“Who is Ryn?”
She pointed to a framed photo sitting below her now smashed television. I walked over and picked it up before returning to her side. In the wooden frame was a woman who was maybe in her forties with a teenage girl on either side. One was obviously Roe, and the other had to be Ryn. They had similar facial features as well as hair and eye color, making it obvious they were related.
She must have been the woman I saw.
“Your sister?” I asked. She nodded. There was a time for tiptoeing and letting her push me aside, but no more. “I know it’s been a hard night, so I can’t tell if it’s due to that or if you have a hard time opening up, or just opening up to me.”
Abruptly, she stood. “I’m going to go put her in bed. There is a bottle of tequila in that cabinet and some limes in the basket on the table. Hopefully you know how to make a margarita.”
I watched her walk down the hall, hating that she had to hold Kinsey protectively to her out of fear from what happened. I stepped over to the large wooden cabinet she pointed to. The tequila was close to empty, but I located a smaller bottle in the back of the cabinet.
I knew vaguely how to make a margarita, but still engaged in the power of the internet for help.
The shards that fell from her television were scattered across the tabletop. It took a moment to locate a trashcan to sweep them into, and then I found a broom and swept the floor around the table.
Once the debris was cleaned, I started in on her drink.
When she stepped out of the bedroom, her work clothes were gone and replaced by an oversized T-shirt and shorts that I could barely see.
I held out a glass to her, and she took a few long gulps. “Thank you.”
“You called me.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry.”
I locked my eyes with hers. “Don’t be.”
She looked down at the tabletop, her fingers swirling along a grove in the wood. “I didn’t know who else to call.”
“You don’t have any friends?”
She shrugged. “I lost a lot after Kinsey. I have Lizzie and James, but they are in Midtown. I knew you weren’t far.”
“I’m glad you could count on me.” I needed to assure her that she was right to call me. It would kill me to find out what happened on Monday knowing I was so close and she didn’t call. I didn’t even want to think about what would have happened if I’d been a few minutes later. The bathroom door was solid wood, but they’d managed to crack it. Much more, and then what? I shuddered to think, and the anger rose in me.
She set her hand on mine and squeezed. “Me too.”
That calmed me and brought me back to what was important. “You have a beautiful daughter. She looks just like you.”
She made an odd chuff that reminded me of the tigers at the zoo, but the sound was more of a bad emotion than the good emotion my memory evoked.
“You’re a good mom.”
She reached up and swiped a tear from her cheek.
“Hey, none of that,” I said as I took her hand in mine and tipped her head up so that she’d look at me. “You did good today. They’re gone, and you’re both safe.”
“It was a situation that I shouldn’t have even been in!” She pulled back, and I watched the anger move through her. She stood and began pacing, which, given the size of the room, meant she walked about two steps before she turned around. “For fuck’s sake, she can’t stay clean for a day, and I’m done! Just fucking done! She brought that into my home, to where her fucking daughter sleeps, to fucking rob me! After all I’ve fucking done for her!”
I narrowed my gaze at her as I tried to unscramble what she was saying, not knowing what fueled her sudden burst of anger. “Your sister?”
“Yes.” She was shaking her head back and forth. “I’m done with her. I can’t do it anymore and after tonight, she’s never getting Kinsey. Ever. I’ll make sure of it.”
Once again, everything clicked. Kinsey wasn’t her daughter. Kinsey was her niece. That was why she’d never mentioned a child. That was why the baby resembled her.
“Your sister is a drug addict, and you’re raising her baby.”
That realization hit me hard. My own mother had abandoned me for drugs, and the beautiful woman before me was doing everything to shield Kinsey from the same experience.
“Not many people at the office know that I’m her guardian.”
“How long have you had her?”
“She wasn’t very old when I took her, a couple of weeks. With no father, a crackhead mother, and a traveling nurse grandmother, I was the best candidate. There was no way in hell I was going to let her fall into the system. She didn’t deserve that just because her mother is a piece of shit.” She tipped back her glass, polishing off the liquid before slamming the glass down in front of me. “Barkeep, another.”
“As you wish,” I said as I moved back over to the tiny kitchen that ran along one wall. There was “open concept,” and then there was her apartment. The kitchen, dining room, and living room were all scrunched into a room that was maybe twelve feet by fifteen feet, which was smaller than my bedroom.
“It didn’t take much for the court to grant me guardianship, especially with all that Social Services had on the situation.” She went silent, her gaze far off before she drew in a stunted breath. “I defended Ryn for so long. Helped her get into rehab clinics, gave her a place to stay. Food, money—whatever to help her. Put strain on my life and my relationships. Now I see that she doesn’t want it. She’d rather put her family—her own daughter—in jeopardy for a hit. She probably would have sold Kinsey for a couple bags of heroin by now. She couldn’t even quit while she was pregnant, so Kinsey had neonatal abstinence syndrome and had to be in the hospital those first few weeks.”
My chest constricted. The baby had done nothing and was born into immeasurable pain because of her mother’s vices. I poured the remainder of the mixture I’d created into her glass, though it didn’t even fill it halfway, then handed it over.
“She couldn’t even give her a damn name.”
Seriously? “Who named her?”
“I did,” she said with a sad sigh. “She was born on our dad’s birthday. His name was Mac, short for Malcolm, so I named her Mackinsey. Somewhere along the line, it just got shortened to Kinsey.”
“That’s a sweet tribute.”
She gave me a sad smile and swiped another tear away, confirming my suspicion that her father was dead. “Mom thought so, too.” She took a deep breath. “I hoped Ryn would get clean one day and could really be a mother to Kinsey, but I’ve lost hope of that ever happening.”
“Why don’t many know about her?” I asked. It was that omission I’d felt when we talked, the reluctance to open up.
“Because I lost people I trusted, people I loved, when I took in Kinsey. Good riddance, but it’s caused me some unintentional issues.”
“Boyfriend?” I knew she didn’t have one, but I wondered if she lost one.
She opened her hand and made the explosion sound. “Four years down the drain. When I told him I was taking her in, he was out. No discussion, just gone.”