Rock Bottom (Tristan & Danika #2)(10)

I handed her forty dollars, and she took it without a qualm.

“That all you have?” she asked blankly. She was a shell of a person. A zombie.

I nodded. “I don’t keep much cash on me. It’s not convenient.”

“What about a debit card? I won’t take much, and I’ll send it back to you.”

My mouth hardened. I’d heard that before. “I’m not comfortable with that.”

Finally, that got a reaction from her, even if only a slight one. Her face formed into a ghost of a sneer. “I’m just trying to survive here, same as you, same as anyone.”

I didn’t think she was the same as me. I knew that her demons had won a long time ago. I still planned to put up a hell of a fight with mine.

“I’m working my way through school, and I don’t have any more money to spare. That’s how I survive.”

“You got my looks, but that’s it. Where you got that attitude of yours, I’ll never know. Dahlia didn’t get our looks, but at least when I talk to her, I know I’m talking to my daughter.”

I latched onto that. It was the entire reason I’d come. Whatever digs she’d been trying to get in, I ignored completely. “Have you talked to Dahlia? Has she come to see you?”

Her sneer was back. “Saw her a few months ago. That one doesn’t think she’s too good for her mother.”

I processed that.

I’d begun to look for my sister about a month prior. Just telling Jerry about my search had unearthed some clues. Unbeknownst to me, he’d found my mother years ago, at the beginning of my employment, and paid her a visit. I’d been very young, and he’d just wanted to be sure that my mother was okay with her daughter, who was barely out of high school, working as a live-in nanny. He had found what I found today, a woman that cared about nothing.

The casual observer might have mistaken it all for apathy, but I was not the casual observer. I’d been watching this indifference all my life, and it was a step beyond even that.

Any soul she’d had she’d lost before I had memories.

It had been a last resort, but having her address was a lead I couldn’t ignore.

“Do you have her address or even her phone number? I’d like to find her. She and I have been out of touch for a while.”

“She told me all about what happened with you and that old man. I doubt she’ll want to talk to you.”

My spine stiffened, and it took every ounce of my will not to visibly flinch.

Those memories had been buried in some dark corner of my mind, but just the knowledge that my mother knew what had happened felt as though they’d been unearthed afresh. I felt exposed and filthy in a way I hadn’t experienced in years.

“I’d like to at least try,” I explained to her calmly. “It’s been years, and she is my sister.”

“You’re no different than me. What you did with that old man proves that. You can look at me like I’m the dirt beneath your feet all you want, but we’re the same. Living wretched lives and getting by however we can.”

“You missed your calling,” I shot back, falling back on sarcasm, as usual, to get by, “you should have been a poet.” I wanted to rail at her, the one who’d abandoned us to the mercy of twisted strangers, but I dug deep and managed to stop with that one barb.

“I don’t have her number, don’t know where she lives. She’s the one visits me, from time to time.”

“How often?”

“How should I know? Do I look like I keep a calendar? Whenever she feels like it, I guess.”

“Does she live in town, or does she drive in from somewhere else?”

“You sure you don’t have any more cash?”

“Are you saying you’ll have answers for me if I bring you more money?”

She shrugged and said something noncommittal, but I suddenly wasn’t concentrating on her, my focus shifting to the man stirring on the bed.

“I should be going,” I began, standing up to leave.

A shiver of fear went through my body when the large man sat up, his black glare going immediately to me. He was older, with salt and pepper hair and an intimidatingly large frame.

I needed to get out of there. One glance and I knew that I did not want to be at this man’s mercy.

I took a few steps back, reaching into my purse, trying clumsily to find the note I’d painstakingly written out for my sister.

The man was across the room, in my face before I could find the piece of paper. He snatched my purse out of my hands. He had my wallet in his hands before I could blink, rifling through it as though he had every right. He shoved it back in the bag, glaring at me. His black eyes lacked any sign of humanity.

I backed away two more steps. He followed, the look on his face as menacing as any I’d seen.

“This your girl, bitch?” he growled at my mother over his shoulder. “It must be your girl. She looks just like you. Girl, you know your bitch of a mom owes me five grand?”

I shook my head, trembling in fear, because for every step I took back, he took two, crowding me against the door.

He thrust my purse back at me, speaking in a low, harsh voice. “What were you digging for in that bag?”

I shook my head, too frightened to process the question quickly.