Page 17 of Madden

"Rebecca? C'mon back."

I glance up at Shelby, eyes wide. "Okay." Gathering the paperwork I brought with me, I follow her to her office. My eyes watch as she goes around the back of her desk and takes a seat, looking at me expectantly. She's going to ask questions I don't know the answer to. I just know it. I'm going to feel like I'm even more of a failure than I normally do at the end of this meeting. My conscience teases me.

"Stop." Shelby says, folding her hands in front of her on her desk. "I can hear your head psyching you out from over here. You need to trust me, I'm not going to steer you wrong. I'm damn good at my job, and I'll work as hard for you as I need to."

"I don't know how I'm going to pay you," I blurt out, my nerves getting the best of me.

"We'll worry about that later. Right now, why don't you tell me what's going on with Mick's dad? He's your brother. Do I have that correct?"

She has a yellow legal pad in front of her, pen poised, where she's already making notes.

"That's right. Trey is my brother."

"Older or younger?"

"He's older than me by five years."

She nods. "And his full name is Trey White?"

"Yes."

"How old is he? I need to know so I can pull the correct records when I look at his previous charges."

I cross my legs, gripping my fingers with my other hand, cracking my knuckles. "I'm twenty-three. He's twenty-eight."

"Do you know what he was charged with?"

I know more about this than I care to. "Yes, drug trafficking, or rather I think they called it trafficking in a controlled substance."

She drops her pen and starts typing on her laptop. "Is this him?" She turns it around to face me, and I see my brother.

It's his mugshot, which I haven't seen before. He looks horrible. As if he's been crying, or like he's been on a bender. Skinnier than I remember, his face gaunt and eyes glassy. When we were younger, he was worried about how he looked, and wanted to always be the type of guy that girls thought was cute. He used to stand in front of the mirror and style his hair indifferent ways, to see which looked better. That seems so long ago. My throat is tight as I answer her. "Yeah, that's him."

Shelby sighs. "He has a lengthy rap sheet. He's done a lot that he has to answer for. It looks like he actually had charges that were pending when he got these. If they decide to run consecutively instead of concurrently, he's going to be in jail for a while, possibly until Mick is of age to decide things for himself as an adult."

This isn't what I wanted to hear, but also what I was afraid of. I knew there was a lot going on behind the scenes, and I knew things had been bad since Katelyn passed away, but I'd had no idea it was like this. "Shit, this is really bad, isn't it?"

She nods. "Can you tell me about Mick's mom? Is there anyone in that family who would want custody of him?"

I wish I knew more about what she's asking. "I know nothing about Katelyn's family. I only met her a couple of times, and she never seemed to take much interest in Mick."

Shelby puts her pen down. "I think I found her record. Holy shit, Becca. Did this kid ever have a chance? Her rap sheet is even longer than Trey's. How did she die? I can see where they dismissed her last charges because she died."

Rolling my neck to loosen the muscles there, I roll my lips together, wondering how to explain this to someone who isn't familiar with the type of lifestyle they lead. "From my understanding, she was on a bender. It was the way she'd do things, she'd go long intervals without doing drugs, but then she would over-indulge."

Shelby makes a noise. "That's the most dangerous thing to do. That's when most of the overdoses happen, because their tolerance has gone down, and they use what they were using before."

I nod, thinking back to the phone call I'd gotten from Trey about Katelyn. "She went and bought a bunch of heroin, because that was her drug of choice."

"Oh, no..."

"Yeah, from what I've heard, all of it is laced with fentanyl now." I rub my palms on my jeans. "Mick was with her, and while she was overdosing, he was there. Trey told me he was stuck in the apartment with her for days. He refused to leave his mom's side, even though she was dead." It still breaks my heart to say those words out loud.

"And they called him to come and get his son?" Shelby seems as if she can't believe how all this played out.

Truth be told, I can't believe it either. They basically sent him from one bad situation to another, and didn't even care. He could've been screaming for help, and no one would've heard. "Yep. I'm surprised after they saw his rap sheet."

"Oh, no." Shelby holds her hand up. "They don't run a rap sheet, not for next of kin. I wish they would, but until there's a reason to call CPS, they won't."