Read Little Lost Angel for Free Online Page A

mine.’ He said, ‘I just don’t understand it.’ I looked at him and I said, ‘Well, Mr. Heavrin, it’s probably not my place to say this, but have you ever noticed how your daughter never dresses like a girl and always looks like a boy?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Yeah, you know, I’ve asked my daughter if she was a lesbian and she told me no, so I don’t know what else to do.’ I told him that maybe she needed to be around her mother more. I told him that she needed to dress like a little girl and act like a little girl. He said he’d tell Amanda to stay away from Shanda.”
    The phone calls from Amanda stopped. With the help of her tutor, Shanda was getting good grades again. Jacque thought that everything was under control. Then while going through the mail one Saturday, she found a letter from Shanda to Amanda, which had been returned because there was no stamp on it. Jacque opened the envelope and foundone of Shanda’s school pictures. On the back her daughter had written a note: “Amanda, I miss you and I will always love you no matter what happens. I miss the touch of your soft body.”
    “It was very obvious from what Shanda had written that there had been physical contact between her and Amanda,” Jacque said.
    Jacque showed the note to her oldest daughter. “I don’t think Shanda’s a lesbian,” Paije said. “I think she’s just real confused.”
    “Don’t fool yourself, Paije. I think we have a big problem here. I think something has happened between Shanda and Amanda.”
    Shanda was spending the weekend with her father, but this was not something that could wait. Jacque called her ex-husband and told him about the writing on the back of the photograph. Shanda, overhearing Steve’s side of the conversation, slipped out of the room and pulled Sharon aside. In a whisper, she asked her stepmother, “If you mail a letter and don’t put a stamp on it, will it come back?”
    “Yes,” Sharon said. “Why?”
    “I think Mom found a letter I sent to Amanda,” Shanda said. “I sent Amanda a picture of me and I wrote a note on the back. It was written like it was from a boyfriend to a girlfriend. It was just a joke.”
    Sharon initially believed Shanda’s story. “Shanda was not one to lie,” she said later. “But when Jacque told me what Shanda had actually written, I knew that it wasn’t just a joke.”
    “We all need to sit down together and get to the bottom of this,” Jacque told Steve and Sharon, who agreed to bring Shanda back to Jacque’s townhouse that evening. Jacque then called Amanda’s father and told him about the note.
    “I asked him to bring Amanda over to my house that evening, and he assured me that he would,” Jacque said. “Well, he and Amanda never showed up. When I tried to call him a few days later, I found out that he’d had his phone changed to an unlisted number.”
    That night, Jacque gave much careful thought to what she would say to her daughter and the others.
    “I could tell that Steve was devastated by my call, but I had told him over the phone that this was not a situation where we wanted to scream and get upset,” Jacque said. “It was apparent that Shanda was going through a difficult time emotionally and she needed our help. We needed to treat her with kid gloves. Suddenly I knew why the last month or two had been pure hell. This is what had been troubling this child.”
    Jacque had always prided herself on her emotional strength, but now she was fraught with worry. “I had never in my life dreamed I would be in a situation where I would have to deal with something like this,” she said. “How do I do this so I don’t hurt her and let her know that I’m here for her, and no matter what she has done, it’s going to be okay?”
    Shanda was crying when she came in with Steve and Sharon. Jacque took her daughter by the hand and sat down next to her on the living-room carpet.
    “Shanda, you need to tell us what’s going on with you and