all this—is that I didn’t help Karisa. I found out from a friend who is still at the school that she is still with her parents. That’s what keeps me awake at night.

My father would have been upset with me for what I did with that baseball bat, making a scene, because those are the kinds of things that get you in trouble. That’s what sent him to prison. But he believed in doling out justice. He never once judged me for what I did to my mother. He understood that it was what she deserved.

This time, I will be smarter.