Chapter 5 - The Phone Call That Brought Maya Home
Six hours earlier, I had been sitting aboard a military transport when a legal officer handed me a satellite phone.
A woman named Elena Ruiz was waiting on the line.
“I’m your brother’s school counselor,” she said.
“He gave me your number, but he made me promise not to call unless things got bad.”
“How bad?”
There was a pause.
“His father came to collect him yesterday. Toby hid in a supply cupboard.”
The engines roared around me.
For several seconds, I heard nothing else.
Elena told me about the bruise.
The weight loss.
The essays Toby had stopped submitting because my father searched his backpack every evening.
Then she read something Toby had written during a counseling session.
If I tell Maya, she’ll come home. If she comes home, Dad will make sure she loses everything. I can wait until I’m eighteen.
Four years.
My brother had decided he could survive four more years if it protected me.
I called my commanding officer.
He arranged emergency leave.
Elena contacted Toby’s advocate, who filed the petition and told me to come directly to court.
The hearing had already begun when my aircraft landed.
The packet was waiting with the advocate downstairs.
My hurry explained the dust, the gear, the disastrous entrance.
May you like
It did not explain how I had missed what was happening for so long.
That was the question I carried upstairs.
