Mommy's Little Girl by Diane Fanning

we’re not proud of, okay? But then there comes a point in time you either own up to it, you say you’re sorry, you try to get past it—or you lie about it, you bury it . . . and it just never, ever, ever, ever, ever goes away.”
    â€œUh huh.”
    â€œOkay. That’s it, okay? Now you know I want you to stop and think about what’s going on here, okay?”
    John Allen waited for a response, but Casey did not oblige.
    â€œAt this point, we can explain that you’re afraid,” Allen continued. “You know that you were ashamed of maybe something bad that happened . . . We’re giving you this opportunity, yet you continue to lie and you continue to lie. Then what happens, at some point, it becomes there’s no excuse—there’s no reason . . . A reasonable person can look at this and go, ‘Wow, this is a person who really just doesn’t care,’ okay? . . . You called because you want our help. You want us to find your daughter, okay? ‘I am calling you and I’m asking for you to help. I’m asking you to help me find my child.’ ”
    â€œUh huh.”
    â€œThat’s been going on for a month, okay? ‘And to help you help me find the child, what I’ve done to this point is, I’ve given you a bunch of bad addresses to go look at—addresses and people that don’t exist.’ Okay? ‘Then, I take you to a place where I tell you that I work.’ Okay? ‘And I walk past the security gate.’ Okay? ‘All the way to an office that I don’t have.’ ”
    â€œUh huh.”
    â€œOkay. You sort of get the picture?”
    Again, Casey did not respond.
    â€œ. . . Do you understand where we’re headed here?”
    â€œI understand,” Casey said.
    â€œ. . . By burying this . . . you are not going to get yourself to a better place, okay? What you are going to do, you’re going to cause everybody else around you to suffer, okay? And at some point, this is going to come out. It always does.”
    â€œUh huh.”
    â€œIt always comes out, okay? Now your best bet is to try to put this behind you as quickly as you can. Go to your parents and tell ’em, you know, some horrible accident—whatever happened—happened. Get it out in the open now, okay? Instead of letting them worry and worry and worry and worry, okay? How old are you?”
    â€œTwenty-two.”
    â€œAt some point . . . you’re going to want to mend things with your family . . . You let this drag out . . . You make us solve this some other way. We’ll solve it, we always do . . . There’s no point in coming forward to say, ‘Oh my God, this is what really happened,’ once we figured it out, okay?”
    â€œUh huh.”
    â€œYou ever had anybody do anything wrong to you? Did anybody hurt . . .”
    â€œOf course,” Casey snapped.
    â€œ. . . When somebody’s hurt you in the past, and they’ve come to you and said, ‘I’m sorry,’ okay? ‘I really am, fromthe bottom of my heart, sorry for what happened.’ Do you forgive ’em?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWhat about somebody that does something to you and lies, lies, lies, lies, lies. You forgive them?”
    â€œIt’s a lot harder to sometimes.”
    â€œA lot harder to,” John Allen nodded in agreement. “Tell me the last time somebody hurt you over and over and then let you suffer for a period of time. And then lied about it when you caught ’em . . . When you caught ’em, that apology didn’t mean a hell of a lot, did it?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œ. . . Right now, your best bet is to just get it out in the open, whatever happened, and tell us now, okay? So . . . we can kind of start getting past this . . . There’s