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.