Of the word that he still couldn’t say. Even in his mind.

When she saw all that, she’d tell them that he’d had a right to keep a gun under his pillow. And she wouldn’t know that he hadn’t put it there until after Brewer was dead.

Because he was still afraid that the big bald guy would come back. Which sounded completely crazy. So he wasn’t going to talk about that unless he had to.

The cop was talking again. “How often does she hit you?”

Again he hesitated. He wanted to make his mother sound bad enough that they’d take him and Joshua out of the house, but not so bad that they thought he was lying.

“She doesn’t hit that much,” he said, opting for as much of the truth as he dared. “She just throws things. Usually I’m fast enough to duck.”

The lady cop’s smile was sweet and sad, her eyes filled with what might have been understanding. “Until today, huh?”

He shrugged. “She’s got me a few times. Once with a vase. Once with a knife.” He pulled up his shirt enough to show the scar on his left side. “It bled a lot, but then it was okay.”

The lady cop studied the scar silently before her eyes rose to meet his. “Did she take you to the hospital?”

“Not that time.”

The cop tilted her head. “Other times?”

He nodded once. “When my stepfather hit too hard. Three times that I remember. Two broken arms and a break here.” He pointed to the bone over his right eye. That one had terrified him. He’d been afraid he’d lose his eye and he didn’t even want to think about having to understand ASL with only one good eye.

“Where did she take you?” the cop asked. “Which hospital, I mean?”

“Not around here,” he said. “We drove a long time.” He glanced at Dr. Dani. “Free clinics like this one.”

Dr. Dani grimaced. “She didn’t give your real name, did she?”

He shook his head. “Never.”

Dr. Dani looked at the lady cop, signing and speaking at the same time. Michael wondered if Greg knew how lucky he was. Stella Rowland Brewer had never learned sign language. No more than the basics, anyway. Yes, no. Come, go. Bad.

Always bad. Michael had come to expect it. And accept it.

“We can x-ray Michael’s bones and show the evidence of older, healed breaks,” Dr. Dani said.

“Thank you.” The lady cop never broke eye contact with Michael, and he appreciated it. At the same time, it freaked him out. “I’m not saying that what she did was okay ever, but did she say why she was angry this morning?”

Michael wanted to close his eyes, because his head hurt. But the lady cop was watching him so steadily that it freaked him out even more.