wall and I feel the whooshing now, along with a mechanical hum.
God. This is so cool. I wonder if there’s a big spiral
staircase inside, like a lighthouse. After tugging at the
door one last time, I give up and stomp down the stairs.
Bastards.
I loudly mutter curse words as I pick my way back
through the stubbly field and beep my vehicle open again.
I wanted one little fun thing, but now there’s nothing to
keep me from driving straight to my boring destination.
I’m thirty minutes away at most.
But I’m not going home. Not really. My parents have
nothing to do with Kayla’s disappearance as far as I can
tell, and the run-down roadside motel in my hometown
isn’t suitable to my tastes. I’ll be staying in the county seat instead, and that would be my first stop anyway. Joylene
confirmed that Ricky is currently in the county jail for
a six-month stint for parole violations. The penitentia-
ries are too full for that kind of shit, so he gets to stay in lockup with nine other men and one toilet. What a life,
my darling brother. What a life.
When I reach the city limits, I check into the nicest
hotel in town. It has an indoor pool and an attached bar,
and all the kids I knew who got married right out of high
school had their wedding receptions here. I came to each
one I found out about. I wasn’t invited or anything. I didn’t have any actual friends. But there was always booze and
free cake, so why not help them celebrate?
Sometimes there was a hot young uncle in the park-
ing lot with weed, the kind who would say, “You’re
eighteen, right?” with a little wink. I wanted access to
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the Jacuzzi and their cooler full of beer, so I was more
than willing to flirt.
Anyway, this place is filled with memories.
“Inside room,” I tell the scrawny old woman checking
me in. “First floor, overlooking the pool.”
“No problem, sweetie. Get to the buffet before five
thirty tonight if you want to avoid the rush.”
The rush? I glance around at the empty lobby and
shrug. Then I take three of the fresh cookies laid out on
a plate next to the American Express sign and roll my
bag to my room. It’s a perfect location. I can sit on a chair with my lights off and watch the people in the pool area,
and they’ll never even notice me. Unless I want to be
noticed. I often do.
But no time for fun now. Visiting hours at the jail end
in ninety minutes, and I may as well get this over with.
I grab one more cookie on my way out, eating it as I
slide my driver’s license into my jeans and lock my phone
and wallet in the glove compartment of my rental. It’s
not my first time visiting this asshole, though it is my first time not being dragged along by my parents. Another
moment of maturity.
I inform the officer at the front who I’m visiting,
then start the half-hour process of getting examined and
quizzed and patted.
“You can leave your phone and valuables here,” a
guard says, sliding over a numbered plastic bin, as if I’d
trust him with my shit.
“I didn’t bring anything. Just my ID.”
“Done this before, have you?” he asks, finally looking
up from his paperwork to run his eyes over my breasts
before he looks at my face. I’m obviously a desperate bitch and probably a lonely one if I’m visiting a man in jail.
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Victoria Helen Stone
“Sure, I’ve made the rounds,” I volunteer, just to
confuse him.
“What?”
“You can have your bin back, sir,” I say, sliding it
toward him slowly as if it’s a treasured possession. “I’m
all taken care of. Are we done?”
After a blank stare, he finally jerks his chin toward
a platoon of dirty plastic chairs. “Wait there.” All my
amusement falls away at the sight of the cheap chairs, the
stackable kind you can buy for eight dollars outside the
grocery store during the summer. They’re meant to be
hosed off in the yard every once in a while. These chairs
have not been hosed off in a very long time. I stare at the gray grime of layers of skin cells and body oil that’s worked deep into the texture on the plastic and I decide to stand.
There are no pictures or even upbeat slogans on the
walls, only tattered paper signs repeating rules and cau-
tions to visitors.
No foul language.
No suggestive clothing or conversation.
No food or drink allowed.
No cameras or phones.
Stay seated during the visit.
No touching of any kind.
Aw, no hugs for Ricky, I guess. What will I do with
all this sisterly affection coursing through my veins?
Ricky was always a terrible brother. Always. If he’d
been loving and protective, I might not have turned out
this way. Though I know my shitty genes helped the
process along, I remember feeling scared as a child. Hurt.
Vulnerable.
Some people are born sociopaths, but some are cre-
ated in childhood. I think I felt too much at one point.
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Problem Child
Those memories are a strange recurring nightmare now.
I can remember them existing, but they make no sense
in the daylight of my current life. Someone else felt those emotions. Not me.
My lip lifts in scorn at that memory of weakness. I
was pitiful, left at the mercy of my neglectful, narcissist parents and my heartless older brother. Abandoned for
days to fend for myself and stifle my tears into a blanket
at night. I scrounged for food and begged for attention.
Sometimes my parents provided both. Sometimes
they took off for days at a time. I was left in the care of a brother who considered me a worthless nuisance. Or I
was left with someone worse.
After years of bouncing back and forth between need
and fear, my brain learned a better way. A stronger way.
And now that it’s stopped developing, I’m permanently
wired to look out for myself and only myself. Some people
aren’t so lucky.
Eventually I’m led through a steel door into a cement-
block hallway. Our footsteps echo above the distant,
droning rumble of men’s voices. A door slams somewhere,
and then we turn left into a room dotted with school
cafeteria–style tables, round with little stools attached for sitting. No loose chairs around that someone might throw.
A female guard in the room points to a table and I sit
there. She watches me impassively for a moment before
sliding her eyes away.
When Ricky enters, I barely recognize him. Ten years
ago he looked bulky and mean, a literal redneck, his nape
already leathered and wrinkled from the Oklahoma sun.
Now he’s thin and mean, a bushy beard covering most of
his pale face. He’s on pills, no doubt. Everyone is these
days. It’s a lot easier to get high when you can pick up
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Victoria Helen Stone
your drugs from a legal cl
inic instead of hoping something
makes it across the border.
My brother looks around the room blankly, trying to
figure out who’s come to visit. “Good afternoon, Ricky,”
I drawl.
He turns a frown on me and glares. “Jane?” he finally
barks out too loudly.
“Yes! It is I, the prodigal sister!”
He’s not happy to see me. He’s not disgruntled either.
I never meant anything to him, and I’m a break in his
long day, so he shuffles over. “What the fuck,” he huffs
as he sits down on one of the round seats, the words half
question and half philosophy.
“I’ve come to visit my big brother!”
“What the fuck?” he ponders more loudly.
The female guard takes a step forward, but I hold up
an apologetic hand and scrunch my face into a sheepish
smile before turning back to my brother. “Keep your
voice down, idiot. I got a call from someone that your
daughter is missing.”
Ricky shrugs one shoulder. “I guess. Whatever. She
took off.”
“That’s not what your ex thinks.”
“Joylene? That fucking nosy drama queen. She came
by here last week. Jesus.”
“So you’re utterly unconcerned that your sixteen-
year-old daughter has fallen off the face of the earth.”
“That bitch can take care of herself, believe me. She’s
like a vicious goddamn cat.” He smiles, seeming trium-
phant that he managed a simile; then his lips widen into
a grin, revealing that his upper teeth on the right side are dark brown and dying. He probably got punched there
and damaged the roots. Or maybe it was a purposeful
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Problem Child
injury, a good source for a pain pill prescription. “She’s a hateful bitch,” he says, “just like you always were.”
“You still mad about that time I kicked you in the
balls in front of your friends, Ricky?”
His grin snaps to an ugly thin line in his ugly thick
beard.
“Fuck you, you whore.”
“You were the one commenting on your own sister’s
ass. Who exactly is the whore in this situation, you god-
damn felon?”
He rolls his eyes and crosses his arms. “What are you
doing here? You don’t live here no more. And don’t give
me any shit that you care what happens to Kayla.”
“No more than you do, certainly.”
He’s unmoved by the criticism of his parenting. His
eyes don’t even narrow. “She’s been thinking she’s grown
since she was eleven. If she wants to be grown, she can
take care of herself. All I know is I’m not paying any
more child support.”
“So you were really keeping up with those payments
until now, huh?”
“Fuck off.”
“I just came here for her address. I don’t actually assume
you’d know anything about your daughter. I’m going to
guess there weren’t any Saturday guilt trips to the arcade
whenever you were briefly out of prison.”
“You want her address so much, you’ll have to pay for
it. Put twenty bucks in my commissary account.”
I almost laugh in his face at the lowball demand, but
better to save that until after I get the address. “Did Dad die yet?” I ask instead.
“Nah. He’s scamming for all the help he can get.
Seems fine to me.”
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Victoria Helen Stone
“Of course.” My mother called a year before, de-
manding help for my father after a stroke. She got a
little too sassy for her own good, though, so I simply
changed my number and left her behind. Apparently
dear old Dad had pulled through without my help. A
cozy country miracle.
“Give me Kayla’s address and I’ll put twenty in your
account.”
“Go do it now.”
“So they can take you back to your cell and leave me
high and dry? No way.”
“That’s the deal.”
“Jesus Christ, Ricky, I’m pretty sure I can find her
mom’s address without your help. This is just my first stop.
Give me the information or I’ll drive straight to Mom
and Dad’s to ask them and you’ll be out twenty dollars.
Those pills are rotting your brain, and you didn’t even
start off smart.”
Ricky grunts at the insult, but he finally gives in and
recites an address I recognize as a block of two-story
apartments a couple of towns over. “Great. I’ll go see if I can track down your missing daughter for you. Cheers,
Ricky.”
“You’re a bitch,” he grumbles as I signal to the guard
that the visit is done.
I walk out of the room without any trouble or any
parting hug. There are no searches on the way out, and I
have nothing to collect, so I breeze past the checkpoints
and stop to sign out at the front window. There’s a plaque
there with instructions on depositing into an inmate’s
commissary account.
I walk out to my rental car and get in. It’s dinnertime
and I hope my favorite restaurant isn’t closed. I want
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Problem Child
chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes and coconut
cream pie for dinner.
I imagine Ricky’s fury when he goes to buy a bag of
Doritos and discovers his balance is still at zero. He can
kiss my sisterly ass.
63
CHAPTER SIX
My favorite diner has closed. I have to settle for my sec-
ond choice, a steak joint that was far too pricey for me
I pass a brand-new Walmart with a sign that reads “Visit
our new Garden Center!” in excited letters. It probably
felt promising in the spring, but summers here really beat
dreams of a green garden out of you. The sun and wind
suck the life out of everything, be it plant or human.
I loved coming into town as a kid, especially in the
winter, when it was dark by six and all the buildings
glowed with light. They always put up Christmas lights
on the telephone poles that ran through town, and I loved
the sparkly angels blowing horns and even the twinkling
golden crosses. I thought it looked like the Disneyland
parade I’d seen commercials for on TV.
But this county seat is a boomtown, and being a
boomtown means being a bust town too. Everyone’s
fortunes—everyone’s power bills and car repairs and
groceries—depend upon the whims of the oil market
and the decisions of billionaires in DC and Houston and
Saudi Arabia.
Natural gas came to town to shake things up, but it’s
no more stable a market than oil. You can watch fortunes
rise and fall in real time here. Shiny new trucks pack the
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Problem Child
streets one month, only to be taken over by tow trucks
repossessing them the next. Right now things look pros-
perous, but I passed two piping companies with “For
Sale” signs on the fences. Trouble is coming. Trouble is
alway
s coming here.
The steak house has a light in the window that says
open when I pull up, thank God. I breeze into the
restaurant, which seemed impossibly fancy when I was
young.
It isn’t impossibly fancy. It’s not even kind of fancy.
This place is just a salad bar and a hostess station and red stained glass over the lighting fixtures.
I order a giant margarita on the rocks as an appetizer,
then ask my waitress about the other restaurant that closed.
“What happened to it?”
“Old Mr. Handelson died and left it to his son, Brad.
He tried to keep it going for a little while, but … you
know.” She raises her blond eyebrows at me.
I shake my head. “I know what?”
She glances around to reassure herself that I’m the
only one in hearing distance. “Opioids.”
“Ah. I get it.”
The woman sighs deeply. “Frankly, I’m glad I never
had kids now.” She looks about fifty, but it’s hard to say
out here. No one I knew ever used sunscreen when we
were kids. We just burned and peeled and built up an
amazing base tan as we weathered away in the wind.
“My sister lost a girl to it already,” she continues.
“And one of her three sons is heading down that road
too.” She clucks her tongue. “We’ve got to do something
about that border.”
I snort and mutter, “Yeah, right,” before raising my
menu to study it.
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Victoria Helen Stone
I’m unsure what the border has to do with it. When I
was young, the drugs around here were made in trailers
by our neighbors, which was why they kept the Sudafed
behind the counter and put up bulletproof glass in the
pharmacy window. Now the drugs are made by giant
corporations in the US and overseas, or ordered on the
dark web and shipped in by international mail. No poor
brown people are needed to make that shiny pipeline
work. There are probably more people at my law office
involved in making these drugs happen. Import-export,
baby. We know how to work those laws.
I sip my margarita and try to plan the perfect meal.
Cowgirl steak? No. Cowboy steak? Yes. Asparagus? No
way. I’ll take a loaded baked potato instead. Or would
I rather have onion rings? No, onion rings I can get at
Sonic Drive-In anytime I want. Definitely baked potato.
That’s not a good to-go item.
When the waitress returns to take my order, she’s colder
than before. Polite but not warm. I guess I didn’t react