Kate’s Reviews > Long Bright River > Status Update

Kacey is Thomas’s mother (fathered by Simon). Mickie took him because Kacey was still on drugs. Mickie’s brief partner Lafferty looks to be the killer. Mickies dad is alive and Gee kept it from the girls. Kacey was born addicted to drugs. Everyone knew Kacey was alive but they kept it a secret (as requested by Kacey) from Mickie. Kacey is pregnant and sober and living with their father.

Paula doesn’t say the cops name but she accuses him of demanding sex from the working girls. Mickie takes this info to Ahern. He says he’ll pass along the info to Nguyen but he needs the informants name. Mickie tells him it’s Paula. I have a bad feeling about this.

There’s a video of the suspect and one of the four victims, Katie. When Mickie sees Kacey’s friend Paula later in the day, she shows the video to her and asks if she recognizes the man. Paula says it’s a cop.

Mickie gets into 2 colleges. She needs Gee to fill out FAFSA papers. Gee laughs in her face. She turns to Simon for comfort. She’s 18. He kisses her for the first time. He tells her she should become a police officer. She eventually does. She saves up enough money and buys her own house away from Gee and Kacey, who progressively becomes more addicted and troubled.

Oooooh. Last chapter revealed Officer Cleare’s first name was Simon. Just realized the father of her son, Thomas, is named Simon. Ooooh. Ew.

Kacey overdoses for the first time when she is 16 and Mickie is 17. She cries in front of Cleare. He tells her to go outside the building. He meets her there, hugs her from behind and asks what’s wrong and she tells him about her family.

Years later, Mickie finds out her father died of a drug overdose. Mickie’s infatuation with Officer Cleare concerns Kacey. Cleare is 29 to Mickie’s 15. He also has a 5 year old son.

Kacey and Mickies mom died when they were young from a drug overdose. She had mickie when she was 19. Gee forced her mother and father to marry. After her mom died, her father grew more distant and combative with Gee and eventually leaving the home. Gee sent the girls to an after school Police Athletic League program. Mickie becomes infatuated with Officer Cleare. Kacey becomes wilder, doing drugs and having sex.

Kacey has become a prostitute to feed her drug habit. One day, Mickie goes into a usual coffee shop and the owner tells her that Kacey has been missing for a month. But the source is Paula, Kacey’s drug and prostitute friend who may be unreliable.

After an unfeeling comment by Lafferty, implying these street girls are stupid and not worthwhile, Mickey requests to work alone. Ahern immediately agrees. Shortly after, a detective, Davis Nguyen, comes in to say there have been two young women murdered. He thinks they are linked to the woman Mickey had found that no one seemed to care about.