Little Mercies

In her latest ripped-from-the-headlines tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Heather Gudenkauf shows how one small mistake can have life-altering consequences…

Veteran social worker Ellen Moore has seen the worst side of humanity—the vilest acts one person can commit against another. She is a fiercely dedicated children’s advocate and a devoted mother and wife. But one blistering summer day, a simple moment of distraction will have repercussions that Ellen could never have imagined, threatening to shatter everything she holds dear, and trapping her between the gears of the system she works for.

Meanwhile, ten-year-old Jenny Briard has been living with her well-meaning but irresponsible father since her mother left them, sleeping on friends’ couches and moving in and out of cheap motels. When Jenny suddenly finds herself on her own, she is forced to survive with nothing but a few dollars and her street smarts. The last thing she wants is a social worker, but when Ellen’s and Jenny’s lives collide, little do they know just how much they can help one another.

A powerful and emotionally charged tale about motherhood and justice, Little Mercies is a searing portrait of the tenuous grasp we have on the things we love the most, and of the ties that unexpectedly bring us together.

Praise for Heather Gudenkauf

‘Brilliantly constructed, this will have you gripped until the last page…’

—Closer

‘Deeply moving and lyrical…it will haunt you all summer’

—Company

5 stars: ‘Gripping and moving’

—Heat

‘Her technique is faultless, sparse and simple, and is a masterclass in how to construct a thriller… A memorable read…A technical triumph’

—Sunday Express

‘It’s totally gripping…’

—Marie Claire

‘Tension builds as family secrets tumble from the closet’

—Woman & Home

‘Set to become a book group staple’

—The Guardian

‘Deeply moving and exquisitely lyrical, this is a powerhouse of a debut novel.’

—Tess Gerritsen, No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author

‘Fans of Jodi Picoult will devour this great thriller.’

—Red Magazine

‘Heart-pounding suspense and a compelling family drama come together to create a story you won’t be able to put down. You’ll stay up all night long reading. I did!’

—Diane Chamberlain, bestselling author of The Midwife’s Confession

‘A great thriller, probably the kind of book a lot of people would choose to read on their sun loungers. It will appeal to fans of Jodi Picoult.’

—Radio Times

‘A real page-turner’

—Woman’s Own

HEATHER GUDENKAUF is the critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling author of The Weight of Silence,These Things Hidden and One Breath Away. Her debut novel, The Weight of Silence, was picked for The TV Bookclub. She lives in Iowa with her family.

Read more about Heather and her novels at www.HeatherGudenkauf.com.

Also by Heather Gudenkauf

THE WEIGHT OF SILENCE

THESE THINGS HIDDEN

ONE BREATH AWAY

Little Mercies

Heather

Gudenkauf

For my brothers and sisters

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise for Heather Gudenkauf

About the Author

Title Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Endpages

Copyright

Chapter 1

When people find out what I do for a living their first question is always about the most horrendous case of child abuse I’ve encountered. I can be at a backyard barbecue or at a New Year’s Eve party or in the waiting room at the dentist’s office, or my husband’s baseball game. You must see so much, they say, shaking their heads, lips pursed in something like empathy, like I was the one who might have endured the beatings, the burns, the torrents of hateful words. Of course I don’t share any details about my clients and their families. So much has been stripped from the children that stagger in and out of my orbit; the very least I can do is honor their privacy. Come on, people urge, tell me. It’s bad, isn’t it? Like I’m dangling some salacious gossip in front of them. Like I’m keeping mum because I don’t want to offend their tender ears, upset their perfectly ordered worlds where all children are touched with gentle hands, spoken to with loving words and tucked warmly into beds with full stomachs.

Close your eyes, I once told the shortstop’s mother and she did, almost quivering in anticipation of the gory details. She nodded in compliance, cocking her head in my direction, preparing for what I will reveal next. Will I tell her about Mariah Crane, the seven-year-old whose mother held her head under water until there was no chance that her damaged brain could ever catch up with her growing body? Or will I tell them about the twins? Everyone has heard about the Twin Case, as it’s still known. Everyone wants to know more about the twins.

Now imagine the vilest things that can be done to a human being, I say. I let her think about this for a moment and I can see the slight spasm of revulsion skitter across her face. That’s what I’ve seen. She opens one eye to see if I’ll say anything else. But that’s all I have for her.

The only people I talk to about the Twin Case are my husband and Joe Gaddey. I was a newly minted social worker, just out of graduate school when I moved back to my hometown of Cedar City, the second largest city in Iowa, just behind Des Moines with a population of about one hundred ninety-five thousand. My husband moved to Cedar City to teach high school history and coach baseball, having grown up in the tiny town of Broken Branch, Iowa, where everyone is related, if not by blood then by marriage. We met through mutual friends and eventually settled into married life, ready to change the world. In the end I have struggled to not let the case change me.

Adam and I hadn’t even met yet when I was assigned my first social work case involving a set of six-year-old twin boys, a five-year-old girl, their mother, their father and a baseball bat. Only one of the boys survived. The family wasn’t new to the system; I had inherited the case from my predecessor and arrived for the first of my scheduled visits just as the emergency personnel were bringing out the first stretcher. Joe Gaddey was the officer positioned outside the front door. In a daze I moved toward him.

“And you are?” he asked. I couldn’t even speak, could only look up at him. I peeked around his solid girth, trying to peer into the house and was greeted with a terrible sight. I teetered on my high heels and grabbed on to his sleeve for support. “Whoa, now,” he said, steadying me. “You don’t want to see that.”

“I’m their social worker,” I said in a small voice. “What happened?”

“Their dad happened,” he said in that wry way I have grown to appreciate over the years. I swallowed back the bile that had collected in my throat, willing myself not to vomit. I knew this job would be difficult, even heartbreaking, but nothing, nothing, had prepared me for this. I felt the police officer’s gaze on me. He was massive. Six-three, two hundred and ten pounds of muscle, a thirty-six-year-old with a baby face and a sharp tongue. “You going to be okay?” he asked. We stood there for a moment. Me nodding my chin up and down like some maniacal bobblehead doll and the officer standing there uncomfortably. “You should probably call your supervisor,” he finally said as the second, third and fourth stretchers emerged, shrouded in black body bags, two of which were child-sized.

“Yeah,” I said, still nodding.

Every day I chronicle the monstrosities inflicted upon children in volumes of paperwork, in endless meetings, while testifying in court. I rarely talk to my husband about my clients anymore. He can see what kind of day I’ve had by the look on my face, the sag of my shoulders, how quickly I make a beeline to the bottle of pinot grigio I’ve reserved expressly for the more difficult days. On these days, Adam understands that there are no words and will gently replace my wineglass with our eleven-month-old daughter. Avery will wrap her chubby arms around my neck and press her petal-pink lips against my cheek so that I can smell the scent of apples on her breath. Whenever I come through the door it’s like Christmas, her birthday and the Fourth of July all at once, she is always so happy to see me. I could take comfort in this, and I do, but I see the same delight on the faces of the children I work with who are reunited with a mother or father. The same mothers or fathers who once slapped them so hard that teeth were loosened or grabbed them so roughly that bones were broken. In Avery I see the same spark that’s in their eyes, the eruption of the same joyful grin. I knew you’d come back to me, their faces say. I know the psychology behind this—why an abused child will run into the arms of their abuser—but it makes me sad.

There is one case I do not talk about anymore, one that I am not able to speak of, not to Adam, not even to Joe. It was a case that I knew would end badly... I felt it in my bones the moment I walked into the home, and I was right.

Madalyn Olmstead did not have an easy entrance into this world, nor did she have a gentle exit. Madalyn was born at Cedar City Hospital six years ago and spent the first ten days of her life in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit for respiratory issues. I became involved when Madalyn was one and a home health-care nurse called my supervisor at the Department of Human Services and asked if someone could check in with Madalyn and her mother at their home. I was assigned the case. When pressed for details, the nurse was vague. “Madalyn needs to use a nebulizer for her asthma, but her mother has a hard time remembering what I tell her. I think she might have trouble reading but is a quick learner when someone shows her what to do. She seems great with Madalyn.” The nurse was quiet for a moment. “Honestly, it’s the husband I’m worried about. It’s like when he comes into the room all the air is sucked out. She becomes tense and all her attention goes right to the husband. He acts like a jealous sibling or something. He has no interest in Madalyn but to complain about how much time his wife is spending with her. She seemed scared of him. Can’t you just go over there and check? I’d feel so much better.”

As a social worker, I was obligated to follow through, though based on what the nurse shared, I didn’t think I’d find anything that was actionable, but at least the father would know that someone was paying attention to the way he was interacting with his wife and his daughter. Three years later Madalyn was dead and I knew James Olmstead had killed her and he got away with it.

Most often Madalyn comes to me in the violet-tinged mornings. That middling space between night and day. She has the sweet, unformed features of a toddler and sparkling gray eyes recessed above full, pink cheeks. Surprisingly, considering the way she was found, it wasn’t the most gruesome of deaths—very little blood and only a few bruises marred her perfect little body. It was the hidden, internal injuries that killed Madalyn. Still Madalyn’s short time on earth began with the violent expulsion from her mother’s womb into the cold, unforgiving earthly air and ended in violence, as well. It just couldn’t be proved. I knew differently and I think her mother did, too. Though she was too blind, too scared, to say so.

When I wake up in the mornings, as the memory of Madalyn creeps beneath the covers with me and my snoring husband, my children sleeping soundly in the rooms down the hall, over and over I try to parse out just how her father, James Olmstead, got away with murder.

I’d been in and out of the Olmstead home for years because of suspected abuse by the father. Neighbors to the Olmsteads would call the police because of loud fighting coming from the house. Twice Madalyn had to be removed from the home because the father had beaten the mother so badly. Twice, the mother didn’t press charges. Twice, Madalyn was returned to the home. There were contusions on Madalyn, but the kind you find on all children: skinned knees, bruised elbows, purple knots on the forehead. All explained away by Madalyn’s mother. Such a busy little girl. You have children, right?

She was right, I do have children. Just before Madalyn died, Lucas was four and Leah was seven and they had the exact same kind of bruises. But as social workers, we know. We know which homes hold the addicts, the predators, the abusers. We just can’t always prove it.

Two years ago, on a beautiful May afternoon, Madalyn Olmstead tumbled out of the third-story window of her apartment building and fell to the concrete sidewalk below. The only other person in the apartment at the time was her father.

“She was out of my sight for only a second,” her father claimed. “She thought she could fly,” he cried convincingly to the news cameras. During the autopsy, besides the traumatic head injury, the medical examiner found suspicious bruising on Madalyn but not suspicious enough to call it murder. Because of his neglect, Madalyn’s father was arrested for child endangerment that resulted in the death of a child and was facing up to a fifty-year prison sentence.

Even though I was convinced this was no accident, at the time I was satisfied that James Olmstead was being tried for the lesser charge and would have been content just having him put in prison. I prepared to testify against James. Over and over I reviewed the documentation of my visits to the Olmstead home, practiced describing the injuries I saw on Madalyn’s mother, the suspicious bruises I saw on Madalyn. The jury never heard my testimony. It can be very difficult for the prosecution to get a defendant’s prior bad acts entered into evidence, and the judge in this case felt that the facts would prejudice the jury too much. Our only hope was that the defense would open the door by providing testimony that it was all a mistake, that James’s character was much different than what he was alleged to have done. That he just wasn’t capable of hurting his daughter. The defense didn’t open that door, didn’t bring James’s moral fiber into testimony, didn’t have his wife or his co-workers at the foundry where he worked, nor the parents of children he coached in Tiny Tot T-Ball, speak on his behalf. Didn’t have James testify on his own behalf. As a result, the jurors were not allowed to hear of James’s abusiveness. He was acquitted. Too much reasonable doubt, the jury foreperson explained after the trial was over.

Three months later, James and his wife sued the owner of the apartment building for not insuring that the window screens were safely installed. They won a tidy sum of money and were from then on known as the victims.

I just knew that James had beaten his daughter and then panicked. In my gut I knew he made it look like she had climbed onto the windowsill, fallen through the screen and tumbled three stories to the sidewalk below. Madalyn was a fear-filled little girl. She was afraid of water, was afraid of dogs, was afraid of strangers, and was, most likely, afraid of heights. There was no way that Madalyn Olmstead would climb onto a windowsill and press her little hands against the screen. Never once in all the time I spent with her did she ever tell me she wished she could be a bird, wished she could fly. One thing I knew of for sure was that Madalyn was afraid of her father.

Months after the trial, not Caren, my supervisor, not Joe, not even my husband would listen to me rant and rave about my suspicions anymore. “Didn’t the medical examiner say her injuries were consistent with an accidental fall?” Adam asked when I brought up my concerns for about the millionth time. I tried to explain that the medical examiner at the time was overworked and had a reputation of taking the lazy way out in determining his findings. Adam wasn’t sympathetic. “Ellen,” he said, “you’re making yourself sick over this. You need to stop worrying about this kid. No one else seems to be.”

Adam’s lack of concern irked me a bit, but Caren’s and Joe’s dismissal truly hurt. In social work and police work, too, we not only deal with facts but gut instinct often prods us into action. I thought they would listen to my worries and would back me up when I suggested another in-depth investigation into Madalyn’s death. They were sympathetic, made all the right noises when I made my case to them, but in the end they said they were satisfied with the jury’s decision and I needed to drop it.

In the end all that was left was the man who got away with murder, the woman who chose to protect him, and me, the social worker who was powerless to protect a four-year-old little girl named Madalyn Olmstead, who will forever be known as Little Bird, the little girl who thought she could fly.

Chapter 2

In the evening’s fading sunshine, ten-year-old Jenny Briard, on her knees, sweating and scraping at the hardscrabble dirt, did not have a reliable lucky charm, but she was determined to find one the first chance she got. Maybe a four-leaf clover or a horseshoe. Even a dusty old penny would do. Her father, Billy, in one of his rare moments of clarity a week ago, gave her a rabbit’s-foot key chain for her tenth birthday. No matter that he gave it to her two weeks late, Jenny wanted to cherish the silky white limb. But try as she might, the thought of a rabbit relieved of its paw to enhance the good fortune of others made her stomach flip-flop dangerously.

“What the hell? What’re you doing out here?” her father mumbled when he came upon Jenny trying to bury the rabbit’s foot in the weedy area behind the motel where they were currently staying. Jenny tried to hide behind her back the pocketknife she had lifted from her father’s jeans for use as a shovel but it was too late. “That’s my pocketknife. Give it here!” Jenny quickly tried to brush away the dirt before sheepishly handing over the knife. Her father peered into the shallow hole. “Hey, that’s your birthday present! What are you doing that for?” he exclaimed, his hair still wild from sleep, his voice laced with cigarette smoke.

Jenny didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t wanted to hurt her father’s feelings, to seem ungrateful for the gift, but in the five whole days she’d been in possession of the charm her father had once again lost his job, they had been evicted from their apartment, their truck had broken down for good, and her father had succumbed to what he called his weakness—twice. “It just seemed like the right thing to do,” she finally said, not able to meet his gaze.

Her father stood there for a moment staring down at her, his shirttail flapping like a flag in the hot Nebraska wind, his jeans hanging low on his hips, the band of his boxers peeking out. “Guess I can’t argue with that line of thinking,” he said at last, lowering himself into a sitting position next to her. “I’m thinking that wasn’t the best birthday present for a little girl, was it? You probably wanted new shoes or your ears pierced. Something girlie like that.”

“No, no,” Jenny protested. “It was a great idea for a present. I just felt...sorry for it.”

They both looked down into the small trench. “Well, how about we commence with the ceremony and then go to the Happy Pancake for supper?” her father asked, looking at her with weary, bloodshot eyes. Together they filled in the tiny hole covering the white paw with dusty earth. “Would you like to say a few words?” her father asked solemnly.

“I’ve never been to a funeral before,” Jenny admitted. “I’m not sure what I should say.”

“Well, I’ve been to my share of funerals and mostly there’s a lot of praying and crying. You can say whatever comes to mind and it’s all right.”

Jenny thought this over for a moment. “Do I have to say it out loud?” she asked.

“Nope, some of the most powerful words ever spoken are said right here.” He tapped his tobacco-stained fingers sagely against his chest.

Jenny stood silently over the tiny grave for a moment and then her father took her by the hand and they walked the quarter mile to the Happy Pancake, both retreating to the restroom after the waitress raised her eyebrows at their dirt-encrusted fingernails.

“The Chocolate Chip Happy Stack is $4.99, if that’s not too much,” Jenny said hopefully, scanning the prices on the menu. “And you can have my bacon if you want it.”

“Get whatever you want, Peanut. We’re celebrating today,” her father said buoyantly. Jenny peeked skeptically at her father from behind the plastic folds of the menu. Usually, whenever her father announced a celebration, he said he was going to invite two friends over and two friends only. Brew and Ski. Her only consolation was that the Happy Pancake promised a strictly family atmosphere complete with thirty-seven kinds of pancakes and a man who dressed up in a smiling pancake costume and made balloon animals on Sundays. Beer and his problematic friends were nowhere to be found on the menu.

“I guess I’ll have the Happy Hawaiian Stack then,” Jenny decided. She had already tried three of the thirty-seven pancake varieties and was determined to try each.

“A fine, fine choice, madame,” her father said in his fake French waiter accent, causing her to giggle.

“So what are we celebrating?” Jenny asked in her most grown-up voice after their orders were placed and they were both sipping on tall frothy glasses of orange juice.

“Hold on to your hat...” he began, and Jenny indulgently clapped her hands atop her head. “We are going on a trip!” her father said, emphasizing each word with a hand slap to the Formica tabletop.

“What kind of trip?” Jenny asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously, thinking of their truck leaking dangerous black smoke from beneath the hood the last time her father tried to start it.

“I got a call from my old friend Matthew,” her father said, pausing when the waitress appeared with their plates and slid a pile of steaming pancakes topped with pineapples, whipped cream and a brightly colored umbrella in front of Jenny. He waited until the waitress retreated before continuing, “You wouldn’t remember him, you were just a baby the last time we saw him, but Matthew called and said they were looking for some workers at the John Deere plant over in Iowa.” He looked at his daughter hopefully.

“That doesn’t sound like a trip,” Jenny said miserably, staring down at her pancakes, the whipped cream already sliding from the stack in a buttery sludge. She pushed her plate to the middle of the table. “That sounds like moving.” She suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore.

“It’s right on the Mississippi River. We can go fishing, maybe even buy a boat someday. Imagine that, Peanut.” Her father stabbed his fork at a piece of sausage, a wide grin on his face. “We could live on a houseboat if we wanted to.”

This was an interesting thought. A houseboat. But Jenny pushed the thought aside. “What’s the name of this place,” Jenny asked grumpily, pulling her plate back and pinching off a piece of the pancake with her fingers.

“Dubuque. And besides the Mississippi River, there’s a dog track and a river museum with otters and alligators and all kinds of cool things.”

Silently, Jenny began eating—she wasn’t sure when she and her father would get their next decent meal. Eight hours from now they would most likely be splitting a bag of chips and a stick of beef jerky. Her belly felt uncomfortably full, her tongue thick with syrup. Her father was going on and on about how great Iowa was going to be, how the John Deere plant paid fifteen dollars an hour, how they’d move into an apartment, but just for a while. Once they were settled they could move into a house where she would have her own room and a backyard. Jenny wanted to ask him if there would be a breakfast nook. It sounded so cozy and comfortable, a small corner of the kitchen, surrounded by sun-filled windows. But her stomach hurt and she didn’t want him to think that she approved of his plan in any way. Jenny licked her syrupy fingers one by one. “When do we leave?” she asked in resignation.

“How ’bout tonight?” her father asked, smiling broadly, his right cheek collapsing into a deep dimple that women loved. Then, leaning in so closely that she could smell sausage intermingled with this afternoon’s beer, he lowered his voice. “You run on home and start packing. I’ll pay and catch up with you in a few minutes. We got a bus to catch at midnight.”

Jenny knew that her father wasn’t going to pay for their supper, but at least he was letting her get out of the restaurant before embarrassing her to death. He was thoughtful that way.