Ember (Constant Flame Duet Book 1) Page 2

  “She doesn’t even have a name?” an eight-year-old boy scoffed. “That Owen kid is a freak too, but at least he has a name.”

  “She has a name, dumbass. She just doesn’t want to talk,” Sam rebutted. “And she let Mrs. Coleman carry her up here, so I don’t think she’s like Owen.”

  Sam had been with the Colemans for a little more than six months, but they hadn’t been her first placement. After both of her parents had been incarcerated, she’d spent a year in a home far shabbier and with people far meaner than the Colemans. She’d seen children who preferred silence like the new little girl, but she’d never seen anyone quite like Owen Harris.

  They said he was four, but he didn’t look it. He was small and skinny, and he hoarded food as though he might never get to eat again for the rest of his life. Owen had only been with the Colemans for a few weeks, but he’d yet to speak a word aloud to anyone. What made him different from every other malnourished, neglected kid she’d ever met was his intolerance to being touched.

  There was nothing physically wrong with him, so far as anyone could tell. They’d checked him over thoroughly many times, but he’d had nothing more than a few bruises when he’d arrived. Those had since faded, but his intense aversion to physical contact had remained. If anyone touched him even lightly, whether intentionally or accidentally, he would fight, scream, or try to run and hide. It was the only time anyone in the home had heard Owen’s voice. No one could figure out what his problem was, and he certainly wasn’t interested in talking about it… or anything else, for that matter.

  Sam had heard the grownups talking about the possibility of him being adopted by some rich couple, and she’d grumbled in envious frustration at the injustice of it. After over a year in the system, she’d come to truly despise her parents. Even at ten years old, she understood that they’d broken the law and had been punished for their actions, but because of their selfishness in failing to consider their daughter, she was being punished as well. It would be better, she often thought, if her parents had simply died. Then, at least, she’d be eligible for adoption too. The rich couple could come take her away instead of the scrawny blond boy who communicated only in shrieks and kicks.

  “Hey,” one of the other children said, drawing Sam’s attention back to the nameless girl on the bed. She was now curled in a tiny ball on her side and hiding her face in against her knees. An older boy was nudging her roughly and raising his voice as though she might be deaf. “Why don’t you talk? Can you hear?” he shouted loudly.

  “Well, if she can’t, then it doesn’t do any good to shout at her, does it? Get out of here. You’re not supposed to be in the girls’ room anyway,” Sam chastised. The boy gave her a sour-faced look and rolled his eyes.

  “Whatever. She’s just another freak.”

  Sam watched him go and turned back to the new girl, who had curled up like a pill bug after being touched. She wondered if perhaps the girl was like Owen.

  “Don’t worry about him. He’s a jerk, but not all the kids here are mean,” she said gently, reaching toward the little girl’s exposed arm. She patted her hesitantly and was relieved when the little girl relaxed a bit rather than tensing up more. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. Sometimes I don’t like to talk either.”

  Sam waited for some sort of response, but none came. After a few minutes of silence, she heard her name being called up the stairs, and she left the room to investigate. Ellie saw her disappear, but her eyes didn’t break from the staring contest she was having with the patterned blanket on the bed next across from her.

  An indeterminable number of minutes later, a tiny, fair-haired boy crept into the room. He’d been listening to the other children talking about the new girl, and he was concerned that she might turn out to be yet another person to be afraid of. Would she try to touch him? Would the grownups give her his food? Would she be mean like some of the other kids?

  They said she didn’t talk either, just like him, and he wondered why. As he inched closer to the bed she was laying on, he saw that not only was she silent… she was completely still. Not even her eyes moved.

  Owen knew instinctively that the new girl wasn’t scary. She was like the baby who lived in the house. Too little and too weak to really hurt anyone. Too fragile to be dangerous. He moved slowly toward the bed and knelt on the floor so that only the top half of his face was visible from where she lay. He inserted himself right in her line of sight and studied her pale, freckled face curiously.

  Pretty, he thought sadly.

  His mother had been pretty sometimes. He used to watch her getting ready to go out at night as she’d brushed her auburn hair and painted her face with pretty colors. She’d worn short dresses that hadn’t covered very much, and shoes with funny heels that had made her walk differently. She would always ask him if she looked okay, and Owen would always tell her that she looked pretty. Even if she’d slapped him for something not long before. Even if she hadn’t fed him in days.

  Although her hair was similar in color, the little girl didn’t really look anything like his mother, and he didn’t think she would act like her either. It was almost as though she were a doll, a life-sized one who looked like a real little girl but wasn’t an actual person. He’d seen one at the dollar store around Christmas time last year. Owen wanted to touch her to see if she was real, but the thought made him tremble with anxiety. Her hair billowed around her head in loose, flame-colored curls, and he longed to test their softness between his fingers, wondering if they were hot like the fire they resembled. He continued to watch her, waiting for her to move or blink. Several long minutes passed, and he began to wonder if she was a doll.

  But then… her eyes shifted. They didn’t really move, but they definitely changed. She was no longer looking through him but at him.

  Ellie’s brow furrowed slightly as she gazed at the small boy. He had sandy blond hair and sad, green eyes that seemed to swallow her whole. Her mother’s eyes had been green, and Ellie was immediately reminded of the last time she’d seen them. How they had shone with tears and pain… How they’d changed in a way that had made her feel utterly and completely alone. Ellie watched the boy curiously, waiting for him to say or do something, but he remained still and silent.

  A stranger watching the two children would probably have thought that they were engaging in a typical children’s staring contest, attempting to see which of them would break eye contact first. Their faces were less than six inches apart, and they could each feel the warmth of the other’s breathing. Owen took a deep breath and slowly reached into his pocket, pulling out a packet of gummy fruit snacks he’d saved from snack time. He’d only eaten half of them, choosing to save them in case he wasn’t allowed to eat dinner.

  He put the little package on the bed and scooted them toward her, but the girl didn’t move to take them. She did, however, lower her eyes to the shiny plastic wrapper for a moment before returning her gaze to his. She shook her head no, causing Owen to frown in dismay. He pushed them a bit closer to her and whispered the first word he’d spoken aloud in weeks.

  “Eat.”

  He dug his tiny fingers into the open packet and pulled out a grape-flavored gummy, holding it to her little rosebud mouth. After another moment of silence, she parted her lips and allowed him to push the morsel between them. A tiny smile of approval graced the boy’s face, and she felt her lips curve a little in response. Both of them felt strange, as though their muscles were protesting even the hint of a smile.

  “I’m Owen,” he whispered again, his voice slightly stronger despite weeks without use. “What’s your name?”

  He waited, unsure that she even knew how to talk, but he couldn’t look away. As Owen Harris gazed into the little girl’s luminous blue eyes, he felt a strange sort of peace settle over him. It was as though his soul recognized hers and spoke to her in a language only she could understand. His eyebrows lifted hopefully when she opened her mouth again and whispered a single word.
r />   “Ellie.”

  Chapter 2

  Mrs. Coleman watched the two most recent additions to her household with hopeful interest over the following week. The authorities were still trying to track down the girl’s next of kin, but apparently, tracing dental records with so little information to go on took time. A part of her wished there were some way to speed things along; Mrs. Coleman was sympathetic toward the child, especially since no one even knew her name yet. However, a larger part was content to wait and even hoped that the wheels of bureaucracy might turn a bit slower than normal. Even a blind person couldn’t miss the positive effect the child had on little Owen Harris, and for that, Mrs. Coleman was very grateful.

  She knew that Owen had come from a very rough situation, but that was almost to be expected of the children who wound up in her care. Since she and her husband were registered as an emergency placement home, they saw more than their fair share of hard luck cases. It wasn’t uncommon to take in a child who had been beaten and neglected or even infants who had been born addicted to drugs and were suffering from withdrawal. Even so, Owen was different than most of the other children she had cared for, though she wasn’t entirely sure why.

  The most difficult aspect of Owen’s situation was that no one really had any idea what he’d been through. His mother had died of a methamphetamine overdose, and he’d been found with her body, apparently after several days alone with her in their studio apartment. The police suspected she’d been an addict who was rarely cognizant of her surroundings, and it had been immediately clear that her son had suffered greatly under her care. Physically speaking, he was seriously malnourished and underweight. He had no marks on his body other than a few bruises here and there, though one was definitely in the shape of a handprint. He’d obviously been severely neglected, most likely in every conceivable way.

  Mrs. Coleman had spoken at length with the resident ER doctor who had been on his case when he was brought in, and the woman had even visited him a couple of times since discharging him. Owen hadn’t been the first of Mrs. Coleman’s ‘kids’ that Dr. Langford had treated, either as a nurse in previous years or during one of her more recent ER rotations as a resident, but Mrs. Coleman could tell that she felt a special connection to Owen. They’d bonded in the ER that first, terrible night, and Mrs. Coleman wished, for the boy’s sake, that ‘Dr. Mary’ and her husband had been able to adopt Owen.

  Dr. Mary had expressed a longing to be Owen’s mother, but she and her husband had recently adopted another boy who was just two years older than Owen. The child was having a hard time adjusting, and since both of the Langfords were also juggling full time careers, neither felt that they had enough time or energy to devote to another troubled child. It would’ve been unfair to both boys, Mary had reasoned aloud on one of her visits. She was determined to help Owen, however, and it had been with that goal in mind that she’d introduced the idea of adoption to some friends of the family, Edward and Vera Monroe.

  The prospective couple had only visited Owen once thus far, but that had evidently been enough for Mrs. Monroe to push forward with the adoption. Mrs. Coleman shuddered a little as the image of the woman came to mind. There had been something not quite right about her, but she couldn’t put a finger on what it was. Mrs. Monroe was a very beautiful woman, but her smile never quite touched her eyes. There was a hint of something nebulous that Mrs. Coleman simply couldn’t define, but the way the woman had looked at Owen had given her chills. Unfortunately, there was really nothing she could do about it. Social Services wasn’t going to validate a complaint of a ‘bad feeling’ when it came to vetting adoptive parents.

  Recalling the way Owen had been so withdrawn during the Monroes’ visit only served to make the recent change in him that much more obvious. She’d yet to hear him speak a conscious word, but she suspected that he was communicating with the new little girl. When he’d first come to them, no one had been certain that he even knew how to talk, and if it weren’t for the shouting he did every night, they might still be in the dark about it. His nightmares were heartbreaking, but it was difficult to soothe a child who couldn’t bear to be touched.

  This was why, when Mrs. Coleman discovered Owen sleeping soundly in the new girl’s bed, she decided to let it go rather than try to move him. Foster homes had strict rules about sleeping arrangements, and for good reason. But no one was going to convince Mrs. Coleman that Owen would be better off sleeping alone, with only his demons to keep him company. That he allowed the little girl to touch him was more progress than she’d seen in the entire month since he’d come to them. Once, Mrs. Coleman had even witnessed Owen kissing the wound on the back of the girl’s neck, just as he’d probably watched her do for the scrapes and bruises of the other children. She couldn’t even bring herself to admonish him for taking food from the kitchen or the dinner table, because she knew that he was sharing it with the little girl.

  As Mrs. Coleman finished her nightly rituals that evening, she peeked into the children’s bedrooms on the way to her own. As she expected, Owen’s bed was empty, and the new girl’s bed had one too many occupants. Her breath caught when she realized that both were awake, however, and she strained to hear through the small opening in the door, not wanting to alert them to her presence.

  The little girl was crying softly, and Owen had an arm around her, patting her back as she sniffled against his shoulder.

  “It’s ok,” he whispered. “Stay with me. I’ll keep you safe.”

  The Following Week

  Owen fought the urge to cry as he sat next to Ellie on the Colemans’ living room couch. He wanted to be brave for her, but it was hard to do that when he knew they were taking her away. Mrs. Coleman had sat them down the night before and explained that the police had found Ellie’s family. Her father was already on his way to pick her up, and he would arrive soon. Owen held Ellie’s hand tightly, wondering if perhaps her father would be willing to take him too.

  Ellie was the only person he’d met who didn’t scare him at all, except for the nice doctor at the hospital. She hadn’t wanted him either, he recalled, thinking of the friends she had brought with her the last time she visited. Mrs. Coleman had told him that Dr. Mary’s friends wanted to be his new parents and that, as soon as the judge said it was okay, they would come and take him home with them.

  Owen liked the idea of having a new family, but he was afraid of the Monroes. The man had dark hair and wore a suit. He never seemed to smile, and Owen knew that he was big enough to hurt him if he wanted. He was scared of the lady too. She was extremely pretty, with pale blonde hair and gray eyes, but although she had smiled at him, it had been a strange smile. Her eyes didn’t change the way the doctor’s did when she smiled, and Owen was worried that she might hurt him the way his mommy had. He’d been afraid of the Colemans at first too, and he still flinched away from them at times.

  He wondered if the Monroes would feed him like the Colemans did. His mommy hadn’t bought food very often, and even when she did, she wouldn’t always share with him. He’d learned to survive on very little food for a long time. Since she usually forgot to lock the door when she left the apartment, he’d eventually figured out how to open it so that he could find food elsewhere. Owen had found things on the ground outside, but they’d never tasted very good. He hadn’t been big enough to reach inside the trash cans, but sometimes he’d been able to knock one over. His mommy had come home and caught him outside of their apartment once, and she’d gotten really angry. She’d hit him really hard that time, and he’d stayed inside after that.

  Owen squeezed Ellie’s hand again, his heart racing a little faster when he heard the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway outside. She was the only person in the world he could trust, and she was leaving him. They were taking her away.

  Would she ever come back? Was her daddy a nice man? Would he hurt her like his mommy had hurt him?

  Owen put his little arms around Ellie’s tiny shoulders, futilely attempting to shield he
r from the eyes of the man Mrs. Coleman was now leading into the living room. The man looked… nice. Nice, but sad. And yet, he was somehow happy too. Owen stared at him, not understanding the mixture of emotions on the stranger’s face.

  “Ellie! Oh, baby girl, I’m so sorry,” the man wept. To Owen’s dismay, Ellie scooted off the couch and went willingly into the man’s arms, burying her face against his neck. She didn’t cry like her father did, and she didn’t speak. When the man leaned back for a better look at her, her eyes told a silent story of pain and fear.

  Nate's features crumpled as he gazed at her, his heart breaking for his sweet girl who had been so happy and lively when he’d last seen her. He crushed her to his chest again and squeezed his eyes shut as they burned with tears. Nate had been devastated to come home to an empty house after Celia had left, but his grief had not been for his wife’s absence. He couldn’t have loved Eleanore more if she were his biological daughter, and the pain of losing her had overwhelmed him.

  He’d filed a Missing Person’s report with the Seattle PD, which was how the Chicago police had eventually located him to give the notification of Celia’s death. Nate had also consulted with an attorney in preparation to file for custody of his daughter once Celia turned up. He’d been prepared for a long custody battle that would drain both his finances and his energy, but having Ellie safe at home would have been worth every dollar and sleepless night.

  Never in his wildest dreams could he have foreseen this turn of events. Now, instead of enduring a grueling custody battle, he was a single father of a grieving, traumatized little girl. She probably would have needed therapy even if she hadn’t been in that car. She would grow up without a mother, and Nate's chest ached at the thought of the many things she would miss out on.