Reminders of Him(30)
Once Kenna is alone, she presses her palms to her eyes and tilts her face up to the sky. She stands like that for a few seconds. Then she wipes her eyes with her T-shirt.
The girl reappears and Kenna smiles, then the girl disappears, and Kenna lets her face fall back into a frown.
She’s just turning it on and off and on and off, and I don’t like that I like that she’s pretending not to be sad every time that girl comes running back to her. Maybe Roman was right.
The girl returns once more and hands her another sparkler. As she’s lighting it, Kenna looks up and spots my truck. Her whole body seems to shrivel, but she forces a smile toward the girl and makes a motion for the girl to run around the building. As soon as the girl is gone again, Kenna begins to head in my direction.
It’s obvious I’ve been sitting here watching her. I don’t even try to hide that. I unlock my door right before she reaches my truck and climbs inside.
She slams the door. “Are you here with good news?”
I shift in my seat. “No.”
She opens the door and starts to get out.
“Wait, Kenna.”
She pauses, and then closes the door and remains in my truck. It’s so quiet. She smells like gunpowder and matches, and there’s a strange current inside this truck that’s so palpable I expect the whole damn truck to explode. But it doesn’t. Nothing happens. No one speaks.
I finally clear my throat. “Are you gonna be okay?” My concern is buried beneath a stone-cold exterior, so I know my question seems forced, as if I don’t care what the response might be.
Kenna tries to get out of the truck again, but I grab her wrist. Her eyes meet mine.
“Are you gonna be okay?” I repeat.
She stares hard at me with her swollen, red eyes. “Are you . . .” She shakes her head, seemingly confused. “Are you here because you’re afraid I might kill myself?”
I don’t like how she seems to want to laugh at my concern. “Am I worried you aren’t in a good headspace?” I ask, reframing her question. “Yeah. I am. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Her head tilts slightly to the right as she turns her whole body so that she’s facing me in her seat. Her shoulder-length strands of straight hair lean with her. “That’s not it,” she says. “You’re worried if I end my life, you’ll be left feeling guilty that you’ve been so unbearably cruel to me. That’s why you came back. You don’t care if I actually kill myself—you just don’t want to be the impetus for my decision.” She shakes her head with a shallow laugh. “You did it. You checked on me. Your conscience is clear now, goodbye.”
Kenna goes to open her door, and the girl she was lighting sparklers for suddenly appears at her passenger window. Her nose is pressed against the glass.
“Roll down this window,” Kenna says to me.
I turn my key so that I can roll down her window. The girl leans in, smiling at us. “Are you Kenna’s dad?”
Her question is so out of left field, I can’t help but laugh. Kenna laughs too.
Diem has Scotty’s laugh and smile. Kenna’s laugh is her own. One I haven’t heard before this second. One I want to hear again.
“He’s definitely not my dad,” Kenna says. She cuts her eyes to mine. “He’s the guy I told you about earlier. The one keeping me from my little girl.” Kenna opens her door and hops out.
She slams my truck door, and then the teenage girl leans in the passenger window and says, “Jerk.”
Kenna grabs the girl’s hand and pulls her away from the truck. “Come on, Lady Diana. He’s not on our side.” Kenna walks away with the girl and she doesn’t look back, no matter how much I want her to and don’t want her to, and fuck, my brain is a pretzel.
I’m not sure I could be on her side even if I wanted to be. This whole situation contains so many nooks and crannies and corners I get the feeling choosing sides is going to be the downfall of all of us.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
KENNA
Here’s the thing.
It shouldn’t matter if a mother isn’t perfect. It shouldn’t matter if she’s made one big, horrible mistake in the past, or a lot of little ones. If she wants to see her child, she should be allowed to see her, even if it’s just once.
I know from experience that if you’re going to grow up with an imperfect mother, it’s better to grow up knowing your imperfect mother is fighting for you than to grow up knowing she doesn’t give a shit about you.
There were two years of my life—not consecutive—that were spent in foster care. My mother wasn’t an addict or an alcoholic. She just wasn’t a very good mother.
Her neglect was validated when I was seven and she left me alone for a week when some guy she met at the dealership where she worked offered to fly her to Hawaii.
A neighbor noticed I was home alone, and even though my mother told me to lie if anyone asked, I was too scared to lie when the social worker showed up at our door.
I was placed into a foster family for nine months while my mother worked to get her rights back. There were a lot of kids and a lot of rules and it felt more like a strict summer camp, so when my mother finally regained custody of me, I was relieved.
The second time I was placed in foster care, I was ten. I was the only foster child, placed with a woman in her sixties named Mona, and I stayed with her for almost a year.