Page 40 of Submission

“Wait, the timeline doesn’t make sense. Megan and her sister are only five years apart. If her mother left when she was nine years old–”

“Yeah, the father had obviously been cheating on Megan’s mother with the nurse for years. So when her mother left, he just moved them both into his house.”

What a dick.

“Do you think he had something to do with what happened to Megan’s mother? Maybe he wanted her gone so he could move in his second family.”

“The father, Samuel, is definitely a douchebag, but I don’t think he’s capable of something like that. He’s too much of a chickenshit.”

A trafficking ring.

That’s ruthless.

While I may make my money dabbling in very gray areas of the law, I find sex trafficking vile and inhumane. It’s one area of the underworld I stay completely away from so I can sleep at night.

“Is there anything else?”

Lars finally takes a sip of his coffee. “I knew there was something about her that I could recognize in myself.”

“What else, Lars?”

“Child protective services were called several times by one of Megan’s teachers. I think it was her art teacher. They didn’t find enough evidence to prove abuse, but they were suspicious.”

“Of what exactly?” I study Lars.

Lars has a disturbed look on his face as he continues. “According to the caseworker’s files, there was a dog food bowl with Megan’s name on it and there was a chain attached to the kitchen table’s leg. The Taylors claimed that it was for their dog, who supposedly happened to be named Megan, but the neighbors I talked to said they never owned a dog.”

My blood is growing cold at this revelation, and I recall something I overheard Megan say once.

“My dad threw me into the street and made me beg on my knees. His wife liked making me eat scraps off the ground. Kinky bitch.”

At that point, while I had been curious about Megan, I wasn’t trying to get too involved, so I pocketed the statement in the back of my mind to address it another time. But it’s putting a lot of things into perspective for me right now.

“The dog bowl and chain were damning information. I can’t believe CPS didn’t act on those findings. What the hell else did they need as proof? Did they need to actually walk in and see her chained to the damn table? As if any abuser being investigated would ever be that stupid.”

“You know how the system is,” Lars says angrily. “I had one of our people locate the old caseworker and get the information out of her. She’s retired now, but she was forthcoming. She said she needed her job and followed things by the book back then. She said she knew there was something wrong in that house, and she tried to get Megan to confide in her, but Megan wouldn’t say anything.”

“She was probably scared to death. Was there anything else?”

“The caseworker admitted that another sign of something being off was that the girls’ bedroom didn’t seem like it was being shared by them. It felt like it was only for the younger child.”

“So why didn’t she do anything?!” I explode, wishing desperately I could do something to go back in time and protect little Megan.

“There were two beds in the room. One was an ornate sleigh bed with clean, girly bedding, and the other was a cot with a thin sheet and no pillow. Unfortunately, the condition of the bedroom only proved favoritism, not abuse.”

The picture forming in my head is sickening, and I’m beginning to realize why Megan is always so sure that I’ll throw her away.

After all,everybody else did.

“So, they tortured her?” I ask rhetorically, my hand slowly tightening around the mug. “What about the younger daughter?”

“She was a normal, happy kid. Raised like any other child except for the fact that her parents are psychopathic abusers, and she witnessed their abuse of Megan.”

I’ve known Lars a long time and I can tell that he’s furious, not that he’ll let it show in any obvious way.

“I see.”

The look on Megan’s face from the other day is still imprinted on my mind. She appeared both angry and terrified of her younger sister. Based on this new information Lars has given me, it’s quite likely that her sister also grew up playing a hand in the abuse.

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