Heather Gudenkauf - Little Mercies

Three months later, James and his wife sued the owner of the apartment building for not insuring that the window screens were safely installed. They won a tidy sum of money and were from then on known as the victims.

I just knew that James had beaten his daughter and then panicked. In my gut I knew he made it look like she had climbed onto the windowsill, fallen through the screen and tumbled three stories to the sidewalk below. Madalyn was a fear-filled little girl. She was afraid of water, was afraid of dogs, was afraid of strangers, and was, most likely, afraid of heights. There was no way that Madalyn Olmstead would climb onto a windowsill and press her little hands against the screen. Never once in all the time I spent with her did she ever tell me she wished she could be a bird, wished she could fly. One thing I knew of for sure was that Madalyn was afraid of her father.

Months after the trial, not Caren, my supervisor, not Joe, not even my husband would listen to me rant and rave about my suspicions anymore. “Didn’t the medical examiner say her injuries were consistent with an accidental fall?” Adam asked when I brought up my concerns for about the millionth time. I tried to explain that the medical examiner at the time was overworked and had a reputation of taking the lazy way out in determining his findings. Adam wasn’t sympathetic. “Ellen,” he said, “you’re making yourself sick over this. You need to stop worrying about this kid. No one else seems to be.”

Adam’s lack of concern irked me a bit, but Caren’s and Joe’s dismissal truly hurt. In social work and police work, too, we not only deal with facts but gut instinct often prods us into action. I thought they would listen to my worries and would back me up when I suggested another in-depth investigation into Madalyn’s death. They were sympathetic, made all the right noises when I made my case to them, but in the end they said they were satisfied with the jury’s decision and I needed to drop it.

In the end all that was left was the man who got away with murder, the woman who chose to protect him, and me, the social worker who was powerless to protect a four-year-old little girl named Madalyn Olmstead, who will forever be known as Little Bird, the little girl who thought she could fly.

Chapter 2

In the evening’s fading sunshine, ten-year-old Jenny Briard, on her knees, sweating and scraping at the hardscrabble dirt, did not have a reliable lucky charm, but she was determined to find one the first chance she got. Maybe a four-leaf clover or a horseshoe. Even a dusty old penny would do. Her father, Billy, in one of his rare moments of clarity a week ago, gave her a rabbit’s-foot key chain for her tenth birthday. No matter that he gave it to her two weeks late, Jenny wanted to cherish the silky white limb. But try as she might, the thought of a rabbit relieved of its paw to enhance the good fortune of others made her stomach flip-flop dangerously.

“What the hell? What’re you doing out here?” her father mumbled when he came upon Jenny trying to bury the rabbit’s foot in the weedy area behind the motel where they were currently staying. Jenny tried to hide behind her back the pocketknife she had lifted from her father’s jeans for use as a shovel but it was too late. “That’s my pocketknife. Give it here!” Jenny quickly tried to brush away the dirt before sheepishly handing over the knife. Her father peered into the shallow hole. “Hey, that’s your birthday present! What are you doing that for?” he exclaimed, his hair still wild from sleep, his voice laced with cigarette smoke.

Jenny didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t wanted to hurt her father’s feelings, to seem ungrateful for the gift, but in the five whole days she’d been in possession of the charm her father had once again lost his job, they had been evicted from their apartment, their truck had broken down for good, and her father had succumbed to what he called his weakness—twice. “It just seemed like the right thing to do,” she finally said, not able to meet his gaze.

Her father stood there for a moment staring down at her, his shirttail flapping like a flag in the hot Nebraska wind, his jeans hanging low on his hips, the band of his boxers peeking out. “Guess I can’t argue with that line of thinking,” he said at last, lowering himself into a sitting position next to her. “I’m thinking that wasn’t the best birthday present for a little girl, was it? You probably wanted new shoes or your ears pierced. Something girlie like that.”

“No, no,” Jenny protested. “It was a great idea for a present. I just felt...sorry for it.”

They both looked down into the small trench. “Well, how about we commence with the ceremony and then go to the Happy Pancake for supper?” her father asked, looking at her with weary, bloodshot eyes. Together they filled in the tiny hole covering the white paw with dusty earth. “Would you like to say a few words?” her father asked solemnly.

“I’ve never been to a funeral before,” Jenny admitted. “I’m not sure what I should say.”

“Well, I’ve been to my share of funerals and mostly there’s a lot of praying and crying. You can say whatever comes to mind and it’s all right.”

Jenny thought this over for a moment. “Do I have to say it out loud?” she asked.

“Nope, some of the most powerful words ever spoken are said right here.” He tapped his tobacco-stained fingers sagely against his chest.

Jenny stood silently over the tiny grave for a moment and then her father took her by the hand and they walked the quarter mile to the Happy Pancake, both retreating to the restroom after the waitress raised her eyebrows at their dirt-encrusted fingernails.

“The Chocolate Chip Happy Stack is $4.99, if that’s not too much,” Jenny said hopefully, scanning the prices on the menu. “And you can have my bacon if you want it.”

“Get whatever you want, Peanut. We’re celebrating today,” her father said buoyantly. Jenny peeked skeptically at her father from behind the plastic folds of the menu. Usually, whenever her father announced a celebration, he said he was going to invite two friends over and two friends only. Brew and Ski. Her only consolation was that the Happy Pancake promised a strictly family atmosphere complete with thirty-seven kinds of pancakes and a man who dressed up in a smiling pancake costume and made balloon animals on Sundays. Beer and his problematic friends were nowhere to be found on the menu.

“I guess I’ll have the Happy Hawaiian Stack then,” Jenny decided. She had already tried three of the thirty-seven pancake varieties and was determined to try each.

“A fine, fine choice, madame,” her father said in his fake French waiter accent, causing her to giggle.

“So what are we celebrating?” Jenny asked in her most grown-up voice after their orders were placed and they were both sipping on tall frothy glasses of orange juice.

“Hold on to your hat...” he began, and Jenny indulgently clapped her hands atop her head. “We are going on a trip!” her father said, emphasizing each word with a hand slap to the Formica tabletop.

“What kind of trip?” Jenny asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously, thinking of their truck leaking dangerous black smoke from beneath the hood the last time her father tried to start it.

“I got a call from my old friend Matthew,” her father said, pausing when the waitress appeared with their plates and slid a pile of steaming pancakes topped with pineapples, whipped cream and a brightly colored umbrella in front of Jenny. He waited until the waitress retreated before continuing, “You wouldn’t remember him, you were just a baby the last time we saw him, but Matthew called and said they were looking for some workers at the John Deere plant over in Iowa.” He looked at his daughter hopefully.