What should I do? They’re sending my foster son back to the man who burned him, and the strangest part is that my boy says he wants to go.
I’m 61 years old. My wife and I have fostered 23 kids since 2004. I’ve seen a lot of children leave this house, and I’ve never once fought the state on it.
Until Tyler.
Tyler is nine. When he came to us, he had a burn across his back shaped like the bottom of a clothes iron. The doctor said it was at least a year old and had never been treated.
He wouldn’t take his shirt off for anybody. Not at the lake. Not at the doctor. Not even to swim with my grandkids in the backyard.
Last Thursday the caseworker called. The father had completed his program, and Tyler would be going home on the 15th.
I told her I’d hire a lawyer. I told her I’d go to the newspaper if I had to. My wife had to take the phone out of my hand.
That night I went to Tyler’s room to tell him we’d fight it. I expected him to cry and beg me not to let them take him.
He didn’t. He just looked at me real calm and said, “It’s okay. I have to go back.”
I asked him what he meant. He sat up in bed and pulled his knees to his chest.
“Nobody told you about Lily, did they?” he said. “She’s four. She stayed with Daddy because she was at Grandma’s when the police came. I’m the one who always got in front of her.”
My stomach dropped.
“If I’m not there,” Tyler whispered, “then he’s going to start using the iron on her.”
I sat down on the edge of his bed because my legs wouldn’t hold me anymore.
In 22 years of fostering, I’d read a lot of case files. I’d read Tyler’s twice. Nowhere in that folder did anybody mention a sister.
“Tyler, does your caseworker know about Lily?”
He shook his head. “Daddy said Lily’s not mine. He said she belongs to Krista, so she don’t count.”
“Who’s Krista?”
“His girlfriend. She left. But she didn’t take Lily.” He picked at a thread on his blanket. “Lily calls me Bubba. She can’t say Tyler right.”
I asked him why he never told anyone.
He looked at me like I’d asked the dumbest question in the world.
“Because if they took me and her both, he’d know it was me who told. And then when we came back, he’d make it worse.” He said it flat, the way you’d tell someone the bus comes at seven. “So I figured if I just went home, I could keep watching her.”
Nine years old. He’d done the math on his own pain and decided it was worth it.
I told him he did the right thing telling me. I told him he wasn’t going anywhere until I sorted this out. He nodded, but I could see he didn’t believe me.
Why would he? Every grown-up in his life had made him a promise and broken it.
Carol was waiting for me in the kitchen. She’d heard everything through the wall.
“Walt,” she said. “Don’t you dare do anything stupid.”
I knew what she meant. When I was younger, I’d have driven to that man’s house that night. I’d have knocked on his door with a tire iron.
But I’m 61. I’ve got a bad knee and a heart doctor I see every three months. And more than that, I knew how this works. If I went over there and did something, I’d go to jail. Tyler would get moved to a group home. And Lily would still be in that house.
So I did the boring thing. I sat down at the kitchen table and started writing down everything Tyler said, word for word, with the time and date.
Then I called the child abuse hotline.
The woman on the phone was kind but tired. She asked for Lily’s last name. I didn’t know it. She asked for an address. I had the father’s address from the court papers, but Tyler said Lily spent a lot of time at her grandma’s place. I didn’t know where that was either.
“Sir, I’ll file the report,” she said. “But without more information, I can’t promise how fast someone gets out there.”
I hung up and stared at the wall for a long time.
The next morning, I called Dana Pruitt. She’s been Tyler’s caseworker for eight months. She’s a decent woman with too many cases and not enough hours.
I told her everything. She was quiet on the other end for so long that I thought the call dropped.
“Walt,” she finally said. “Shane Decker told the court he lives alone. He signed an affidavit saying no other minors live in the home.”
“Then he lied.”
“Maybe. Or maybe Tyler’s scared and making up a reason not to go home. Kids do that.”
I felt my face get hot. “Tyler’s not trying to stay here. He’s trying to go back. Why would a kid make up a story that sends him back to the man who burned him?”
She didn’t have an answer for that.
“I’ll look into it,” she said. “But you need to understand something. The transfer is court ordered. Unless I find real evidence, Tyler goes home on the 15th.”
That gave me 11 days.
Tyler’s court-appointed advocate was a retired schoolteacher named Margaret Ossler. She’d visited him once a month since he came to us. She brought him library books about sharks because that’s the only thing he ever asked her for.
I called her next.
Margaret didn’t wait for me to finish. She drove over that afternoon with a yellow legal pad and sat with Tyler on the back porch for an hour.
I watched them through the kitchen window. Tyler talked more in that hour than I’d heard him talk in a month. At one point he drew something on her legal pad and pushed it across to her.
When she came inside, her eyes were red.
“He drew the house,” she said. “And a little stick figure in the corner. He said that’s where Lily sleeps. On a blanket in the laundry room.”
