“Are you trying to tell me it’s not on yours?”
I turned back to the screens. “Fair point. I’ll try that way if the other doesn’t work.”
I really hoped the other way worked, because my appetite for her was more than just sexual.
Though the idea of edging her until she said yes did sound appealing.
The day was rough, as was every September 11th. Mom and I went to the memorial as we always did, but this time we had Kinsey in tow. After finding his name, I introduced him to her.
It was a bittersweet moment. It still floored me that something so devastating was now so long ago.
“What are you doing tonight?” I asked Mom as we walked back to the subway entrance together.
“I have a shift starting at midnight.”
“So, nap?” I asked as I looked into the stroller. Kinsey was out like a light, fast asleep after a busy day.
She nodded, her arm threading with mine. “Any weekend plans?”
I shook my head. “The usual—laundry, groceries, and cleaning. Probably a walk in the park since the heat is supposed to break a little on Sunday. Kinsey loves the park.”
“Any men in your life?”
I quirked my brow at her. “Really?” Inside I was really trying hard to not think about Thane today, and I was determined to keep it that way. After the pang subsided, I buried my feelings back down.
“What?”
I gestured to the stroller I was pushing and the infant inside. “I’m basically a single mother.”
“I was a single mother and I dated.”
“We weren’t still in diapers.” It took a few years before Mom had her first date. A firefighter she met in a nine-eleven support group.
She’d never had to go through the gamut of dating with a toddler. Hell, I couldn’t even get a man interested enough to want to date.
Thane wants to date you, my brain reminded me. But he wouldn’t once he found out.
We were almost to the subway entrance when I spotted a familiar profile standing against the railing. Her hair was bleached, the blonde long grown out, and looked like it hadn’t been combed in weeks, and her clothes were riddled with rips and tears as well as some stains.
“Ryn.”
She blinked at us and blew out a shaky breath. “Hi.”
“You’re late.” I hated the tone in my voice, that edge of anger and rage that whipped across my words. Any other day, it would be cautious. The knot in my heart would loosen looking at her state, but not today.
It was with well-worn reason. Over the years I tried so hard to help her get clean, to help her have a life outside of drugs. I was the supportive older sister who did whatever I could to help. It failed every single time for one reason—she didn’t want to get clean.
She traded sex for drugs and got pregnant with Kinsey, but never stopped.
While I hadn’t given up on my sister, I had given up enabling her. Especially when one November morning I picked up a tiny bundle from Social Services.
“Ryn, baby…” Mom trailed off. The words had been said before. Over and over and over for nearly a decade, but they never penetrated. “How are you doing?”
Ryn chewed on her thumbnail, or rather what was left of it, and nodded. “I’m okay.”
I ground my teeth. “You don’t look okay.”
She tried to smile, but she was fidgeting badly. “Well, you know, today.” Her eyes flitted over the stroller, but she didn’t even seem to register her child was in front of her.
“What are you on?” I asked.
“Roe!” Mom snapped.
“What?” I asked as I turned to her. “She’s high as a kite, Mom.”
I’d seen the different stages of high on her many times over the years. Whatever empathy I once had for my sister was nearly gone. It took a massive hit the day I took her abandoned daughter home. The same daughter she had yet to acknowledge.
“I just… you know… Daddy.” Ryn blinked away a few tears.
It was like a stab to the heart. Daddy. Nearly two decades had passed, and I still missed him. My memories were limited, overwritten with time and age, but I still remembered his laugh and the smell of his aftershave.
We were all silent for a moment, but the more it stretched on, the more my anger grew.
I didn’t want to hate my sister, but the drugs were making it nearly impossible to love her. It wasn’t her, my baby sister, who grated on me. It was her high alter ego.
“You barely remember him. You’re just using today as an excuse for why you’re high when it doesn’t matter anyway, because you’re always high.”
Ryn shook her head, tears filling her eyes. It was an act I’d seen many times.
“I’ve been clean for two weeks. I swear. I swear, Roe. I just… today. It’s today for fuck’s sake.”
I closed my eyes and tried to push the memories from the day away. I’d gotten good over the years at putting that day in a box, separating it from the rest of my emotions. The pain, the fear, the unknown that filled me with terror as I watched the sky turn grey and block out the sun. The acrid smell that lasted for months.
He called. Told us he loved us. I begged him to come home. I was sorry. Just come home, then the line cut out and the screams echoed through the streets along with a roaring thunder.
I shook my head, a tear sliding down my cheek.
“This is no way to honor him,” I said before turning and walking away.
“Roe!” she called out.
“It’s been a rough day,” Mom said in an attempt to soothe her.
“Love you, Mom,” she said.
I turned back to see them hugging and waited for Mom. They separated, and Mom swiped a tear from Ryn’s cheek. They talked for a moment, Mom probably asking if she’d eaten, then pulled money from her wallet.
I wanted to go and snatch it away because I caught the way Ryn brightened. The high was calling her.
“Why did you do that?” I asked when Mom caught back up to me.
Mom looked somewhat chastised. She was a nurse. She knew what drugs did to people.
We made our way down to the subway and onto the train that had just pulled in.
“You shouldn’t say things like that to her,” Mom said once we were seated on the train.
“Why not? Have I not done enough for her? Fights with my boyfriend because I spent our rent money getting her into rehab, her stealing my stuff, getting high in my apartment, and giving her more money than I can even count?”
“Don’t give up on her.”
“I’m not, Mom.” I let out a sigh and looked down to the stroller and the chubby cheeks of the baby slumbering inside. “But I’m done coddling her. I don’t have the energy for it. All of my love and empathy and caring transferred into her daughter.”
Mom took my hand in hers and squeezed. “I know. I’m sorry. Seeing her like that, never knowing where she is or what she’s doing. Every phone call I think will be the police to tell me she’s dead.”
It was a fear I had as well.
“We’ve tried, but she doesn’t want to get better.”
“I just don’t understand why.”
“Because then she’d have to become a functioning member of society with no means of escape. Ryn just wants to get high. That’s all she’s ever wanted.” My chest clenched. All I wanted was for Ryn to get better, to come back to us, but I wasn’t going to aid her habit any longer. Not until she came to me, sober, and asked for help. Just one fucking time to come to me when she wasn’t high or itching to get high.