When the officers knocked, my mother opened the door with the same offended expression she wore in restaurants when the waiter forgot the lemon for her water. She looked at us uniformed officers and said, “This is ridiculous.”
Amber appeared in the hallway seconds later, saw me standing near the patrol car, and her face changed completely.
“Did you call them?” she shouted.
One of the children immediately started crying. Mia appeared behind her mother, holding the baby on her hip as if it were perfectly normal for an eight- or nine-year-old to be prepared for a state intervention at 8:30 at night.
That image still haunts me.
The social worker, a woman named Denise Morales,
