“At first, I was happy Kate had been sent back, but little by little, even at that young age, I started noticing something was off about her. She would lie to the staff constantly when she got in trouble by blaming other children. The more Kate disliked you, or even worse, didn’t give in to her demands, the more trouble they got into. The staff liked her and believed the lies she would tell them. If I said anything to her about the lies she told, when I left the room, I would come back and find some of my things had disappeared or been destroyed. The older we grew, the more afraid of her I became.

“I was given to another foster family, and I was thrilled to be away from her. When I was sent back, I prayed she wouldn’t be there. She was. There was no place where I could hide that she couldn’t find me. She would watch me like a hawk, and the more frightened I became of her, the more she liked it. When she discovered something scared me, she would hone in on it, and if I didn’t do something she wanted, Kate would punish me by using those fears against me. The harshness of the punishment depended on how angry she was at me.” Alanna didn’t go into any of the details of the methods Kate had used against her.

Taking a jerky breath, she continued on under her lawyer’s scrutiny. “It came to the point I was afraid to be alone with her and would give my things away rather than see them end up with her or be destroyed.”

Her lips turned upward in a pained smile. “Finally, I was given a reprieve when Kate was sent to a new foster home. I remember sleeping for two days straight with her gone. I wasn’t the only one glad to see her away. Out of thirty kids, she had everyone terrified of her. Truthfully, I think some of the staff were, too, by that point.

“About six months after Kate left, I was taken to a new foster home. They didn’t tell me it was the same one where Kate was living. The only good part of that foster home was the Fields family. They were wonderful to me. They were to all the children. Despite having a child of their own, they had taken in a boy the same age as Kate, then me. However, there wasn’t a day that went by that Kate wouldn’t throw in my face that I was only there because she had told Mrs. Fields she missed her little sister.”

“She wanted you indebted to her,” Mrs. Bates surmised.