Free The Devil's Stepdaughter: A Bell Elkins Story (Bell Elkins Novels) by Julia Keller Page B

breaking his stride. “Yeah,” he went on. “Got teased a lot when I was your age. Had to learn to stand up for myself.” His hand was thick and hard, the palm ridged with calluses. It totally swallowed up her hand, the way the water instantly closed over the small rocks that she liked to toss into Comer Creek.
    The social worker’s name was Mrs. Perkins. She was a nervous, chubby, fluttery woman who kept a light pink Kleenex folded over twice and tucked up in her right sleeve, although she never used it. She sat down across from Belfa in an artificially bright conference room at the hospital that night—they had taken her to the hospital even though nothing was wrong with her—and asked her if she had any relatives they could contact. Grandparents? No. No grandparents. Well, how about an aunt? An uncle? Cousins? No. No. And no.
    Mrs. Perkins’ mouth made a straight line across the bottom of her pale face. It looked like a dash on a page. “Okay,” she finally said. “Well.”
    The man named Fogelsong loomed over Mrs. Perkins. He had come in the room suddenly, and he seemed too big for it, like a piece of secondhand furniture that doesn’t quite fit. His stiff brown hat was in his hands. His head, Belfa thought, looked a lot smaller without the hat.
    “Hey, Sheila,” he said to the woman. “While you’re setting up placement, why don’t I take her and go get something to eat? Ike’s Diner, maybe.”
    Mrs. Perkins’ mouth never changed, except to open when she was ready to speak. “You don’t mind?”
    “I don’t mind.”
    Mrs. Perkins rose, retrieving her printed forms and her file folders and her empty Hardee’s coffee cup and her pen, holding the assembled supplies tightly against her broad chest as if she feared someone might snatch them from her. She looked very tired, Belfa thought. Well—so did the man who’d said his name was Fogelsong, come to that. Everyone looked tired tonight. Even the doctor who had asked her questions when they first arrived at the hospital an hour or so ago. The doctor had very gently put her hands in places Belfa didn’t like to think about, apologizing as she did so, after which the doctor—looking relieved, looking as if a great burden had been removed from her—turned to Mrs. Perkins and shook her head, mouthing the word
No
.
    “Tough one,” Mrs. Perkins said to Fogelsong. “Don’t know how in the world I’m going to—”
    The deputy met her eyes, and then let his eyes drop to the level where Belfa sat. Mrs. Perkins understood his silent message:
Not now
. Of course. What was she thinking? It was the tiredness that had gotten hold of her. And the frustration. And the endless case load.
This job
. That was what Mrs. Perkins really wanted to say, Belfa would realize many years later, when she recalled the moment:
This job. Look what it’s done to me. Talking like that, in front of the child. Jesus
.
    “Belfa,” Mrs. Perkins said. “I’m working very hard to find a family for you to stay with, okay? And if you don’t like it, we’ll find another family, okay? Try not to be scared. Or upset. There are people who care about you. And who are here to help you. Okay?”
    “Okay,” Belfa said, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
    ____
    She slept in one end of the trailer with Crystal, Abigail and Tina, in a space set off from the rest of the place by a tacked-up orange bedspread with a sticky fringe at the bottom. Belfa’s bed was a deflated air mattress on the floor. The three sisters slept on an old brown couch—Crystal stretched out in one direction, and Abigail and Tina, scrunched up side by side, going in the other. Crystal’s big dirty feet repeatedly pushed in between the small bodies of Abigail and Tina; sometimes they yelled when her toenails speared their flesh or her foot “accidentally” whacked them in the chin, and Crystal laughed. Some nights, Mrs. McCluskey slept in the girls’ area, too, in a sagging old recliner that