Problem Child, page 23
This time I’m the one to reach for Kayla’s hand. I grasp it in mine and nod. “My niece has been traumatized, and I want to help her leave this violation behind her and get a good education. I have reason to believe her mother will agree to a change of guardianship, but there will still be a hell of a lot of red tape to work through. All I ask is that you call off your attack dogs and do what you can to help us leave. It will be good for everyone to get Kayla into a new environment.”
His eyes narrow. “That’s all that you want?”
“Yes. I’m not here to blackmail you. I’m here to ask you to do the right thing, if you know what that is.”
“And the . . . evidence?”
I shrug. “There’s nothing to be done about that. There’s no physical tape I can turn over. No proof that it’s really gone. The best you can do, Mr. Morris, is distance yourself from your brother in every way possible. Reject him. Let him sink or swim on his own. If you do that, then his criminal evidence has no hold over you, because your future isn’t tied to his. You won’t have anything to worry about.”
He uncrosses his arms and presses his hands flat to the desk. “So you can’t give me any assurance that this won’t come out.”
I lean forward and let him see the natural darkness in my eyes. “Let me make something clear. You are not the victim in this situation, and I’m not here to assure you about anything. You don’t need protection. You are not the one who has been damaged. What I’m giving you is the opportunity to do right by a young girl who was raped by your brother and further victimized by your support for her rapist. You will get no reassurance, and I have put automatic safeguards in place in case of any further malfeasance on your part, and I promise those protections are airtight and legal. Is that reassuring enough to you, Mr. Morris?”
“Yes. Yes, it is.” He says the right thing, but he’s angry again, backed into a corner and hating it. But that’s fine. He can hate it as much as he wants as long as he understands that I hold the power here.
“And those strings we spoke about?” I press.
He clears his throat and I see him set his anger aside. He’s a businessman, and this is business now. “I’ll do what I can to make sure your application for guardianship is expedited.”
“And you’ll call off your dogs?”
His jaw clenches. Clenches again. “I’ll speak to my brother and make sure there is no further contact of any kind. If he was the one responsible.”
He’s too smart to admit he was involved, and I can respect that, so I dip my head. “If anything happens to me or to Kayla, this will not work out well for anyone.”
“I understand.”
“Good. I hope your brother gets the help he needs.”
It’s his turn to incline his head.
I stand and tug Kayla up too. She keeps her head down as we exit, her sandals slapping against the floor. My neck prickles, my animal senses warning me that Bill Morris is watching from his desk.
He can watch all he wants, but there’s no good way to solve the problem his brother has dropped at his doorstep like a decomposing rat. If they’d gotten to Kayla while she was alone, maybe. But now she’s got me.
I’m grinning widely as I wave goodbye to the receptionist and step onto the elevator.
Kayla jerks her hand away. “We could’ve gotten so much money from him!”
“He’s a politician, Kayla. If we pushed him too far, he would have turned us in to the cops for blackmail and painted himself as an innocent victim in his brother’s crimes. Then he probably would have started a task force against child exploitation while we were still waiting for a trial.”
“Whatever,” she snaps.
“You’ve still got the recording. Do whatever you want when you’re eighteen.”
“I can do whatever I want right now.”
“Not if you want to get out of this place. You start throwing that video around and you’re on your own. I’m not going down in flames so you can score five thousand dollars and a permanent audience on the dark web. I have a law license to protect, and you might have a future if you listen and learn. Might.”
Rolling her eyes, she pops a piece of grape bubblegum into her mouth.
“You were amazing back there,” I say, and that brightens her expression.
“Yeah?”
“Great acting.”
“Thanks.”
“You should try out for the school play.”
“Dumb,” she answers, but her anger is gone, smoothed out by praise. I know what a little girl like her wants. Praise and admiration. I know because I want the same and I always have.
She blows a purple bubble. “If his guys try to grab us on the way to the car, you’re on your own. I’m quicker.” She flashes me a mean, narrow look, but I smile. Then I giggle. Then I’m laughing so hard, I have to hold myself up on the elevator rail.
“Weirdo,” she mutters, but I don’t mind. She likes me.
CHAPTER 22
I completely forgot about dealing with the police.
With Kayla reported as a missing child, there were interviews and written reports and talk of child neglect charges for her mother. There was even a murmur of charging Kayla with truancy, but I shut that down.
They spent so little time looking into her disappearance that they never even connected her to Brodie, so there are no questions about his death. I assume they don’t care about him at all either. I wonder who his house will go to now.
Kayla and I made up a much more palatable story to tell the authorities, of course. Something about her hitchhiking and then living on the street for a while. The intense questioning about her circumstances did help move her mother’s decision along. The woman was eager to assign me temporary guardianship by the end of that first day and wash her hands of the entire situation. A true case of parental devotion.
Permanent guardianship will take longer, but we’ve greased those wheels. A judge immediately approved Kayla’s voluntary move to Minnesota, expressing gratitude that an attorney was taking this troubled girl under her wing.
A temporary situation is better for the two of us regardless. She’ll be slightly more malleable if there’s a chance she could easily lose all her new luxuries. And with a budding little sociopath, malleable is better.
It’s our third day back in the boonies, and there’s been no sign of trouble. We could still be gunned down on the highway back to Oklahoma City, but my hunch is that Bill Morris decided to take my deal. The emergency hearing with the judge came through suspiciously quickly.
We’ve got one last stop before we head to the city to catch a flight. That’s right. It’s time to say goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa!
That’s a joke, of course. Kayla wants to pick up the belongings she moved to their trailer. I’ve advised her to leave that shit behind, but I guess she has some useless crap she wants to drag to Minnesota with her. Fine. I drive her to my parents’ place and we both step out into the crunching brown grass.
My mother, ever a lover of drama, rushes out of the trailer as soon as she spots Kayla. “Oh, my baby!” she cries. “I heard you were back!” Today she’s wearing baggy white jeans and a pink Hallmark sweatshirt. How apropos for our touching family reunion.
She throws her arms around Kayla, who stands stock-still and waits for it to be over. “My sweet little Kayla! Where have you been?”
“Mom, there are no cameras or social workers here. Cut the crap already.”
She snarls like a vicious dog over Kayla’s shoulder before letting her go. “Look at these fancy-ass clothes,” she says in a sharp whine.
“Yeah, they’re great,” Kayla answers.
“Go on and get settled in,” my mom says. “I put a few things in your room, but you can just shove those boxes out of the way, no problem.”
“She’s coming home with me, Mom. Seriously, cut it out.”
The kindly grandmother act falls from her face for good now, and she swings around to glare at me. “What are you yapping about?”
I wave her off wearily as Kayla slips past her grandmother to bang through the metal storm door.
“You can’t take my granddaughter away; I only just got her back.”
I glance around with huge eyes. “Seriously, who are you playacting for? There’s no one else here, and I heard all the shit you talked about Kayla the first time I dropped by.”
“I have custody, and you need my permission to take her out of state no matter how high and mighty you think you are, and I’m not giving it.”
Permission. What she means is that she wants money; she always wants money, and she’s not smart or steady enough to work me for it. All she can ever do is lash out and attack, because she resents having to beg for what she wants.
I used to send money sometimes. I used to do it because my best friend told me I should. “They’re your family,” she’d insist. “The only family you’ll ever have.” True, thank God. And Meg was the only conscience I ever had, but she’s dead now, so Mom is out of luck.
They raised me, yes. But puppy mills raise animals too, offering paltry shelter and shitty food, just enough to keep them alive, and no one ever thinks the owners of those places are owed any love. I have no idea why it’s supposed to be different with parents.
“You don’t have custody, Mom. She was crashing here and you were charging her rent. We’ve already worked all this out with Kayla’s mother.”
“You’re a liar just like you always have been.”
“I’d show you the signed court document, but I honestly don’t care that much. Kayla is getting her stuff and we’re leaving.”
Mom’s face is drawing tight and desperate now. As much as she hated me, she always wanted me under her control and in her orbit. She’s pulling the same thing with Kayla now. “I held her room for her! I stored all her clothes! Someone needs to pay for that.”
“No one is giving you any more money, Mom. Least of all me. Maybe you can con some of your other grandchildren, but I’ll warn Joylene about you, at least. God knows how many others there are at this point.”
“You listen here, you little—”
“No, you listen. I didn’t even tell Kayla that you gave Little Dog’s name to that thug. She doesn’t know about that. Do you want me to tell her?”
Her face twists, freezing in an ugly mask for a moment before she smooths it out into helplessness. “I didn’t know he was dangerous.”
“That boy is dead, by the way, so your judgment is hopelessly skewed. You’d better drop it right now, lady.”
Miraculously, she does. She takes two short steps to the trailer, then glances to me as if she’s worried I’ll steal everything if she turns her back. I’m not even sure what she’s going to try to pull with Kayla, but I remember now how she tried to sabotage my escape to college. She threw away letters from Minnesota. Told me she got a call that I’d been rejected after all.
Some sort of fear of abandonment, maybe. Who cares?
My eye catches one last time on that crack in my old bedroom window. I remember the rage behind it. The bloodlust.
“What was his name?” I ask.
“What?” my mom asks, her hands fluttering. “Who?”
“That man. Your boarder. He told me to call him Uncle Pete, but he wasn’t related to anyone I know. What was his name?” Maybe I’ll look him up. Maybe he’s still around. He seemed old at the time, but fifty could have been ancient to a little girl. He could very well be alive and kicking.
“Pete?” She scowls. “I don’t know. Low? Lowell? Something like that. Haven’t seen him around in years.”
“Maybe he was sent to jail for raping little girls, Mom.”
“Oh Lord,” she mutters. “You keep that filth to yourself. Climbing all over that man like he was your daddy.”
My filth. The filth of a seven-year-old girl who just wanted to be safe and warm. Monster that I am, they’re lucky I didn’t burn them all alive in that goddamn trailer.
I cock my head because . . . I still could. I stare at that window, which I cracked in that rage tantrum when I was ten because I hated everyone. It wasn’t my fist. I’m not that self-sacrificing. It was my brother’s stupid remote control for his stupid toy truck that he’d run straight into my back on Christmas morning.
My parents had told me they didn’t have money for gifts and I was a nasty little bitch anyway. All I’d gotten was a set of cheap flavored lip gloss and a fake Barbie doll from the thrift store. My teenage brother, on the other hand, got the exact remote-control monster truck he’d wanted.
He ran it into me all day long, leaving bruises on my legs and back. Then he offered to let me “play with it” while pointing at his crotch. “Five minutes for five minutes.” My mother just laughed.
The minute he went outside to sneak a cigarette, I stole the remote and threw it at the wall hard enough to break it. Then I threw it again. And again. Until it finally ricocheted off the window with a satisfying snap. At the time, I wished I’d cracked his head instead of the glass. I still do. I wish I’d cracked them all open.
That old trailer is packed with trash and could easily ignite and spread flames to the brand-new trailer next to it, still stinking of flammable chemicals. Spread to the elderly woman inside and her stroke-victim husband, unable to navigate out in the smoke and heat. A clean slate. For me and Kayla and the rest of the goddamn world who’ve been subjected to these people for almost seventy years.
But no.
Not worth it. I have a real life now. A gorgeous condo and a beautiful cat and a new car and a niece full of promise, not to mention a successful boyfriend who wants more. The fucking American dream. Everything my mother will never have.
So when Kayla emerges with a duffel bag packed with belongings, I leave my mother behind, still screeching and cursing about what I owe her. I leave her behind because I don’t owe her shit except revenge, and she’s not even worth that anymore.
CHAPTER 23
I watch her like I’m bingeing a fascinating new television show. She changes personality with her wardrobe. Today Kayla is wearing her traveling outfit: sleek black jean leggings and a stylishly slashed pink T-shirt. The girl is already hooked on shopping, but I’ve made it clear she’ll be getting a job soon to cover some of those costs.
“A real job,” I cautioned, and she smiled sweetly. Lord save me from the machinations of a child monster.
She’s softened the twang of her accent as if she’s a wealthy Dallas teenager who’s accustomed to plane rides and airport smoothies, but I see her wide eyes. All the wonder of a five-year-old with none of the innocence.
“This is business class,” I explain as we board the plane and find our seats.
“Not first?”
“First class is something you can discover on your own dime. I think these seats should be sufficiently comfortable for your narrow ass.”
She shoots a squint toward the leather seats in front of us. “I thought they were going to be cool capsules anyway. Those just look like Grandpa’s ugly recliner.”
“You’ve seen too many commercials,” I mutter, but she’s already ignoring me to poke around on the in-flight entertainment system. I feel like a real mom now.
Just kidding. This is much easier to do without guilt or worry. As soon as we’re in the air, I get out my laptop and get some work done on my new cases. I can’t wait to be back in the office, kicking some ass. It’s a new Rob-free era, and I’m ready to shine!
She maintains her air of boredom as we rise into the sky. When the flight attendant comes by, Kayla orders a Coke, then demands all three snacks when offered a choice. I feel tingles of affection when the woman grudgingly hands Kayla peanuts, pretzels, and a granola bar. Finally, someone I can actually relate to.
Ninety minutes later, I reach past Kayla to open the window shade. “Look down,” I say.
“Huh. What’s all that water? Flooding?”
“Land of Ten Thousand Lakes.”
She looks at me blankly.
“That’s what Minnesota is called. The Land of Ten Thousand Lakes. You’ll like it.”
“Whatever,” she says, but I notice her sneaking looks out the window as we turn into the descent. It’s new and different, and that will be enough to keep her interest for a little while. Then there will be a new house, a new school, new people. This should be easy.
“Do I really have to sleep on the couch?” she asks suddenly.
“Just for a few weeks. I’ll find a new place.”
“I could take your bed and you could stay with your boyfriend. I’ll be fine.”
“Sure, invite over anyone you want and trash the place.”
“I’d be good,” she promises with big eyes.
“Girl, please.”
“I need privacy.” Her voice rises a little. “I don’t even know you! You could be taking me out of state to traffic me! I’ve seen Dateline!”
I notice the woman in the next seat stiffen and turn toward us, so I pitch my voice higher too. “I know you’re scared, and this will be hard, but you’ll get the treatment you need at the institution and they’ll make sure you don’t start any more fires, Kayla. We can’t bring your parents back, but we can make sure you don’t hurt anyone else.”
Kayla stares at me. I stare back. Finally, she breaks into loud laughter and I join in. This girl.
“Don’t try that again,” I warn, and she gives me a thumbs-up. Teenagers like to test boundaries. Even I know that.
“I don’t expect you to be normal,” I say more quietly. “I’d be disappointed if you were. Believe it or not, we can be friends.”
She snorts in scorn.
“I’m like you,” I say with less patience now. “That’s important.”
“We’ll see.”
I take a deep breath and remind myself that I don’t trust people either. It’s the only smart way to get through life. “Yes,” I say. “We’ll see.” I can be patient for a month or two. Probably. Maybe. She’ll learn to trust me. And then we’ll have each other.
We’re off the plane and walking into the baggage claim area when I spot him. Luke.
