***
That night, Sparkle dropped Sam and me off at my place and he went to his apartment with Peter. I had to wait until the next morning to phone my mother, as it was way too late by the time we got home. Needless to say, I was nervous calling her, and I had good reason to be.
As it turned out, she had no idea that Sam was even missing. That was surprise number one. Surprise number two was that my mother got off the phone with me to call her brother to find out what he knew, and, it so happened, he didn’t know that Sam was missing either. Well, as I said before, bad news comes in threes, seeing as that Uncle Jesse called Cousin Tess, and she did, in fact, know that Sam was missing and simply didn’t care.
But, and this is a big old but, while Sam was telling the truth about the beatings
