“With all due respect, Officer, this is her home. The child’s mother has just died. To remove her from everything she knows would add to her trauma. Here are the documents.” As if on cue, Taured produced a cream-colored envelope that he handed to the detective. “We have been both forthcoming and compliant in regard to law enforcement and Lorraine’s body, but as you can see, I am the legal guardian of her daughter and you have no right nor reason to remove her from her home.”

They were speaking again, the men. Summer sought the female officer’s eyes and found them drilling into her. She looked to see if the men noticed, but together, they were examining the papers. Gingerly, she met the woman’s eyes, a strange sensation rising behind her ribs. She was younger than Summer’s mother, maybe in her twenties. She was very blonde and very tan, her hair pulled back severely and knotted at the nape of her neck. She was narrowing her eyes, moving them from Summer to the floor and back again. And then, with a little jerk of her head, O’Connor squeezed her own eyes closed. Summer understood. She stood up rather suddenly and, from the corner of her eye, saw all four men pivot their heads to look at her. Then she let her whole body go limp. It didn’t even hurt when she hit the ground.

She heard the sound of their feet, the clamor of voices, and then the female officer sternly say, “Step back, all of you, give her some room. Byron, call an ambulance.”

“No need,” Taured said. “Tom here is a doctor.”

Summer lay limp and still, breathing in tiny gasps.

“I want her taken to a hospital to be checked out,” O’Connor said. A second later, Summer heard her speaking, and then the crackling sound of a radio saying an ambulance was on its way.

“I think you’re overacting.” Taured’s voice sounded strained.

“She’s a fifteen-year-old girl whose mother has just died. She’s collapsed, she could be severely dehydrated or worse. He said she was a runaway, yet here she is. She’s telling us she’s been abused. She needs to be checked out physically.” O’Connor was addressing one of her male colleagues. Summer’s heart was pounding so hard she wondered if they could hear it.

“She’s grieving, she’s exhausted,” Taured argued. “We will take very good care of her. Tom here has been her doctor for the last five years. Gentlemen...?”

Taured did not like when women acted like men, as he called it. He was petitioning to the men in the room: he assumed the men had more power.