The Broken Ones by Ren Richards

Author:Ren Richards [Richards, Ren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788164061
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2020-02-14T05:00:00+00:00

20

THEN

On what would be her last Christmas, Reina was three years old. Eleven months later, she would disappear forever.

It was also the first year Nell went to visit Bonnie without Lindsay, who had practically surgically attached herself to Matthew Cranlin.

Nell brought Reina along instead. Ethan had offered to come too, but Nell knew he was hoping she’d refuse, which she did. ‘I can’t make you ride out all that way,’ she said, standing in the driveway with her hand on the car door handle. ‘You wouldn’t like my mother anyway. You’ve heard the stories.’

‘Yeah,’ Ethan said. ‘Drive safe. Call me when you get there so I know you’re okay.’ He hoisted Reina over to her. A second ago, Reina had been latched to his hip with her head tucked against his shoulder. She’d looked like a baby koala in her puffed mint-green coat, staring impassively at the lightly falling snow. But once in Nell’s arms, she went slack and uncooperative. Nell had to tighten her grip so Reina wouldn’t slip through her arms like a heavy bag of groceries.

She dreaded the drive without Lindsay there to balance things out. Lindsay’s pettiness and contrarian nature didn’t yield for toddlers. In Lindsay’s mind there was no difference between a stubborn child and a burly mugger in the back alley behind a bar. If someone provoked her, she responded in kind and there would be no exceptions. If Reina threw one of her screaming fits in the grocery store, Lindsay would crouch down before her and scream too. If Reina pitched her cereal at the wall, Lindsay said, ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ and threw her drink. Whenever Lindsay brought Reina a present, the first thing Reina did was break it. So Lindsay bought more challenging and resilient things: a cast iron bank shaped like an alphabet block, a Rubik’s cube whose little square buttons would not come apart no matter how Reina pulled at them.

It became its own sort of weird affection, and both participants got a kick out of it. Nell envied this. Lindsay had found a way to bond with her niece, even if she did consistently maintain that the child was a terror. It was something. Nell had observed the way Reina studied her aunt; doubtless Reina recognised someone who would challenge her – someone who didn’t fear her tantrums or feel devastated when her gifts were smashed or peed on. They were playing a game.

Nell didn’t even get that much out of her child. Reina had always known how to break Nell. Sometimes when Reina sat catatonic in front of the TV or in her car seat, Nell suspected it was out of boredom. Nell was such an easy mark that there was no sport in it.

For the first hour of the drive, Reina slept, lulled by the thrum of the engine and the heat. Nell’s gaze flitted to the rear-view mirror. She so rarely got to have a good, uninterrupted look at her daughter’s face. She avoided looking when the baby was awake.

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