There was something about Ross's parties that had always made me uncomfortable.
It wasn't the size of the house.
It wasn't the food.
And it wasn't even the money.
It was the way he seemed to need everyone to know that the evening belonged to him.
Ross didn't just host people.
He wanted credit for hosting them.
He liked being the one who could say he had arranged everything.
He liked having an audience.
That New Year's Eve party was exactly the kind of event he enjoyed.
He had talked about it for weeks.
The caterer was expensive.
The guest list was large.
Allison's relatives were coming.
Every detail seemed designed to make the house feel impressive.
I wasn't at the party.
I was working.
And that was part of why I had trusted my father to supervise the children.
I couldn't move back and forth between my job and Ross's house.
The station needed me for the night.
Tasha was needed at the hospital.
My children needed adults who would keep them safe.
Dad had said he would do that.
I took him at his word.
I didn't think I was making an extraordinary request.
Calvin was twelve.
Molly was nine.
They weren't babies, but they were still young enough to need someone watching over them.
They needed more than a house full of adults.
They needed an adult who understood that they were his responsibility.
That was what my father had agreed to be.
I had not asked Ross to raise them.
I had not asked Allison to change her plans.
I had not asked anyone to cancel the party.
I had simply relied on the arrangement our family had made.
That was why the truth would hurt so much later.
It wasn't only what Ross did.
It was the fact that I had trusted the situation in the first place.
I had placed my children's safety in the hands of people I thought I knew.
People I had known my entire life.
People who could look at Calvin and Molly and recognize them immediately.
They knew who their mother was.
They knew I was working.
They knew this was a winter night.
And yet that knowledge did not protect my children.
I would spend a long time thinking about that.
But on New Year's Eve, I was still unaware.
The hours at the station moved in their usual uneven rhythm.
Some songs seemed to last forever.
Other songs ended before I felt ready.
There were moments when Abby and I had too many things to do at once.
Then there were brief stretches when everything settled.
I liked those quieter minutes.
The sound of the music filled the studio.
The controls glowed.
The glass separated me from Abby's desk.
Beyond that, the building felt almost empty.
Radio at night had always been strange that way.
You could speak to thousands of people while sitting almost entirely alone.
I had learned to live with that contradiction.
It was one of the reasons I had stayed in the profession.
I liked knowing there were people out there who found some comfort in hearing a familiar voice.
A truck driver might be crossing a state line.
A nurse might be finishing another difficult hour.
A person unable to sleep might be sitting in a dark kitchen.
And somewhere among all those people, someone might need exactly the song I was about to play.
I took that seriously.
I tried to make my voice sound calm.
I tried to make people feel heard.
Even when I was tired.
Even when a caller was difficult.
Even when the request was something I couldn't possibly approve.
Abby handled much of the activity that happened before callers reached me.
She kept track of names.
She listened for trouble.
She passed along the details I needed.
And whenever she thought something might be important later, out came another sticky note.
I could look through the glass and see her writing.
Sometimes she wrote so quickly that I couldn't imagine how she understood her own handwriting.
But she usually did.
Her desk was covered with evidence of the evening.
Little reminders.
Times.
Names.
Problems.
Things waiting to be handled.
I trusted her judgment.
We had spent enough nights working together for me to recognize when she thought something deserved attention.
But there were limits to what either of us could know.
She could tell me when a caller was waiting.
She could warn me when the next song was almost finished.
She could point out a technical problem.
She couldn't tell me what was happening across town at my brother's house.
Neither could the glowing controls in front of me.
I had no window into that evening.
I only had the plan we had made.
And Tasha's message.
That message stayed in my mind as a simple confirmation.
The children had been dropped off.
Someone had answered the door.
Nothing more needed to be done.
I know how careless that sounds now.
At the time, it felt normal.
Parents make arrangements every day.
They trust grandparents.
They trust brothers and sisters.
They trust people who have watched their children grow up.
Most of those arrangements pass without incident.
Nobody remembers them afterward.
That was what I expected from this one.
I expected to finish my shift.
I expected Calvin and Molly to be safe.
I expected the new year to begin without anything worse than exhaustion.
I was not preparing for a family conflict.
I was not preparing for anger.
I certainly wasn't preparing to hear that my children had spent hours in freezing weather.
The thought never crossed my mind.
Ross had spent weeks promoting the party.
He wanted it to be memorable.
He wanted people to talk about it.
I wonder now whether he understood how memorable that night would become for me.
Not because of the decorations.
Not because of the guests.
Not because he had spent money.
But because he had taken two children who should have felt welcome and treated them as though their presence was a problem.
According to what I would later learn, Ross shut them out.
He told them they weren't wanted at the celebration.
He used his own children's wishes as the explanation.
The words were cruel.
The decision behind them was worse.
But those facts belonged to a part of the evening I hadn't reached yet.
I wasn't standing on the porch.
I wasn't there to challenge him.
I couldn't see Calvin's face.
I couldn't see how Molly reacted.
I couldn't hear the door closing.
All I knew was what Tasha had written earlier.
The door had been opened.
That was enough to let me carry on.
Across town, Ross was hosting his party.
At the station, I was doing my job.
Those two things happened at the same time.
For a while, they remained separate worlds.
His house was full of people.
My studio was full of sound.
He had guests.
I had callers.
He was celebrating.
I was working.
And Calvin and Molly were supposed to be somewhere inside his home, watched over by their grandfather.
That was the picture I had in my head.
I would have sworn it was true.
I didn't understand how little information I actually had.
The weather made everything more serious.
It was New Year's Eve in Wichita.
Winter had settled over the city.
This wasn't a night when children could safely be left outside for hours.
I knew that much.
Anyone living there knew it.
A porch was not a place to leave a nine-year-old girl and her twelve-year-old brother while adults enjoyed a party inside.
I would never have agreed to that.
Not for a few minutes.
Not for a disagreement.
Not because another child didn't want company.
And certainly not for three hours.
But nobody had asked me.
Nobody had explained that the arrangement had changed.
Nobody had told me that the promise my father made was no longer protecting my children.
I kept looking at the studio clock for ordinary reasons.
A song was ending.
A caller was waiting.
Midnight was getting closer.
There were announcements to make.
I had trained myself to pay attention to time.
Radio demanded it.
A few seconds could mean a missed cue.
A delayed transition could sound awkward to everyone listening.
So I watched minutes carefully.
I counted them.
I planned around them.
I knew how long a song would run.
I knew when to speak.
I knew when to stay quiet.
What I didn't know was that those same minutes had a very different meaning for Calvin and Molly.
For me, time was part of my job.
For them, it had become something they had to endure.
I didn't know that yet.
I kept doing my work.
I spoke warmly to people I had never met.
I helped them welcome another year.
I made sure the station sounded cheerful.
And I remained completely unaware of the situation unfolding at Ross's house.
That was the terrible difference between what I believed and what was actually happening.
I believed the children had family around them.
They were outside.
I believed their grandfather was supervising them.
He wasn't keeping them safe.
I believed Ross had welcomed them into his celebration.
He had refused them.
None of those truths reached me when they should have.
And the longer I remained unaware, the more time passed.
By the time the studio clock moved toward eleven, I was thinking about the countdown.
I was thinking about music.
I was thinking about the callers Abby was trying to manage.
I had no reason to imagine that someone living across from Ross would become the person who finally made sure my children had somewhere warm to go.
I didn't even know that neighbor's name yet.
I didn't know he would have to use a number my son remembered.
I didn't know he would try to reach my father as well.
And I didn't know that a message would be waiting on my phone while I continued speaking to strangers.
All I knew was that the broadcast needed to continue.
And so it did.
Click here to continue reading: PART 3: An Unknown Number Called While I Was Live on the Air, and I Made the Mistake of Believing It Could Wait
I Trusted My Father With My Children on New Year’s Eve, and That One Simple Decision Became Something I Could Never Forget
Part 2 of 15
