I adopted the teenage boy no one else could handle — and fourteen days later, he set his fork down at dinner and told me I had a right to know what really happened in those other houses.

I didn't sleep that night. I sat at the kitchen table after Eli went up to bed, turning it over and over.

Three times. Three families. Three reports. And every single time, the same woman had decided he was lying.

Her name was Paula Rourke.

I had shaken her hand. I had thanked her. She had smiled and said Eli was lucky to have someone like me.

I pulled up the agency's website on my laptop. Her photo was still on the staff page. Supervisor of Placement Services. Fifteen years with the agency.

I looked at that picture for a long time.

In the morning I made his favorite — scrambled eggs and toast — and waited until he sat down before I said anything.

"I need to ask you something. But first I need you to hear this: whatever you tell me, nothing changes. You are not going anywhere. Do you understand me?"

He looked up from his plate. "Yes."

"The three families. I need you to tell me everything you saw. All of it."

He set his fork down carefully.

"First family was the Barlows. I was twelve. Their foster daughter was eight. She had bruises up and down her arms, said she kept falling. But they were in the wrong places for that." He paused. "I told the school counselor. Two days later Mrs. Rourke shows up at the house. Talks to the Barlows for maybe twenty minutes. Then she drives me back to the group home and tells me I misread what I saw."

"And the little girl?"

"Still there when I left."

My hand closed hard around my coffee mug. "The second family?"

"The Selbys. I was fourteen. The dad locked the youngest kid in the basement overnight. Called it discipline. The boy was six." Eli's voice stayed flat and careful — the way a person talks about something they've told so many times they've trained the feeling out of it. "I told a teacher at my new school. She said she'd report it. Then Mrs. Rourke turns up again. Says the teacher went straight to the agency, and she'd already handled it. Says the Selbys are good people, and I've got a documented history of making false reports."

"Documented where?"

He met my eyes. "My file. She said it was in my file."

I put the mug down. "Eli. I read your file before the adoption. Every page. There was nothing like that in it."

Something moved across his face. Not quite surprise. More like a door he'd kept shut for years easing open.

"She told me it was there," he said quietly. "Told me no family would ever keep me if I kept causing problems."

The refrigerator hummed. Nothing else in the room made a sound.

"The third family," I said.

He looked down at his eggs. "The Deramuses. I was fifteen. The father was doing something to his stepdaughter. I heard it. I knew exactly what it was." He stopped. "I didn't waste time on a teacher that round. I went straight to the police."

I held very still. "What happened?"

"An officer came out to the house. Talked to Mr. Deramus for a couple minutes. Then Mrs. Rourke shows up — I still don't know how she got there so fast — and walks me out onto the porch. Tells me I've made a serious false accusation. Tells me if I keep it up, there'll be consequences. Legal ones." He looked up. "I was fifteen. I didn't know if she could actually do that. So I stopped talking."

I stood up and walked to the window. I stayed there until I was sure my voice would hold.

"Eli. The stepdaughter. Do you know what happened to her?"

A long pause.

"No. I never found out."