Chapter 10 - AVA'S BAG
The small bag by the door contained:
two shirts,
Lucas’s diapers,
Ava’s toothbrush,
one stuffed rabbit,
snacks.
Patricia said she intended to take the children to Melissa’s for the afternoon.
That part was probably true.
She was not abandoning them on the street.
But Ava refused.
Why?
Because Patricia had done it before.
Whenever insurance people came, the children went somewhere:
Melissa’s,
a neighbor’s,
a park,
a grocery store.
Ava had started understanding that adults were being told she lived somewhere else.
She did not understand fraud.
She understood one thing:
“Patricia says the house can’t know we’re here.”
When Grant heard that sentence, he sat down.
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A house could not know anything.
But a six-year-old had learned to organize her life around an adult lie.
