Mrs Johnson looked to her husband to respond. She could not believe the lack of surprise on the caseworker’s face. The interactions that had taken place between them in the past had seemed so much less mechanical than this. She found herself wondering if this coldness meant that they were being blamed for Aria’s disappearance or if the truth was that Aria was always just part of the protocol of the job.
“What do you mean it isn’t unusual to see kids just run away like this?” Mr Johnson said forcefully. “I’m sorry, but it can’t be usual for a child to disappear for almost two weeks into thin air.” Mr Johnson tried not to express his disdain for incompetence in his question, which was really a statement. Unfortunately he didn’t succeed.
“Many of these children have a long history of running away,” Nina replied. “Aria is one. As you know, she ran away on several occasions from multiple group homes that she was placed in before being placed with you.
“Some of the kids run away because they miss their families. Aria is one of those kids who, unfortunately, was separated from her mother at a later age and so there may be a desire to find her mother and force the process of reconnection. Others run away because they can’t abide by the rules of the houses they are placed in. Others run away because they are in bad foster homes where abuse is taking place.”
Mr Johnson recoiled. “Are you trying to imply that we should have been more lenient or that we didn’t provide enough love for her here?”
He could feel the discrepancy inside himself when he said it. He was terrified that the real truth of Aria’s disappearance had more to do with him than with anything else. But he would not admit this guilt to anyone but himself. Instead he covered it over with defensive bluster.
He need not have worried. Nina guessed at nothing anyway. Instead, she said “not at all” and proceeded to sit with Mr and Mrs Johnson for just over an hour, suppressing her nerves while calming theirs. She explained the facts and the realities of the situation at hand until the color had all but drained from their faces. There was something in her that liked to shock such obviously idealistic and therefore optimistically delusional people. Although she appreciated their interest in these forgotten children, she also felt that people like this were one reason why the children had been forgotten in the first place.
Despite her fear about Aria’s wellbeing, wherever she was, Nina walked to her car feeling almost at ease with Aria’s decision to run away. She hated foster parents like this. People who simply did not get that if a child didn’t have a problem before being separated from their parents, they had one the minute they were. People who expected that putting a roof over a child’s head or a warm plate of food on the table or a Bible verse on the wall would somehow whitewash over the pain and make it not exist anymore. Nina found it as abusive to deny and erase the emotional truth of a child as it was to physically abuse them. Call it her personal pet peeve. Driving away, she knew deep down that Aria, with her perpetual feeling that no one cared about her, was just as likely to disappear completely as she was to pop up again as if nothing had happened.
When all was said and done, Mrs Johnson was once again grappling with her faith. Unable to accept that it was actually as hard as they said it was for authorities to find a child. Unable to accept that, with all her efforts to make Aria feel loved, she hadn’t succeeded. Unable to accept that God had a good plan for creating the suffering behind the statistics she had just been given.
The other children in the house, having heard the door close, had flooded into the living room to watch cartoons. She sat by the youngest of them, petting her bangs as if this child were the last surviving emblem of her identity as a good mother. She didn’t look to her husband to comfort her or to do anything else useful this time. They would deal with reality in their own way.
To her surprise, he sat down beside her and stared at the television set. She knew that he wasn’t really watching the TV. She knew he was grappling with the very same reality as she was. The fact that everyone had done everything that could have been done. Now they had to wait, but not wait. Their lives could not be put on hold forever, especially in light of the statistics they had just been given. The only thing they could do was to keep an open door in their hearts if Aria ever did come back.
Mrs Johnson was wrong. Her husband wasn’t grappling to swallow the same reality as she was. Instead, aside from feeling the increased seriousness of the situation, Robert Johnson was feeling much the same as he had felt when Aria had first disappeared. He was trying to stitch together the two sides of himself that hoped to rip him apart. One part of him felt the guilt and doom of knowing that he was the real reason she’d left. He feared his fate because of it. He hated himself for it. Aria had been more accessible to him and more open to his affections than Mrs Johnson had ever been. He knew it was wrong, but it also felt so right and special that the wrongness failed to prevent it.
He knew that self-blame was selfish. But it drowned out even the grief at her loss and the worry that he had for her wellbeing.
The other part of him felt immeasurable relief that Aria had run away. He did not trust himself when she was around. When she was there, something about her
