Page 29 of Kid
I played over what I’d seen at Jade’s place inside my head.
There had to be a reason Jade didn’t want Jeremy to have a cellphone. I get not wanting a child much younger than Jeremy to have one, but Jeremy was sixteen. He was at the age of consent, old enough to wander far distances on his own.
Why she didn’t want him to have a phone was beyond me.
I dropped the quandary for another—how had she not known something was wrong?
It wasn’t as they’d taken the teen from somewhere else. It had happened right in her front yard. Kidnapping him must have been noisy as fuck.
At sixteen, Jeremy would have known he was in danger—he must have struggled and shouted for help, yet Jade heard nothing.
And a large part of her flower bed had been trampled. How was it a woman who took such great pride in her flowers hadn’t noticed?
It shook me to my core to even suspect her of anything, but the questions persisted.
I lifted my face to the downpour of water, trying not to let my dislike for the woman cloud my senses. I didn’t like her, but was she capable of kidnapping—or setting up her own grandson’s kidnapping?
And even if she was, what would she gain?
With my shower over, I dried my skin, hauled on some clothes and walked back out to find Nella.
She was in the backyard, sobbing.
“Nel?” I called softly.
She wiped her tears and stood to face me. Though she said nothing, I pulled her gently into my chest and held onto her until she shifted backward.
“I can’t lose him, Kid.” Her voice trembled. “My mother is crazy so he’s all I have. It was my job to protect him. Calie would be so disappointed in me because I keep failing him. I can’t seem to do anything right when it comes to what makes him happy.”
I led her to sit then sat across from her to hold her hands. “You’re not failing him, Nel. Jeremy knows you love him like crazy.”
“Love isn’t enough if he’s not safe.”
“And if this was any other situation, I might have agreed with you.” I replied. “But right now, that love is what will get him through this.”
“How?”
“He knows you love him. Which means he knows you’ve got his back and will come for him.”
She sighed.
“You didn’t cause this.” I shook her hands to stress my point. “We’ll find him.”
“Yes, I did.” Nella nodded. “When mama said she had guardianship of Jeremy, I should have said no. I should have put my foot down and kept him with me. Even though the will was clear, I still can’t see my sister leaving guardianship to my mother.”
“Maybe there’s something between your mother and sister you didn’t know about.” I pointed out. “Do you think the will was tampered with?”
“I don’t know what to think.” She inhaled then exhaled long and hard. “But the will has always been strange to me. It never sat right with me that Calie would leave Jeremy to my mother.”
“What do you mean?”
“Calie and mama never got along. Even as little girls, she butted heads with mama, a lot!” She explained. “Then at eighteen, Calie left home and the only reason she even looked back, was me. She married, got pregnant and would barely allow mama around the baby. Then, all of a sudden, she left guardianship to this woman? If we find him—”
“When.” I corrected. “When we find him.”
Nella smiled at me. “When—he’s coming to live with me. He’s sixteen—he can legally choose now, right?”
“Right.”
“And I’m sorry. I know when we started fooling around you didn’t sign up for this—for a teenager.”
“I don’t want you to worry about that now.” I told her. “First, we’re going to concentrate on finding him. Everything else is secondary.”
She looked broken and it killed me.
I gripped her by the hips and lifted her into my lap. She sat astride me, pulled into me and tangled her arms around my neck, while pressing her face into my neck. When I wrapped my arms around her, she sighed and whispered my name.
