“I am not sure why you came here,” Margaret said carefully. “Avery is under state protection.”
“I only want to understand what happened before and after the prison visit,” Dorothy replied.
Margaret hesitated before finally explaining that Avery had been brought to the home six months earlier by her uncle Daniel Bennett, who claimed he could no longer care for the child because of work obligations. However the staff had noticed bruises on Avery’s arms when she arrived, and since then the girl had rarely spoken and often woke screaming from nightmares.
“And since she returned from seeing her father,” Dorothy asked.
Margaret lowered her eyes and answered quietly that Avery had not spoken a single word since returning, as though she had already said everything that mattered.
Through the window Dorothy could see the child sitting alone on a wooden bench in the yard staring into the distance.
Five years earlier the Bennett home had been peaceful on the night everything changed. Victor had recently lost his construction job and sat in the living room drinking whiskey while his wife Angela Bennett spoke angrily on the phone in the kitchen.