A Welcome Reunion

by Lucinda Berry

Could a child be born bad? And if so—if there really was such a thing as a bad seed—could you turn them good?

Janie didn’t just tug at your heartstrings—she pulled them straight out.

Janie’s narrative was all about redemption. How she’d been rescued by the Bauers when they thought they could help her, but how they’d thrown her away when they didn’t think they could fix her. That’s when she’d gone through her darkest hours, and it was in that place that she’d discovered the strength she needed to be her own savior. Or so she said.

“Is that why you hurt your roommate at New Horizons Correctional Facility?”

“Hurting people hurt other people, and I’m not sure there was a little girl on the planet who was in more pain than me. So yes, I lashed out. I took it out on the people around me at the time.”

“You snipped off your roommate’s earlobe with a nail clipper, and you crushed another resident behind the washing machine, breaking three of their ribs and collapsing their lung.”

Snipping off your own earlobe first so no one would suspect you of hurting your roommate was cunning.

The conditions of his plea bargain were that he have no contact with her, and he wouldn’t risk it. Not after how hard he’d worked to keep his medical license after the trial.

“and that’s that she was cunning, cruel, and manipulative. Her roommates were terrified of her. And here’s the thing you don’t know about institutionalized kids. They love their roommates. They grow very attached to them because they become almost like siblings. But Janie? She cycled through roommates in every placement center she was in, all the way up until the very end. That says something. It says something huge.”

there was nothing I loved more than a woman who’d confidently stepped into her own power.

And there it was. In black and white, the scrawled signature: Christopher Bauer.

She stared at her hands clasped on the knife, and a wicked grin slowly covered her face. Pain—even her own—excited her.