Joshua swallowed hard. “She’s been really sad lately. She . . .” He bit his lip. “She sleeps a lot.”

Diesel’s jaw tightened. These were dicey situations. A parent suffering from depression wasn’t necessarily unfit. He needed to tread carefully here. Joshua’s mother had appeared normal when she’d dropped him off and he didn’t seem to be neglected. His clothes were dirty now, but they’d been clean when he’d arrived. He looked to be well fed, and Diesel had never seen suspicious bruises on him.

“Who watches you when she sleeps, Joshua?” he asked.

Joshua brightened. “Michael does. He takes care of me.”

Diesel made his lips curve, even though his trouble-meter was pinging loudly. Michael was Joshua’s older brother, but the boy was only fourteen. Diesel had seen enough of these situations while investigating story leads at the Ledger, the newspaper he’d worked at for the past seven years. Too many older siblings were left to care for the younger ones. Sometimes this was necessary, like when a single parent had to work multiple jobs to keep the family fed, but Joshua Rowland’s mother wasn’t a single parent. She was married to a man named John Brewer, whom Diesel had never met. He assumed that Brewer hadn’t adopted the boys, as they had a different last name, but that could be for any number of reasons and didn’t indicate an issue in and of itself.

Brewer appeared to be financially successful. The family lived in a well-to-do part of town, where homes were huge and called “estates.” Mrs. Brewer wore designer clothes and drove an expensive car. According to her parent info sheet, she didn’t work one job, much less multiple.

She should have had time to take care of her children, or money to hire a nanny. If she was leaving child care to her older son, that meant something else was going on.

He forced his voice to be as gentle as he could make it, which wasn’t easy. It was normally gravelly and rough, so he made sure he was smiling benignly. “What does Michael do for you?”

“Washes my clothes. Plays with me. Reads me stories at night and fixes my breakfast when I wake up. Eggs and bacon,” Joshua added proudly. “Because he says I’m growing and cereal’s not good enough.”

“He’s right,” Diesel said. “I can see you growing right now.”

Joshua giggled, as Diesel had hoped he would. “No, you can’t.”

Diesel’s lips twitched. “Well, maybe not right now, but I did before. Who picks you up from school?”

“Michael does. He walks me home.” Joshua’s smile dimmed and he bit his lip again. “But Michael’s sad, too. And I can’t make him be happy.”

Diesel glanced at a sympathetic Mrs. Moody before returning his attention to the forlorn little boy. “Why is Michael sad?” he asked softly.