I have no memory of who I was before I met Ellie.
Eric likes to say this about himself. It's an out and out lie but Eric found that he liked lies like this one because it masked his pain and embarrassment from anyone who pried into his youth. Eric, the keeper of dark secrets, desires, and regrets often found himself also the teller of such things. He held onto the idea that the only safe thing to do was to lie about what he was until he, himself, believed all of it to be true.
Eric wasn't entirely wrong in his original opinion of his early life before Ellie Fitzgerald became part of it. This was in part true because his memory worked more like an almost broken slide projector, holding onto some memories until something would jog it back into motion and another memory would almost load into place before the whole assembly that was his mind would lock back into place. As for the rest of his memory about life before Ellie was a series of scenes that Eric fought hard to forget ever happened.
Eric could not remember either of his parents. When he closed his eyes and tried to picture them he could not. The only parents that ever came to mind were Ellies. All that he remembered about his parents was what his Aunt Bettie had told him the last time he ever saw her.
Eric played with some toys on the floor of a room. He could never remember what the toys were- save that he liked how they felt in his small hands. Smooth and cool to the touch, that was it, he was pretty sure that they were dolls of some sort although he suspected they were Barbie and not G.I. Joes. The memory was featureless and thus Eric never tried to explore any further into what the toys could have been.
After a time, the door to the room opened as a woman came in, all that Eric could remember about her was that she seemed to have been crying about something. A man followed her in but before he could even register the man, his aunt Bettie reached down and snatched away the doll.
"You disgust me," the woman sneered at him.
"Bettie, enough." the man would say in his memory.
"No, it's all his fault that they're-" Bettie would say then "I hate you and I hope you die soon."
Then the Bettie would burst into tears, tear the head off the toy before throwing it down at Eric as he crouched there below her. he would bend down and pick up the head and look at it without emotion, without tears. Bettie would then stomp out of the room and Eric's life. The man would say something but Eric would no longer be listening to him and the memory would fade away.
Eric was six years old when he was placed into foster care by the state.
Much of the rest of his childhood would appear in episodic scenes similar to this one. Eric never associated an emotion with any of them. He had no memory of his parents outside of his aunt's rage at him, her palpable hatred at him for taking them away. All he really knew was that he had never cried for the lack of them nor did he ever smile when he remembered the things that followed their disappearance from his life.
One thing remained a constant in Eric's life, no one would keep him longer than a year. So, by the time the Fitzgerald's fostered him, he had around 7 placements - it was likely there were more but only 7 of them registered in his psyche.
Eric compartmentalized much of his life before Ellie as if all of it were butterfly specimens that he had stored in a book.
Specimen 1: Helen and Ernest White.
A midwest American couple with 2 sons, Paulie and Jonnie who immediately hated Eric. The boys would tie Eric up and leave him inconvenient places like the basketball goal in the neighbors driveway or the mailbox down the street. Eric had no memory of ever resisting either of them as they tied or taped him to their latest idea. Paulie would call Eric names like dork and dweeb as he did this. Ernest would eventually notice that Eric was not home for dinner and come out looking for him. Upon finding Eric, Ernest would berate him for letting the neighborhood bullies into doing this to him and that Eric should learn to fight back instead of just letting it happen. 3 months after Eric entered the White's lives, Eric suddenly fought back against Jonnie by biting his hand as he was busy duct taping Eric to a stop sign drawing blood. Jonnie howled in agony as the small bite bled. Paulie took a swing at Eric, missed him striking the sign post with his fist, Paulie screamed as the metal tore into his flesh and blood went everywhere. By the time Ernest got home, there were police cars and an ambulance on the scene. Ernest waded into the crowd to find Eric looking at the two boys who were being treated for their wounds. Upon seeing their father, both of the boys pointed at Eric and burst into tears. Ernest turned back on Eric and went to take a swing at the boy right in front of a police officer, who would later take Eric back to the state home after Ernest had been arrested and charged with child abuse.
Specimen 2: Grammy Watkins.
She smelled like cats; Eric, as it turned out was allergic to cats. She said he would get used to the cats. She was wrong. Eric woke up in a hospital two days later. All Eric remembered was that Grammy Watkins smelled like cats.
Specimen 3: Steve and Gracie Miller.
At first, this seemed to be a good placement. Steve and Gracie were decent folks from Arkansas and their home life was stable enough. They had a son, Max and a daughter Maxine both of whom were a few years older than Eric who had turned 7 by this point. Max and Maxine were paternal twins and appeared to get along with Eric who showed no real interest in them. Steve noticed that Eric showed no interest in him or Gracie and was nonparticipatory in family activities. This wasn't a problem for the state until they realized that the Miller's idea of family activities was nudism and going to nudist events. The social worker tried to keep her cool as Gracie explained that Eric would have to strip down to his birthday suit if he wished to remain in foster care with the Millers. Eric chose that moment to point out how ugly Steve and Gracie were without their clothes.
Specimen 4: St. Martin's Home for Lost Children.
The state believed that Father Mark and his wife Sister Angeline were married and ran the home with the blessing of the church. This was not actually accurate as the state failed to verify which church that Father Mark and Sister Angeline belonged to or for that matter who the other children belonged to. Nothing seemed amiss until Father Mark announced that the kids were all going on a camping trip with Sister Angeline and a Brother Marvin to the local state park, about a week after Eric has arrived. Eric did not integrate well with his fellow foster kids and the three runaways housed there. The state police caught up with the three when they failed to report crossing state lines or the minor detail that the lot of them were moving to Saskatchewan without passports. The State Police were unamused when Eric informed them that his foster parents were not married, that Sister Angeline had been naked in front of the children and that Father Mark had kissed Brother Marvin right before the police had caught up with them. Eric delivered all this in a monotone. The media storm went on for a month and the state had their hands full trying to re-place the children following the media finally forgetting that the kids existed. No one ever determined what religion the culprits actually belonged to, no church came forward to say that St. Martin's was a part of their faith.
Specimen 5: Robert Casey and Susanna Maxwell.
It turned out there was nothing off with this couple other than Susanna Maxwell going by her maiden name instead of Casey's. The couple tried to care for Eric who by this point had perfected the unemotional non-reactive state of being that he would maintain most of his childhood. Truth be told, Susanna just could not stand that Eric would not call her Mom, or show any affection for either of them and he was sent back to the state after almost a year of the couple trying everything from physical displays of affection to bribery to a weird of exchange of promising toys in exchange for a simple sign of gratitude. When they were asked why they had made the decision to send him back, both of them looked at each other for a moment before admitting that they didn't like Eric and that there was something seriously wrong with him. The state did reevaluate Eric sending him through a barrage of screening and sessions with several family therapists and even a couple of psychiatrists who came back with little helpful information other than Eric was a bright child who showed little emotion for others. One of the psychiatrists went as far as to suggest that Eric was possibly sociopathic but that was dismissed as hearsay since Eric didn't show any of the other signs that could fit their model for this. In the end, the experts determined that Eric was emotionally withdrawn from the trauma of losing both of his parents in a fatal car crash when he was almost six. unbeknownst to the State and their experts, Eric overheard this detail in a final conversation before he was deemed eligible to reenter foster care.
Specimen 6: Robert and Gillian Smith.
The Smiths were a middle-class family with four children who lived in the suburbs and were quite popular with their neighbors. Eric had turned 10 at some point and the Smith threw him his first birthday party and Eric smiled, perhaps for the first time in his life when he saw his name on the cake. Overall the Smiths were very good to Eric, he got along with Helen (age 12), Sarah (age 10), Robert Jr. (age 8) and even Grant (age 5). There was no conflict and he and Sarah became playmates for the year he spent with them. Then Robert lost his job at the plant and failed to find any work. Life at the Smith house became stressful as Robert fell into a deep depression as the bills piled up and the Smith's standing a neighborhood celebrities dwindled then faded altogether.
When Gillian took Eric back to the Foster house, she cried the entire trip and had to pull off the road several times because she was so overcome with emotion. Sarah took Eric's departure the hardest of the kids and had to be forcefully separated from Eric when it came time for Gillian to return home. Eric waited until they were gone before he wept in the silence of the room he shared with the other unwanted children at the state home.
Specimen 7: James and Barbara Matheson.
Some time passed before this placement, a series of short-lived experiences where the state placed Eric with a series of quick failures that meant nothing to Eric save for the annoyance of having to repack his suitcase between stops. By the time the Matheson's entered the picture Eric had turned 12 and was weary of the prospect of yet another family and yet another eventual rejection for some reason that never seemed as important as the last.
The Mathesons were a solid upper-middle-class family who had decided to faster some children as a means of "giving back" to the church being devout Baptists. Eric had no interest in religion and was immediately at odds with James who saw this as a challenge to indoctrinate Eric into the "only way you are going to heaven." Eric seeing that this would get him sent back to the state house decided that the path of acceptance would be best for him to stay in what was an otherwise nice place, or so he thought.
The Mathesons had three children: Deborah 14, Jimmy 12, and Delores 8. They also fostered two other boys, Gerald 12 and Henry 8. Eric was the latest addition to the family dynamic. The first shock was having to attend church on Sundays and Wednesdays along with family chores that included lawn maintenance and gardening - the latter under the supervision of Barbara. Any misstep, even a complaint was met with a quick slap on the bottom and followed by a quick prayer that the child would be forgiven for his or her mistake.
Eric hated Barabara. Deborah hated Eric especially after he refused to kiss her one night when she cornered him in the children's bathroom and presented him with the option to do so or face the consequences. Eric found out that the other two foster boys had complied out of fear of what the consequence would be. The consequences turned out to be Deborah blaming Eric for everything that went wrong at the house. This was a fair amount especially since Deborah had her father twisted around her finger and she loved to break something than cry foul and blame it all on Eric.
Eric took the slaps and prayers well enough, then when James took him to the garage and switched him bare bottom, he made the decision to kiss Deborah at the very first opportunity. He never cried despite the pain and shame that followed the punishments. James was still sure at that point that he would bring Eric around to Christ and make him a good Christian. Eric was pretty sure whoever this Christ was that he wanted no part of this family.
Once the opportunity presented itself, Eric approached Deborah planning to kiss her and get it over with. Deborah, however, drunk with the power she now had over Eric, refused to comply and demanded that he do her chores in addition to his own. When Eric refused she told her father that Eric had tried to kiss her and Eric was switched nightly - to "get the devil out of him."
It was the first time Eric cried since the Smiths left him at the state house. As he crouched in his room, his bottom red from the latest punishment, Jimmy came in and sat down next to him and told him he was sorry that his sister was such a bitch. Eric thanked him and from that point on Jimmy would help Eric whenever he was sent to bed without food or grounded from family outings.
Jimmy steadily showed more and more affection for Eric as the months passed until one night, after Deborah's latest torment had taken to fruition in the form of accusing Eric of 'groping" at her, and James declaring at the dinner table that if Eric did not get "the devil out of him" there would be hell to pay that following Sunday. Eric, for his part, had simply surrendered and gone to the garage for yet another switching only to find that James just locked him in for the night. Eric decided that if he was given the opportunity he was going to run away. Jimmy came in later with a blanket and a pillow and some food. Eric thanked him, cried a little and they spent some time trash-talking Deborah and her evilness towards him.
Eric would remember what happened next, for years to come. One moment, they were sitting side by side looking up at the garage doors laughing about Deborah's panic at finding a zit on her nose and then Jimmy trying to kiss Eric by forcing Eric - who was smaller than Jimmy. Eric froze up in shock as Jimmy groped at him trying to get his hands in Eric's jeans as he continued to push against him moaning. Then the garage flooded with light and there was yelling as James grabbed Eric by the neck hauling him up then slamming his small body against the wall several times.
The next thing Eric knew he was being bodily thrown out the front door to the pathway to the driveway as James Matheson continued to roar accusations at him at full blast. Eric managed to recover long enough to pull up his pants and scrambled across the lawn out of range. Barbara came out of the house as James went into full preacher mode. She managed to get James to calm down and go back in the house as the neighbors began to come out to see what the commotion was all about. Once that was done she stormed down to where Eric huddled crying his eyes out. She stopped long enough to spit on him before she noticed the police lights approaching down the street. When he looked back and saw Deborah smiling at him from her window. she gave him the bird before closing her curtain.
Once the police had arrived, James Matheson reappeared to make a statement that Eric had assaulted his daughter and son before trying to force himself sexually on his son. The police officer looked at his partner and they both looked at Eric who stood as far away from James as possible and not be standing in the road. The other cop looked back at his partner and shrugged. They looked back at James and shrugged at him. Obviously, they had a hard time believing that Eric was capable of doing anything. Eric carefully walked around to the opposite side of the police car away from James and approached the Police officer, when the police officer looked down at him, Eric turned around raising his shirt and dropping his pants revealing the welts left by the constant switching. The policeman swore softly. As Eric straightened he heard the other policeman tell James Matheson to put his arms up.
Eric never collected the suitcase, it was delivered back to the state foster house a few days later by a social worker who looked stunned as the other two foster boys were with her. The social worker knelt down next to Eric then pulled him into an embrace whispering "I'm sorry, so very sorry," over and over again.
Eric stayed in the state home for a few months before he was once again sent to a new home.
It was Sunday, September 14th. It had rained that morning. Eric looked up at the victorian style house nestled in the trees in the quiet neighborhood. The front door opened and a tall austere man stepped out. He looked down at Eric who looked up at him. A moment passed before the man nodded and gestured them all inside. Eric was brought into a sitting room. There he saw a severe woman sitting with the other social worker and a young petite girl.
She had jet black curly hair cut into what he would later learn was called a pageboy flip, dark green eyes almost blue, a small shy smile and slight frame. Eric fell in love immediately.
"Eric," The social worker said kneeling down next to him. "this is your foster sister Ellie."
Eric likes to say this about himself. It's an out and out lie but Eric found that he liked lies like this one because it masked his pain and embarrassment from anyone who pried into his youth. Eric, the keeper of dark secrets, desires, and regrets often found himself also the teller of such things. He held onto the idea that the only safe thing to do was to lie about what he was until he, himself, believed all of it to be true.
Eric wasn't entirely wrong in his original opinion of his early life before Ellie Fitzgerald became part of it. This was in part true because his memory worked more like an almost broken slide projector, holding onto some memories until something would jog it back into motion and another memory would almost load into place before the whole assembly that was his mind would lock back into place. As for the rest of his memory about life before Ellie was a series of scenes that Eric fought hard to forget ever happened.
Eric could not remember either of his parents. When he closed his eyes and tried to picture them he could not. The only parents that ever came to mind were Ellies. All that he remembered about his parents was what his Aunt Bettie had told him the last time he ever saw her.
Eric played with some toys on the floor of a room. He could never remember what the toys were- save that he liked how they felt in his small hands. Smooth and cool to the touch, that was it, he was pretty sure that they were dolls of some sort although he suspected they were Barbie and not G.I. Joes. The memory was featureless and thus Eric never tried to explore any further into what the toys could have been.
After a time, the door to the room opened as a woman came in, all that Eric could remember about her was that she seemed to have been crying about something. A man followed her in but before he could even register the man, his aunt Bettie reached down and snatched away the doll.
"You disgust me," the woman sneered at him.
"Bettie, enough." the man would say in his memory.
"No, it's all his fault that they're-" Bettie would say then "I hate you and I hope you die soon."
Then the Bettie would burst into tears, tear the head off the toy before throwing it down at Eric as he crouched there below her. he would bend down and pick up the head and look at it without emotion, without tears. Bettie would then stomp out of the room and Eric's life. The man would say something but Eric would no longer be listening to him and the memory would fade away.
Eric was six years old when he was placed into foster care by the state.
Much of the rest of his childhood would appear in episodic scenes similar to this one. Eric never associated an emotion with any of them. He had no memory of his parents outside of his aunt's rage at him, her palpable hatred at him for taking them away. All he really knew was that he had never cried for the lack of them nor did he ever smile when he remembered the things that followed their disappearance from his life.
One thing remained a constant in Eric's life, no one would keep him longer than a year. So, by the time the Fitzgerald's fostered him, he had around 7 placements - it was likely there were more but only 7 of them registered in his psyche.
Eric compartmentalized much of his life before Ellie as if all of it were butterfly specimens that he had stored in a book.
Specimen 1: Helen and Ernest White.
A midwest American couple with 2 sons, Paulie and Jonnie who immediately hated Eric. The boys would tie Eric up and leave him inconvenient places like the basketball goal in the neighbors driveway or the mailbox down the street. Eric had no memory of ever resisting either of them as they tied or taped him to their latest idea. Paulie would call Eric names like dork and dweeb as he did this. Ernest would eventually notice that Eric was not home for dinner and come out looking for him. Upon finding Eric, Ernest would berate him for letting the neighborhood bullies into doing this to him and that Eric should learn to fight back instead of just letting it happen. 3 months after Eric entered the White's lives, Eric suddenly fought back against Jonnie by biting his hand as he was busy duct taping Eric to a stop sign drawing blood. Jonnie howled in agony as the small bite bled. Paulie took a swing at Eric, missed him striking the sign post with his fist, Paulie screamed as the metal tore into his flesh and blood went everywhere. By the time Ernest got home, there were police cars and an ambulance on the scene. Ernest waded into the crowd to find Eric looking at the two boys who were being treated for their wounds. Upon seeing their father, both of the boys pointed at Eric and burst into tears. Ernest turned back on Eric and went to take a swing at the boy right in front of a police officer, who would later take Eric back to the state home after Ernest had been arrested and charged with child abuse.
Specimen 2: Grammy Watkins.
She smelled like cats; Eric, as it turned out was allergic to cats. She said he would get used to the cats. She was wrong. Eric woke up in a hospital two days later. All Eric remembered was that Grammy Watkins smelled like cats.
Specimen 3: Steve and Gracie Miller.
At first, this seemed to be a good placement. Steve and Gracie were decent folks from Arkansas and their home life was stable enough. They had a son, Max and a daughter Maxine both of whom were a few years older than Eric who had turned 7 by this point. Max and Maxine were paternal twins and appeared to get along with Eric who showed no real interest in them. Steve noticed that Eric showed no interest in him or Gracie and was nonparticipatory in family activities. This wasn't a problem for the state until they realized that the Miller's idea of family activities was nudism and going to nudist events. The social worker tried to keep her cool as Gracie explained that Eric would have to strip down to his birthday suit if he wished to remain in foster care with the Millers. Eric chose that moment to point out how ugly Steve and Gracie were without their clothes.
Specimen 4: St. Martin's Home for Lost Children.
The state believed that Father Mark and his wife Sister Angeline were married and ran the home with the blessing of the church. This was not actually accurate as the state failed to verify which church that Father Mark and Sister Angeline belonged to or for that matter who the other children belonged to. Nothing seemed amiss until Father Mark announced that the kids were all going on a camping trip with Sister Angeline and a Brother Marvin to the local state park, about a week after Eric has arrived. Eric did not integrate well with his fellow foster kids and the three runaways housed there. The state police caught up with the three when they failed to report crossing state lines or the minor detail that the lot of them were moving to Saskatchewan without passports. The State Police were unamused when Eric informed them that his foster parents were not married, that Sister Angeline had been naked in front of the children and that Father Mark had kissed Brother Marvin right before the police had caught up with them. Eric delivered all this in a monotone. The media storm went on for a month and the state had their hands full trying to re-place the children following the media finally forgetting that the kids existed. No one ever determined what religion the culprits actually belonged to, no church came forward to say that St. Martin's was a part of their faith.
Specimen 5: Robert Casey and Susanna Maxwell.
It turned out there was nothing off with this couple other than Susanna Maxwell going by her maiden name instead of Casey's. The couple tried to care for Eric who by this point had perfected the unemotional non-reactive state of being that he would maintain most of his childhood. Truth be told, Susanna just could not stand that Eric would not call her Mom, or show any affection for either of them and he was sent back to the state after almost a year of the couple trying everything from physical displays of affection to bribery to a weird of exchange of promising toys in exchange for a simple sign of gratitude. When they were asked why they had made the decision to send him back, both of them looked at each other for a moment before admitting that they didn't like Eric and that there was something seriously wrong with him. The state did reevaluate Eric sending him through a barrage of screening and sessions with several family therapists and even a couple of psychiatrists who came back with little helpful information other than Eric was a bright child who showed little emotion for others. One of the psychiatrists went as far as to suggest that Eric was possibly sociopathic but that was dismissed as hearsay since Eric didn't show any of the other signs that could fit their model for this. In the end, the experts determined that Eric was emotionally withdrawn from the trauma of losing both of his parents in a fatal car crash when he was almost six. unbeknownst to the State and their experts, Eric overheard this detail in a final conversation before he was deemed eligible to reenter foster care.
Specimen 6: Robert and Gillian Smith.
The Smiths were a middle-class family with four children who lived in the suburbs and were quite popular with their neighbors. Eric had turned 10 at some point and the Smith threw him his first birthday party and Eric smiled, perhaps for the first time in his life when he saw his name on the cake. Overall the Smiths were very good to Eric, he got along with Helen (age 12), Sarah (age 10), Robert Jr. (age 8) and even Grant (age 5). There was no conflict and he and Sarah became playmates for the year he spent with them. Then Robert lost his job at the plant and failed to find any work. Life at the Smith house became stressful as Robert fell into a deep depression as the bills piled up and the Smith's standing a neighborhood celebrities dwindled then faded altogether.
When Gillian took Eric back to the Foster house, she cried the entire trip and had to pull off the road several times because she was so overcome with emotion. Sarah took Eric's departure the hardest of the kids and had to be forcefully separated from Eric when it came time for Gillian to return home. Eric waited until they were gone before he wept in the silence of the room he shared with the other unwanted children at the state home.
Specimen 7: James and Barbara Matheson.
Some time passed before this placement, a series of short-lived experiences where the state placed Eric with a series of quick failures that meant nothing to Eric save for the annoyance of having to repack his suitcase between stops. By the time the Matheson's entered the picture Eric had turned 12 and was weary of the prospect of yet another family and yet another eventual rejection for some reason that never seemed as important as the last.
The Mathesons were a solid upper-middle-class family who had decided to faster some children as a means of "giving back" to the church being devout Baptists. Eric had no interest in religion and was immediately at odds with James who saw this as a challenge to indoctrinate Eric into the "only way you are going to heaven." Eric seeing that this would get him sent back to the state house decided that the path of acceptance would be best for him to stay in what was an otherwise nice place, or so he thought.
The Mathesons had three children: Deborah 14, Jimmy 12, and Delores 8. They also fostered two other boys, Gerald 12 and Henry 8. Eric was the latest addition to the family dynamic. The first shock was having to attend church on Sundays and Wednesdays along with family chores that included lawn maintenance and gardening - the latter under the supervision of Barbara. Any misstep, even a complaint was met with a quick slap on the bottom and followed by a quick prayer that the child would be forgiven for his or her mistake.
Eric hated Barabara. Deborah hated Eric especially after he refused to kiss her one night when she cornered him in the children's bathroom and presented him with the option to do so or face the consequences. Eric found out that the other two foster boys had complied out of fear of what the consequence would be. The consequences turned out to be Deborah blaming Eric for everything that went wrong at the house. This was a fair amount especially since Deborah had her father twisted around her finger and she loved to break something than cry foul and blame it all on Eric.
Eric took the slaps and prayers well enough, then when James took him to the garage and switched him bare bottom, he made the decision to kiss Deborah at the very first opportunity. He never cried despite the pain and shame that followed the punishments. James was still sure at that point that he would bring Eric around to Christ and make him a good Christian. Eric was pretty sure whoever this Christ was that he wanted no part of this family.
Once the opportunity presented itself, Eric approached Deborah planning to kiss her and get it over with. Deborah, however, drunk with the power she now had over Eric, refused to comply and demanded that he do her chores in addition to his own. When Eric refused she told her father that Eric had tried to kiss her and Eric was switched nightly - to "get the devil out of him."
It was the first time Eric cried since the Smiths left him at the state house. As he crouched in his room, his bottom red from the latest punishment, Jimmy came in and sat down next to him and told him he was sorry that his sister was such a bitch. Eric thanked him and from that point on Jimmy would help Eric whenever he was sent to bed without food or grounded from family outings.
Jimmy steadily showed more and more affection for Eric as the months passed until one night, after Deborah's latest torment had taken to fruition in the form of accusing Eric of 'groping" at her, and James declaring at the dinner table that if Eric did not get "the devil out of him" there would be hell to pay that following Sunday. Eric, for his part, had simply surrendered and gone to the garage for yet another switching only to find that James just locked him in for the night. Eric decided that if he was given the opportunity he was going to run away. Jimmy came in later with a blanket and a pillow and some food. Eric thanked him, cried a little and they spent some time trash-talking Deborah and her evilness towards him.
Eric would remember what happened next, for years to come. One moment, they were sitting side by side looking up at the garage doors laughing about Deborah's panic at finding a zit on her nose and then Jimmy trying to kiss Eric by forcing Eric - who was smaller than Jimmy. Eric froze up in shock as Jimmy groped at him trying to get his hands in Eric's jeans as he continued to push against him moaning. Then the garage flooded with light and there was yelling as James grabbed Eric by the neck hauling him up then slamming his small body against the wall several times.
The next thing Eric knew he was being bodily thrown out the front door to the pathway to the driveway as James Matheson continued to roar accusations at him at full blast. Eric managed to recover long enough to pull up his pants and scrambled across the lawn out of range. Barbara came out of the house as James went into full preacher mode. She managed to get James to calm down and go back in the house as the neighbors began to come out to see what the commotion was all about. Once that was done she stormed down to where Eric huddled crying his eyes out. She stopped long enough to spit on him before she noticed the police lights approaching down the street. When he looked back and saw Deborah smiling at him from her window. she gave him the bird before closing her curtain.
Once the police had arrived, James Matheson reappeared to make a statement that Eric had assaulted his daughter and son before trying to force himself sexually on his son. The police officer looked at his partner and they both looked at Eric who stood as far away from James as possible and not be standing in the road. The other cop looked back at his partner and shrugged. They looked back at James and shrugged at him. Obviously, they had a hard time believing that Eric was capable of doing anything. Eric carefully walked around to the opposite side of the police car away from James and approached the Police officer, when the police officer looked down at him, Eric turned around raising his shirt and dropping his pants revealing the welts left by the constant switching. The policeman swore softly. As Eric straightened he heard the other policeman tell James Matheson to put his arms up.
Eric never collected the suitcase, it was delivered back to the state foster house a few days later by a social worker who looked stunned as the other two foster boys were with her. The social worker knelt down next to Eric then pulled him into an embrace whispering "I'm sorry, so very sorry," over and over again.
Eric stayed in the state home for a few months before he was once again sent to a new home.
It was Sunday, September 14th. It had rained that morning. Eric looked up at the victorian style house nestled in the trees in the quiet neighborhood. The front door opened and a tall austere man stepped out. He looked down at Eric who looked up at him. A moment passed before the man nodded and gestured them all inside. Eric was brought into a sitting room. There he saw a severe woman sitting with the other social worker and a young petite girl.
She had jet black curly hair cut into what he would later learn was called a pageboy flip, dark green eyes almost blue, a small shy smile and slight frame. Eric fell in love immediately.
"Eric," The social worker said kneeling down next to him. "this is your foster sister Ellie."
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