Problem Child, page 4
People have never called me a hero, but ten minutes later the drunk brunette is happily eating her crock of manchego cheese and Kyle is heading out to catch an Uber. The woman has totally lost her irritation with me, and if she registered my conversation with Kyle about work, she’s forgotten it now.
She’s regaling me with the story of Kyle and High-Maintenance Girl’s abrupt end. I order some bacon-wrapped shrimp and dig for all the deepest secrets as if I’m part of this woman’s world.
“Let me ask you something serious,” I say.
“Okay!” She claps her hands onto her thighs and sits up straight as if she’s ready for a quiz.
“Is your friend really high-maintenance, or is Kyle just a fuckboy?”
The brunette—Laura, I think—squints hard, wrinkling her nose. “I don’t know. Genevieve is kind of demanding. She gets very touchy when you don’t return her texts.”
“But Kyle is also clearly a fuckboy.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess he is.”
“So it won’t be worth it if Genevieve decides to slash your tires and shit-talk you to all your mutual friends. There are a sea of fuckboys here tonight. Choose one that didn’t date in your friend group. It’s just smarter.”
Her eyes widen. She pops some toast into her mouth and nods. “Oh my God, you’re so right. What am I doing? Oh my God, you’re my new best friend!”
I’m finally having fun, and when I accidentally catch the eye of the guy in the too-tight shirt at the end of the bar, I realize he’s still watching for another signal from me. Before I can shake my head, he vanishes, then reappears next to me and begins to slide into the seat I vacated when I moved closer to my new friend, Laura.
“No,” I say, and turn my back to him. You have to be cruel or they won’t believe you. Even then it’s pretty dodgy. I can feel him hovering, the possibility of sex too buoyant a lifesaver to let go of easily. But a few minutes of staring at my back finally begins to sink him. “Fucking bitch,” he mutters.
“Good food is one hundred times better than random dick,” I say as I pop my last toast point into my mouth and chew. “Every time.” My new friend collapses with laughter. A nice evening, all in all. By the time I finally head home to feed my cat, I’m not worrying about Luke at all.
CHAPTER 3
Good times always come to an end, and I’m restless now that I’m clean, well rested, and back at work. Rob’s door is closed when I get in. It stays closed all day, though I can hear him furiously typing away, likely producing the best work he’s ever done for the firm in an attempt to claw his way back into the partners’ good graces.
All I have to work on is boring prep stuff and contract research, so when my phone rings, I snatch it up quickly out of desperation.
“I have another call about your niece,” I hear in mournful tones. What the hell? My family is pure trouble, and I cut contact with my parents a year ago. They’re the only family that would ever get in touch. My grandma is long dead, and my brother and I haven’t spoken since I left Oklahoma ten years ago. Truth be told, he wouldn’t bother reaching out even if Mom and Dad were struck dead in an entertaining freak accident. So what’s up?
I open my mouth to tell the receptionist to put the call through to voice mail again, but I hesitate. My parents are overstepping by tracking me down at my new place of employment, but I’m also really bored, and my family is great for providing eye-rolling stories. I always feel superior after our interactions, and that’s an additional plus.
“I’ll take it,” I finally answer, and the line clicks open. “Yes, this is Jane,” I say, a warning in the words.
“Jane? Jane, oh my gosh!” Not Mom or Dad. So maybe they are both dead. The unfamiliar female voice keeps gushing. “I’m so glad I got through to you! This is Joylene. Did you get my message?”
“No.”
“Oh.” She takes a breath and blows it out for long seconds. “Okay, I’d better start from the top, then. I found your name and office number online, so I thought I’d reach out. I hope that’s okay.”
“I don’t know you.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m your brother’s ex. Joylene?”
I roll my eyes and wait to hear how much money she wants and for what. Does this woman really think I give a shit what happens to my shiftless, asshole big brother? I care exactly as much about his well-being as he cared about mine when we were growing up: not one good goddamn tiny little bit. And I care even less about his exes and children.
Finally giving up on any gracious forgiveness on my part, Joylene takes another deep breath. “I think we met once at Christmas a long time ago. When your brother and I were together.”
“I’m sorry,” I offer, and she actually laughs like she gets it.
“Yeah, well. I was young, and times were desperate. Regardless, we have a son together, so I stay in touch, and I’ve been involved with his other kids, because they are Wesley’s siblings and I feel like he should have a relationship with his own family.”
Wesley. I remember them now. Joylene was a short, curvy black woman who’d seemed far smarter and more responsible than Ricky or any of the other women he’d ever dated or impregnated. He complained bitterly that she was no fun after he knocked her up. Apparently she’d been quite a drunk, which explains her long-ago attraction to my brother. Once she got pregnant, she went cold turkey and turned her life around. Ricky was outraged at her sobriety. Her naming the boy Wesley was the last straw. “Fucking nerd name,” he’d grunted out right in front of the child.
“The reason I’m calling is,” Joylene ventures, “well . . . you’re an attorney.”
“I don’t practice criminal law, so whatever he’s done, I can’t help.” And I won’t help. My brother has been in and out of the court system since the age of seventeen for various felonies. Breaking and entering, grand larceny, aggravated assault. That kind of thing. He impregnates a woman during each brief furlough, like a salmon returning home to spawn.
“I wouldn’t ask for him,” Joylene says. “This is about his daughter. I really don’t care what happens to Ricky. If he violates probation again, he’ll be back in for three years and out just in time for Wesley’s graduation, and that’s all I care about. A boy needs his father.” She said that last part hard and fast, as if she’d been trying to convince her son and everyone else of that for many years.
“But this isn’t about him,” she continues. “His daughter Kayla is missing and no one gives a damn.”
“She’s missing?”
“Yes. The girl just turned sixteen and no one has heard from her in a month. The officials don’t care because everyone involved is considered trash. I don’t know who else to call. No one is doing anything. Not the police. Not her mother. Nobody.”
I roll my eyes. “She’s missing or she ran off?”
“I don’t know. She’s missing or kidnapped or dead. Anything could have happened to her, and no one even cares? How is that right? She’s Wesley’s sister! And if he disappeared, I’d want someone to look for him. If I weren’t here . . . Good Lord, I shudder to think what could happen to my son.”
“Look, Joylene, I don’t even know this girl. I’m in Minnesota. I’m not a criminal attorney or a detective, and I’m certainly not a children’s advocate. I couldn’t help if I wanted to.”
“She’s been in a little trouble,” she says, as if I haven’t spoken, “but nothing real bad. And she’s just a tiny little thing. She can’t look out for herself.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s not right. Everyone has just thrown her away. I’m not a blood relation, so no one will even return my phone calls!”
“You should call an attorney in your area. Get help there.”
Joylene sighs, and I’m moving the phone away from my ear, ready to hang up, when she speaks again. “Everyone always says she’s just like you, so I hoped maybe you two had a connection or something.”
Frowning, I pause in mid-motion, the phone three inches from my ear. What does she mean, “just like” me?
I slide the phone another inch toward the receiver, but I’m a cat when it comes to curiosity, so I impulsively change my mind and put it back to my ear. “What do you mean?”
“I thought maybe you’d been involved with her when she was young.”
“No. Why do people say she’s just like me?” I’m also a cat when it comes to narcissism. Joylene hesitates, so I press harder. “She looks like me? Or she’s mouthy or something?”
“Yes, she’s definitely mouthy.”
“Good for her. She sounds like a teenager.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
I groan at her hesitation. “Joylene, I don’t have time for this. It’s the middle of a workday. Spit it out.”
“Okay.” Her voice is harder now, sick of my shit. “Everyone says she’s a cold-blooded little bitch just like you always were.”
I freeze, but my heart beats faster, harder. Just like me. Is it possible? My condition does run in families, especially if you throw in hardship and a healthy dose of instability. “Cold-blooded how?”
“She’s a little . . . I don’t know. I guess she’s a little spooky. But that’s no reason to throw a child away! Wesley loves her. Or he used to, anyway. We moved to Moore, and he hasn’t seen her in a good three years, maybe four. But when she was little, she was more wild than spooky.”
Spooky. Her chatter fades in my ears as my pulse fills my head. Ricky has a daughter who’s a spooky, cold-blooded bitch just like I am. Is it possible? A little Baby Jane out in the world?
I settle back in my chair and cross my legs. “All right, Joylene, let’s start from the beginning. Tell me everything you know.”
CHAPTER 4
She doesn’t appear sixteen in her picture. Not even close. She’s a weak-looking thing, scrawny and pale, and my first instinct when I find her photo online is to dismiss the whole story entirely. She’s nothing like me. Look at her.
But her eyes stop me. It’s a school photo, the cheap blue-gray background a dead giveaway, and she doesn’t seem pleased to be sitting for a forced portrait. Kayla’s dark-blond hair is parted in the middle and falls in a flat line a couple of inches past her shoulders. Her white skin is dotted with freckles and her thin mouth is set in a stubborn line, nostrils flared, as if she’s refusing the command to smile.
Everything about her is unremarkable, maybe even pitiful. Everything except the eyes. A dull green, they’re fixed on the camera, and if they were sad or scared, she’d look every inch the neglected child she likely is. But there’s no fear there. No sorrow. There’s nothing. Just a slight sheen of moisture and the cold emptiness of deep space.
“Hello, hello, hello,” I whisper to my missing niece. She does look a little like me after all.
I turn on my laptop camera and pose for a humorless full-face shot, just as Kayla did. We don’t resemble each other in any other way. I have dark-brown hair cut in a fringed bob, and my face is a nice, full oval without the bony angles of hers. But the spooky eyes? Yeah. Those are the same.
I can cover it up by smiling, crinkling my eyes into little half-moons of happiness. But that takes effort to pull off, and Kayla clearly doesn’t give a shit.
Is my niece a sociopath?
Joylene said the girl had been in a little trouble before but nothing huge. A couple of fights at school. A few items shoplifted from the grocery store. Or maybe more than a few.
“What kind of society calls the police on a child for stealing food?” Joylene huffed. But we all know what kind of society does that. Our kind. And Kayla had known it too, and she hadn’t been afraid to try it. Maybe she wasn’t as weak as she looked.
There are no details about her disappearance online. Just her birth date and description and the day she was seen last, on a website about missing and endangered children. Kayla was last seen four weeks ago, just as Joylene explained. She didn’t know too much beyond that. “Your mama says she must have run off. I called the police, and they said they’ve filed a missing-person report but had no reason to believe she was at risk. They sounded bored about the whole thing.”
“And Kayla’s mother?”
Joylene snorted. “She won’t even call me back. Your brother says no one has heard from Kayla, and he can’t do shit from jail, so to leave him alone. The end. No one cares, Jane. I can’t get any information from CPS or the county or the police because we’re not related.”
Joylene came to the wrong place looking for concern, but I still find myself fascinated as I google my niece’s name. Did she just run away? God knows, I considered it a hundred times, knowing I’d be better off without my shitty family weighing me down. But in the end I decided the free room and board was worth it. I wanted to finish high school so I could get to college and show them all how much better I was than them.
And I did it. But maybe Kayla came up with a different plan. Leave these losers in the dust and hope for the best.
Or maybe she was raped and killed and left on the side of the road.
“It’s none of my business,” I tell myself aloud. But I still spend most of my afternoon looking up information on missing teens in Oklahoma. No bodies have been found that look like hers. No random feet washed up in rivers. Maybe she’s just being sex trafficked.
This time when Luke texts me, I don’t ignore him. Jane, come on. Can we talk?
Yes, I write. Come by my place tonight.
Sounds like a setup for murder??? he responds.
I laugh at that. Maybe he knows me better than I think. Perhaps you can appease me with calzones and save yourself.
Done.
There’s an Italian take-out place a block from his condo that I love. He already knows my order. There are good things about being in a relationship.
I’m not ready to give him up. I know that. But I refuse to hang around until he dumps me. That’s not an acceptable outcome, and I might lose my shit and do something dangerous to the next girl he sleeps with.
A conundrum. Give him up now or later? Or . . . maybe there’s a third choice. String him along forever, promising children we’ll never have. That’s an option to consider. I can distract him with good sex for years, and then I’ll surely get tired of him and walk away before he has a chance to realize I’ve been voluntarily infertile this whole time. I will get sick of him. Nothing lasts forever. The sex has to get boring at some point, and there’s not much more to me.
When I leave work at six, Rob is still typing away in his office, hard at work, and I’ve never seen that before. This experience is going to be so great for his personal growth.
Half an hour later, Luke knocks on the door of my condo. When I open it and see him, I feel strange inside: a tight, vibrating sensation high in my belly that makes me nervous. He sets the bag of food on the counter along with a bottle of wine and turns to face me. “I’m sorry I freaked you out yesterday. That wasn’t my intention.”
“I know,” I respond, and then I add, “I’m sorry too,” because I understand that I’m supposed to, but I don’t know what to add after that. I don’t have anything else to say except Stop it, stop it, stop it, I don’t like this. But that would cause another conversation, and who can live like that? So instead of telling him to stop, I make him stop by sliding into his arms and squeezing him tight. He squeezes back and within seconds we’re kissing.
The fight has triggered something rough and desperate in him, and I like rough and desperate, so I’m thrilled when he backs me up to the countertop of my galley kitchen and lifts me onto it. He doesn’t have to move carefully or ask if I’m in the mood. I’ve trained him not to. I’ll lash out if he does. I know my own bad habits.
I groan when he shoves my skirt up, then hiss with pleasure when he slides his hand into my underwear to touch me.
“Christ, I can’t get enough of you,” he whispers, and I’m suddenly filled up and overflowing with power and delight. I’m not a soft and caring person. I’m not nurturing. But I have this, damn it. And he loves it. He still loves it.
“Show me,” I beg. “Fuck me.” He does.
I don’t have a soul, but in this moment I feel as if I do. I feel beautiful and full and glowing with the kind of life that other people take for granted. Luke needs this, and I’m human for a few minutes, his soul filling me up as he thrusts. This is love. This is emotion.
Is it real?
I expand, my heart swelling until it pops wide-open with my climax. Then I’m myself again, my insides cooling as the sweat evaporates on my skin.
And there are still the calzones to look forward to.
“I missed you,” he murmurs against my neck.
“It’s only been twenty hours.”
He grins like an embarrassed little boy, and he’s so cute that I laugh and kiss him on the cheek. “Tell me you love me,” I demand.
“I love you,” he says, and I know he means it, which is strange and wonderful and sad.
“Me too,” I say solemnly, hoping it’s close to the truth. If it’s not love, it’s as near as I’ve ever gotten. “Now let’s eat.”
“I brought your favorite wine.”
“I saw that. How do you think we ended up on the counter?”
“My boundless charm?”
I slide off the cold granite, pull my underwear back on, and open the bag of food. What a great reunion.
By the time I pop the last bite of calzone into my mouth, Luke and I are sprawled on the couch, my legs draped over his lap, and half the bottle of wine is gone. I lick my greasy fingers and watch him watch my tongue.
“Something weird happened today,” I say. “My niece is missing.”
His reaction is delayed, because I suck a finger into my mouth and he finds that distracting.
“What?” he asks.
“My niece is missing.”
He frowns, his head cocked, then he pushes himself upright on the couch. “Your niece? Jane, are you joking?”
“No.”
