Rattled: Rattled (The Baxter Boys #1) Read online

  No crosses, I write on my pad.

  “She got pregnant when she was sixteen, and her parents kicked her out. She made her way to New York, thinking she’d get a job and a place to live. She ended up with the wrong people.”

  This didn’t surprise me. Most runaways don’t end up in good places.

  “During a drug deal, she was stabbed and died.”

  I glance up at her. “How old were you?”

  “Four.” She shrugs. “Child services contacted my grandparents, but they wouldn’t take me in. I was created in sin, and might as well have been the spawn of Satan.”

  I snort and shake my head. “Nice Christians.”

  “Religious,” she corrects. “Not exactly Christian.”

  “Foster care?” It’s a guess, but I can’t imagine where else she would have ended up.

  A soft smile comes to her face. “Yeah. I was with a great family for five years. The Wilsons.”

  I straighten and look at her. “Wow.” That’s a long time to be with one family when you’re in the system.

  “They were great. They’re the ones who taught me how to play the piano.”

  “Why didn’t they adopt you?” I draw a piano. I don’t know if it’s going to end up in the tat. I’m still not sure what’s going to be there, but she has a story to tell. One I should have asked her to tell me when we first met.

  “They couldn’t afford to. Adoption is expensive. They were only able to keep me and the others for so long because the state paid them, but they weren’t in it for the money. They really did love us and wanted to keep us. But my foster father got a job out-of-state. They couldn’t take me from New York, and they couldn’t decline a good-paying job, so I was sent to another home.”

  A photograph has slipped out of the envelope, and I pick it up. It’s Kelsey when she was young—younger than she was when she came to Baxter—with a guy a few years older. “Who is this?”

  “Brandon.” A sad smile comes to her lips. “After being in more foster homes than I could count after the Wilsons moved, Brandon and I ended up in the same place. He got there a week or so before me.”

  “Brandon” is the name of the father on the birth certificate, so I know there is a lot more to that story.

  “I was thirteen and he was fifteen, and too old for this couple.”

  Again, I shake my head. I’d been in the system. A lot of families wanted the cute little ones, not the teens, even though we needed a mom and dad just as badly as the two-year-olds.

  “They liked them young.” She clears her throat. “As in a sick way.”

  My stomach churns. I wish I could pretend that abuse in the system doesn’t happen, but it does. Still, there are a hell of a lot more great families out there, like the Wilsons, willing to take kids in and love them like they are their own. It’s only the bad ones that everyone hears about and taints the system.

  “I couldn’t stand to be there, and I tried to talk to my social worker, but she said her hands were tied. So after being there for a couple of months, with no end in sight, I decided to run away. The night I snuck out, I ran into Brandon at the corner. He was running away too. We decided to stick together because it was safer than being alone.”

  Well, he didn’t stick with her because when she showed up at Baxter, she was pregnant and he wasn’t anywhere around. “What happened to him?”

  Tears fill her eyes. “He’s dead.”

  Kelsey

  * * *

  I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’ve never really told anyone what had happened to me, except Mrs. Robak and a handful of therapists. Six years ago if someone would’ve told me that the first non-psychologist or professional I would choose to open up to would be Alexander Dosek, I would have laughed in their face. Yet here I was, spilling my guts because he asked.

  I don’t know what it has to do with getting my baby’s foot tattooed on my body, but he seems genuinely interested.

  “For two years we managed well enough. He was tall and looked older than his age, and he told people I was his younger sister so that nobody would mess with me.” What I don’t tell Alex is that by the time I was fifteen and Alex was seventeen, there was nothing brotherly or sisterly about our relationship. “We fell in love, and Brandon vowed we’d be together.”

  We were so young then, but we didn’t feel like it. Much of our innocence had been stripped from us when we were children, though I was still a virgin until Brandon. A lot of kids in the system or on the streets aren’t so lucky.

  I wait for Alex to make a derogatory comment about my professions of love at fifteen, but he says nothing and just keeps sketching. I wish I could see what it is, but he’s holding the sketch pad at an angle away from me.

  “After a few years of sleeping in shelters, or anywhere we could find, Brandon got a job in a convenience store working third shift, and I worked as a waitress in an all-night diner. Neither place asked questions and we scraped by enough to rent a room by the week. At least we weren’t sleeping on the streets and could shower on a regular basis.”

  I smile to myself. “We were happy. And things were good in comparison to the first two years. We both worked all night, and during the day we’d sleep and read.”

  “Read?”

  “Yeah. Brandon insisted that we’d never get anywhere in life if we didn’t educate ourselves. He planned on saving for school. When I was old enough we were going to get our GEDs and enroll in college.” I shake my head. “It was silly, I’m sure, because we would have never had that kind of money, but it was a dream.”

  “What did you read?” Alex asks while he keeps sketching. His questions make me feel like I’m back with my therapist again.

  “Anything and everything. Brandon would go through the garbage every day and bring home magazines and books, whatever he could find.” I chuckle as I remember his favorite save. “One day he came home more excited than I had seen him in a long time, and he had this big fat book. ‘It’s a dictionary, Kels,’ he said. ‘Now we can look up any words we don’t understand.’ The place where he’d found the book—which I later found out was an old school that was closing down—had also tossed out an entire set of encyclopedias that were printed sometime in the 1970s, but he hauled all of them to the apartment and we took turns reading them from A to Z.”

  Alex waves a tissue in front of my face. “Here.” His eyes are kind. Much kinder than they ever were in school. I take it and wipe my nose, and the back of my hand brushes against wetness. I didn’t even realize I was crying.

  “Things were going good. At least, as good as they could for two juvenile runaways. And then it happened.” I have to look away from Brandon and the camera. For a minute I forgot it was there and I hope this doesn’t make it on the air. Telling Alex this story is one thing. The entire world? Well that’s an entirely different matter.

  “What happened?” he prods.

  I swallow past the lump in my throat. I don’t want to tell him, but maybe after I do he’ll understand. Not that I care one way or the other if I have Alexander Douche-Dosek’s approval or not, but maybe he will learn not to judge without full knowledge of the situation.

  “I was on my way home from the diner and was bringing Brandon a piece of pie to get him through the rest of his shift…when I heard the gunshots. As I came around the corner, two guys wearing ski masks were running out of the place where Brandon worked. When I got to him he was lying on his back, blood everywhere, but he was alert. I held his hand as his life slipped away. Before he was gone he told me that I was the one beautiful thing in his life and that he loved me.”

  Alex pushes the box of tissues toward me. I pull one from the box. “Thanks.”

  “Take your time,” he says gently.

  One of the crew places a glass of water on the table and then disappears behind the camera. I swallow and try to gain control of my emotions.

  “The cops soon learned who I really was and my age. I was such a fucking mess. I’d been with Brandon for
over two years. He was my family. Hell, he was my world.” I wipe my eyes again. My heart aches as if it happened just yesterday. “They sent me to children’s services again, but this time I wasn’t afraid to tell them anything and explained in no uncertain terms why Brandon and I ran away. They had me see psychologists, therapists, and put me in a home with other delinquents, even though I’d never broken a single law. That’s where I met Mr. Smythe. He just observed, all the time, but not in a creepy way. He was trying to figure me out, because after I told them why I ran away, I refused to talk about Brandon or anything. Then, someone donated an old piano to the home I was in. I couldn’t stop playing it to the point that I was banned from the piano from ten at night until eight in the morning.”

  “I do remember you played beautifully.”

  Alex’s words shock me and I look up at him. He isn’t mocking me.

  “I used to listen, when I was painting. In the summer, when the windows were open, music would flow from your building into the art building and I always knew when you were at the piano.”

  My face heats. I’d had no idea, not that it mattered. He’d still treated me like shit.

  So why the fuck am I telling him all this?

  “That explains why you ended up at my school.” His smile is lopsided.

  “Mr. Smythe had me do a bunch of testing and my academics were good so I got admitted.”

  “Well, you had read an entire set of encyclopedias.”

  I shouldn’t laugh, but I do. “Yeah, and a lot of books. Brandon was right about that. You can’t go anywhere without some education.”

  Alex

  * * *

  “What did Brandon think of the baby?” Maybe I shouldn’t ask, but I want to know. It’s not just the moms who abandon their kids that I hate, but the dads too. The ones who disappear after knocking a woman up and leaving her to raise the kids alone without any kind of support. They are lower than scum.

  “He didn’t know. Hell, I didn’t know. When I got to the school, they did a physical and all the normal testing and that’s when I found out.”

  How could she not know? I know that there are stories about women delivering babies, never knowing they’re pregnant, but I don’t buy it. How the hell can’t they know? Then again, I am a guy. Maybe there is more to it than a missed period.

  “I figure I got pregnant shortly before Brandon was killed. After that, everything was so fucked up, I didn’t even notice my periods had stopped.”

  That does make sense. It had to have been pretty traumatic watching the guy you love die and then being tossed back into the system and moved around.

  “Five months along and I didn’t have a clue.”

  “You gave it up.” Shit, I didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but I can’t help it. If she loved this Brandon as much as she said, then she’d have fought tooth and nail to keep his baby.

  Her dark eyes harden. “It wasn’t an easy decision!” she yells.

  “Then tell me.” My tone is calmer but I need for her to explain to my why she gave up her child. She would have never told me back in school, even if I would have asked.

  “If I had kept the baby, I couldn’t remain at the school. They didn’t have a nursery. If I left the school, I would have been back in the system.”

  “You would have still had your daughter,” I point out, the old judgmental self coming to the surface. I can’t help it though. She abandoned her kid.

  “I’d be raising her in a group home, if that. If a social worker didn’t think I was doing a good enough job, then they’d take her away from me and then what? She’s in the system, I’m in the system, and I wouldn’t be able to protect her.”

  “So you decided to do what was best for you and give the baby away.”

  Kelsey stands, knocking her chair back. “I did what was best for my baby. Not for me,” she yells.

  She’s glaring at me.

  Shit, a camera is on us and I just fucking blew it. So much for customer service.

  I quickly begin to apologize. “I’m sorry—”

  “Save it,” she bites out and starts gathering up her documents.

  I can’t let her leave. Not now. I may be able to make it up on some of the customer service, or maybe not, but if Kelsey walks out that door, I am fucking screwed. “No, really, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t judge, but it’s just a sore spot with me.”

  “What? Moms giving their kids up for adoption?”

  I meet her eyes, but I can’t tell her, or confess anything. I’m too angry. “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “I really was trying to do the best for my daughter,” she says with a little less anger.

  “How?” I really do want to know how being raised by someone who is not a blood relation is good when that decision is for purely selfish reasons.

  “Well, first of all, I didn’t just give her to anyone.”

  “How do you know?” If she’s going to give me a fairytale story, I’m not sure I’ll be able to contain my anger.

  “I picked them.”

  “What?” How is that possible?

  “Mrs. Robak took me to an adoption attorney. I went through all kinds of files on couples who wanted a child. When I narrowed it down to half a dozen or so, I got to meet them. I went to their homes, had dinner and got to know them.”

  “How did you narrow it down?” I ask cautiously and I hope to hell it isn’t for some frivolous reason.

  “Jobs, location, school, lack of criminal record, health and ages.”

  Okay, not so frivolous.

  “A couple that I met didn’t give me a good vibe.”

  “Huh?”

  “Vibe,” she tries to explain. “Brandon and I were on the street for too long. You just get a feel for people even without talking to them, sometimes. If my gut got a vibe, they were crossed off the list.”

  One of the crew members comes forward and straightens her chair and then disappears. Kelsey sits and I try not to blow out a sigh of relief.

  “The third family I met was perfect, but I didn’t settle on them until I met the last three.”

  I’m nodding and my anger at her is kind of dying away.

  “They were perfect and already had three children, which they had adopted from overseas.”

  “Where?”

  “Africa, China, and Colombia.” She smiles. “They wanted their own United Nations, I guess, but decided to adopt from within the States because we have a lot of kids needing families, too.”

  “Do you get to see her?”

  The smile slips from Kelsey’s face. “No. It’s closed. They have all of my information and my daughter will know she’s adopted, but I can’t contact her, ever. I agreed to that to avoid confusion. When she is older, her parents will tell her about me and then it will be up to her if she wants to meet me or not.”

  Tears are in her eyes again. “That must have been hard.”

  “It was, but what the hell could I give her? An uncertain life? A life on the streets? Danger? With them, she’s protected and loved. She’ll have anything her heart desires. Ten times more than I could ever give her.” Kelsey looks me in the eye. “I wasn’t selfish in giving her up. Selfish would have been keeping her, then losing her to the system. There are great families out there, but there are also some really bad ones and I couldn’t risk that happening to her. This was the only way I could think of that would protect her.”

  Man, this is so not what I was expecting. She really loved this Brandon and she loved her daughter. Kelsey didn’t deserve the shit I gave her, and I’m sick about the way I treated her.

  I glance up at the clock. We’ve been in here over an hour and I haven’t even started the tat yet. There’s no time limit. The Reeds want a good tat for a good reason, not a rush job that will leave the customer unsatisfied. I get that and I’m really glad I took the time to ask. And if there is a time limit that I’m not aware of, hopefully they’ll understand and give me some slack on it. But from what I know of them, and after they hea
r Kelsey’s story, they’ll get why this is taking so long. I just wish I could delete the parts about me being an ass.

  There’s still other stuff on the table. How many more layers are there to discover about Kelsey?

  I pick up a sheet of music. “What’s this?”

  “Brahms’ Lullaby. I used to sing it to Brandy before she was born, and play it on the piano for her. I guess I hoped that she’d maybe remember hearing it when she was still in me and it would make her happy.” She bites her lip and looks down. “Silly, I know.”

  “No,” I say. “It’s not.” This is handwritten music, but I know the song. Who doesn’t? “Why are there hearts for note heads?”

  She shrugs and smiles. “Just something I wanted to do.” Her eyes fill with tears again. “I loved her so much and there was so little I could do to show her.” Her hand slides across the sheet of music. “But whenever I hear the song, I’ll always think of Brandy.”

  “Is ‘Brandy’ for her dad, Brandon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about Anne, her middle name?”

  This time Kelsey grins at me. “Anne of Green Gables, of course. It was my favorite book and it’s about an orphan who went to live on a farm and had an amazing life. I hope my Brandy has one too.”

  “Did the new parents keep the name?” I scribble out the question marks behind Brandon and Brandy’s names.

  “I have no idea what name they gave my little girl. But she’ll always be Brandy to me.”

  My throat tightens, but I’m not about to cry in front of her or the camera. Clearing my throat, I stand and grab the documents off the table. “I just need to get this scanned so I can do that tat, if that’s okay.”

  She nods and I practically run from the room, only to stop in the hall and try to catch my breath.

  Shit. I am such a fucking asshole. Then and now. Why didn’t I see the pain she was in?