Summer came around and I was on my way home. I saw a car stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire and a spare tire lying on the side of the road. It was also flat. The owner of the car had her back turned to me. I pulled over and got out to see if I could help.

As I approached the girl, I heard her cussing. Something about her cell phone being dead.

"Can I help you?" I asked.

She whipped around, slightly surprised. I was caught off guard as well. It was Kellie.

"Unless you have a tow truck or can patch a tire," Kellie said, "No."

"You're Kellie right," I asked, "You're a client of my father's, Charles Scott."

"Tyler, it was, I think," Kellie said.

I looked up at the sky, cloudy and threatening to pour.

"Let's clean up the mess," I said, "And why don't you come with me. It looks like it's about to pour. I'm sure my father won't mind."

Kellie thought about it before agreeing, "Sure."

We got in my car. I had no idea what to say to her. She had no idea what to say either. I eventually learned that for Kellie, holding her tongue was rare. Although, now not holding her tongue means saying something as a sarcastic, cutting remark. Back then it was the occasional out there remark and more along the lines of well, talking your ear off.

We got to the house and called for a tow truck to get her car. My father insisted she stay for dinner. It was there that I learned about her childhood had been spent going from foster home to foster home, enduring almost daily beatings, and the violent death of her mother at the age of five.

I also learned that with my father's help, she had been granted emancipated minor status. At the last foster home, Kellie had ever been in, the father had beaten her badly. She'd had to go to the hospital. My father met Kellie at the police station once she was well enough to give her statement. He'd seen the extensive bruising and stitches, made a few inquiries, and found out that social services was looking to place in her a foster in which she'd run away several times from before. He approached her with the idea to become an emancipated minor.

By the time, dinner was over, Kellie's car was finished and she left. I wouldn't see her again until next spring.