Another figure appears in the doorway. She can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. Her face is dry, gaunt. Her hair is still long, but the brown roots are grown out almost to her ears. The split, straw-like ends go down past her shoulders.
“Ah, fuck,” Jess rasps, her heavy-lidded eyes going wide. “Fuckin’ Striker...”
She starts to stumble backwards inside the house, like she’s gonna try to make a run for it.
“Jess!” I call after her. “I need to talk to you! I ain’t gonna hurt you!”
There’s lots of reasons the Lords of Carnage would be coming for Jess, and even in her drug-addled haze, she knows it. I’m prepared for that, though.
“Look,” I say. I reach into a pocket of my jeans, quick, so she doesn’t have time to wonder if I’m about to pull out a gun. Instead, I take out a wad of bills. “I got some cash for you, in exchange for talking to us for a few minutes,” I say.
She turns back, peering at me suspiciously from about ten feet inside. “Yeah?”
“Come on out here. I’ll give you this for answering some questions. That’s all this is, I swear.” I hold up my hands.
Jess gives me a scowl that makes her face seem about a hundred years old. My gut lurches when I remember she’s not even thirty yet. The drugs are sucking her life away from her. As she reaches out a thin, knuckly hand to grab the bills from me, it makes me sick to think that the money will just speed up the process.
“Whaddya wanna talk about?” she mumbles as she shoves the cash into her bra. She’s so skinny that the lump sticks out awkwardly.
Ember pulls in a breath, glancing at me, then back at Jess.
“Jessica, my name’s Ember. I’m a friend of Tank Barrigan’s.” I notice right away that Ember avoids the word lawyer. “I’m helping him out, to make sure your daughter Wren has a good, stable home. And well, the problem is, he’s taking good care of her, but he doesn’t have any legal papers saying he’s Wren’s father, which makes that really hard. So, we’re hoping you could help him out with that.”
“Like what? What can I do?”
“Well…” I see the wheels turning in Ember’s head, considering what to say next, how far she should go. “It seems to me like maybe it would be easier for you — if you didn’t want the responsibility that comes with legally being Wren’s mom — to sign responsibility over to Tank as the father. That way, you’re off the hook for her care going forward.”
Jess’s jaw juts. “You mean not be her mom anymore?”
“I mean, biologically of course, you’d always be her mother,” Ember course corrects. “But yes, you could sign away your rights to Tank, and you wouldn’t ever be expected to contribute any money or anything else to help with her upbringing.”
“But then he wouldn’t let me see her.” Jess narrows her eyes into slits. “Why’s he think he has the right to take my daughter from me?” Jess’s voice starts to rise. “He don’t have any right to do that!”
“He didn’t take her from you,” I bite out, unable to keep silent. “You dumped Wren off on him, Jess. He didn’t even know about her. Don’t act like you care about bein’ a mother, and don’t get this shit twisted. You abandoned the kid, and Tank stepped up.”
She sneers at me. “Yeah, you Lords are so fuckin’ noble. You think you can judge me. Like you wouldn’t have done the same thing in my position.”
“Like hell I would,” I shoot back. “That kid deserves better than you gave her. The best thing you can do for her right now is sign your rights over to her father.”
But Jess lets out a screech of a laugh. “You’re so fuckin’ high and mighty, Strike. You’re just lucky I didn’t pick you instead.” She turns to Ember. “You’re wastin’ your fuckin’ time. This one talks a good game, but he’ll never commit to you. None of them ever do. They just use you and toss you aside.”
Jess turns back to me. “Fuck you, fuck Tank, fuck all’a you!” she yells, flinging an arm out defiantly. “Fuckin’ Lords can suck my left tit! I ain’t signin’ a goddamn thing!”
“What about your daughter?” Ember tries again, taking a step closer. “You abandoned her, and now you’re stopping her from having her father adopt her, so he can keep her safe. How can you do that to her? Doesn’t Wren deserve better than that?”
“You do not get to judge me, you fancy cunt!” Jess hollers. She lunges forward, the veins in her neck bulging. I reach out and block her before her addled ass can hurt Ember, grabbing her by the shoulders. At my touch, she lets out a deranged howl and starts clawing at me and thrashing against my grip. She’s completely out of control, like an angry feral cat. I shout at Ember to get off the porch, then let go of Jess before she hurts herself. With a final howl, she lets fly a string of filthy curses, then spits at me before flying back into the house, screen door banging behind her.
“Fu-uck,” I mutter. “Yeah, she’s not gonna be reasonable.”
“Shit,” Ember hisses. “Shit, shit, shit.” I climb down off the porch to join her. There are tears in her eyes. “She’s crazy, Striker!”
“It’s the drugs. But yeah, basically the same thing.” I glance over at our car across the street. “Well, I guess now we go back to Tanner Springs and tell Tank and Cady Jess ain’t gonna sign Wren’s custody over to Tank.”
“What are we going to do?” Cady asks, lip trembling.
We’re all sitting in Tank and Cady’s kitchen. Wren is in her bedroom at the end of the hallway, where she’s playing with the door closed.
“Well, we can’t force her to sign if she doesn’t want to,” Ember says. “Maybe we wait a few days and try to talk to her again?”
“It’s a hopeful thought,” I growl. “But seems pretty pie-in-the-sky, to me. Jess was pretty mad. I thought maybe we had a shot at her being grateful that the Lords were willing to let bygones be bygones, but looks like I was wrong.”
“So, we have no recourse.” Tank’s face is stony. “We can’t make Jess sign, and now she’s probably pissed off enough she’ll refuse just because she can.”
“We’ll think of something,” Ember soothes, reaching for Cady’s hand across the kitchen table.
Cady and Ember sit in commiseration, with Ember murmuring encouraging words to calm Cady down. But I know from our conversation on the way back in the car that Ember’s out of ideas, and almost out of hope.
Tank, across from me, meets my eyes and lifts his chin toward the sliding door toward the backyard.
“Hey, brother, can I bum a smoke from ya?” he asks.
I know Tank quit the cancer sticks a while ago because of Wren, but I ain’t gonna deny him. I stand up with him and we go out back, leaving the women to talk between themselves.
“You want one?” I offer, shaking a couple cigarettes out of my pack.
“Nah. I just needed a minute away from that.”
“I figured.” I pull one out for myself, light it up. “Wish we hadn’t struck out with Jess, brother. I thought maybe we were on to something.”