***A/N some dark themes ahead***
1978-Winter
I'm nervous, and scared...and above all else angry. The first time the lawyer called the house Stevie was gone with-God only knows who, and I was a bottle of bourbon and some valium deep into my weekday coma. The second time the phone rang I screamed at the person on the other end, who just happened to be T. Marvin Pickford. My attorney, and the man I've paid a considerable sum of money over the years to track down Connor. Stevie doesn't know about him, I wanted to have all of my ducks in a row before I approached her. Finding our son is the last chance we have to save our marriage, I believe that with all my heart.
A few perfunctory sentences and some sharp directives and here I sit, wobbly and still hung over but rapt with attention. "Lindsey, come on in son" shiny cowboy boots, bolo tie and suspenders are my lawyer's favorite uniform. He plays up the "simple country lawyer" bit to the hilt, and while he is technically from Texas, he's not from some small town. He's from Houston, the fifth largest city in the country by population.
"Thanks for calling, sorry about ripping your head off I've been busy working on the new album and finishing off our tour" without comment Pickford pours me and himself a tall whiskey, we sip in silence for a few seconds before he passes a file to me from across his desk "His name is Hunter Beck now, he was adopted by a young couple in their twenties. Because of some beauracratic snafu they were able to convince the scholars who work out there that they had money enough to pay for all the treatments and special needs classes he would need, but the reality was they were broke meth addicts"
All those careful promises about making sure Connor would be safe, that he would have a good home healthy meals, children with his same disability to interact with, caring staff-bullshit. I swallow hard when I take a look at his pictures in the files, the home where he was taken from is a hovel. Little more than four aluminum walls and cracked faux wood floors. Garbage in every corner, dirty clothes on the ground, empty food containers, animal waste. When I get to the picture of where Connor was supposed to have slept I want to weep.
What looks like a dog bed in the corner covered in what I imagine to be urine stains, no blanket, no pillows. I can clearly see dead cockroaches and other insects on the ground nearby, and not a single toy or book in sight. His pictures are what finally do me in, my son four years old covered in welts, insect bites, bruises, cigarette burns, and patches of irritated skin. His eyes are hollow, he can't make eye contact with whoever has the camera. The pictures of him without his clothes on are enough to make me want to commit murder.
He's emaciated, nearly skeletal.
"Jesus-I was told-we were told he'd be in a group home for kids with special needs. That we didn't have the money or education to take care of him! How the fuck did this happen Marvin?!" wiping at the side of his expensive ostrich boots my lawyer tries his best to calm me "Know anything about Georgia Tann? The Tennessee Children's home scandal? Well, that's basically what you're looking at here. Benevolent but overwhelmed parents convinced to give their kids up for a better life. Meanwhile the agency and the crooked doctors sell the child off to the highest bidder or in Connor's case bilk the federal government for his monthly checks and give him away to anyone who'll take him."
"No one comes to make sure he's actually still in the home? That he's receiving the money the government is dolling out for him?" I find that disturbing, and rage inducing "Come on Linds, that agency has gotten away with scamming people for decades. The feds only recently busted them that's the only way were able to find Connor. He was taken out of the Beck home by CPS a few weeks ago, they're under indictment for manufacturing amphetamines..." Stevie's going to lose it. I wanted to find Connor for her, so we could have a shot at adopting him again now that we have the money to provide care. But he's already lived ten lives worth of misery and we're to blame.
