Aequitas, Hope Anika [android pdf ebook reader .TXT] 📗

to share his identity with me.” The voice was faintly disapproving and touched by a Midwestern accent Cheyenne knew intimately: the diction of a Cheesehead. One too many lagers, and she’d sound just like him. “Miss Elias, you are this child’s only hope.”

Well, that was just profoundly stupid. Who would make her anyone’s only hope?

Ah, Georgia. The hate that had once lived in Cheyenne’s heart had long since faded to indolence—or perhaps apathy, because really, why expend the energy?—but this...this was almost funny. Almost. Except for the whole kid thing. And the whole “ward of the State” thing. And the whole “you are this child’s only hope” thing.

Fuck a duck.

“Son of a nutcracker,” she said.

“I take it you and Miss Humboldt were no longer…close?”

Cheyenne could only laugh, a harsh, bitter bark that hurt her throat. She had no words. What she’d once been—what they’d once been—bore no relation to what they’d become.

“No,” she said, so cold an unknown part of her shivered. Chuck growled softly in response. And then—ping.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what to say,” said Smith/Jones.

Which made two of them.

Georgia had given birth?

Cheyenne could not even begin to comprehend it.

“To what?” she wondered. “Rosemary’s Baby?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“I am sorry to be the bearer of such unexpected news, Miss Elias. I was under the impression that you and Ms. Humboldt were…friends.”

“Not in this universe.” Then, in spite of herself, “Where’s the kid now?”

“At the DHS temporary placement center, Haven House.”

Bile surged with sudden, violent force. The response was wholly visceral; she stumbled back a step, lost her footing, and fell ass-deep into the sagebrush, her heart thumping wildly in her chest. Chuck wandered over to sit beside her, his body warm against her thigh. In the distance, the Grand Teton Mountain Range rose from the valley floor like a row of stalwart, granite infantry lined up for battle, and high above them, the sky was pure, azure blue.

She saw none of it.

Haven House.

The crumbling red brick building bled into her brain in rivulets, streams that ebbed and flowed until the image coalesced into the hellish homestead of her childhood, shockingly familiar in all of its dilapidated glory.

White walls and scarred wooden floors and windows barred by steel. Sirens and screams and cold, angry hands. Blurred faces, hollow words, pain, pain, pain—

Cheyenne shook herself. Struggled to breath. Put her hand over her heart in futile effort to ease its breakneck pace. Chuck put his paw in her lap.

“Fuck me,” she said.

“Miss Elias?”

Another bark broke from her.

A kid and a mental breakdown. The gift that keeps on giving.

“Cheyenne?”

“Haven House,” she croaked. The scent of urine and Lysol spray flooded her nostrils; mildew tickled the back of her throat. Her stomach clenched in rebellion. “Shit-boy-howdy.”

“Er…do you know it?”

Like the back of her scarred hand. Tied to a truck and dragged down memory lane. What had she done to deserve this?

Try being born.

“Not funny,” she whispered, her knuckles aching where she gripped the phone.

That it had such power—that all she’d become could dissolve so quickly into what she’d once been…she never would have guessed. Everything she’d considered conquered merely lay dormant, existing in stasis, mute until its reawakening.

Like the plague.

“I am sorry, Miss Elias. Clearly this is an unwelcome surprise.”

Unwelcome. What a pale, weak word for Georgia’s last hurrah. So mild and understated, the antithesis of who she’d been. Like declaring the sun lukewarm. Or the ocean a bit briny.

“Perhaps you should take some time and think it over?”

“Negative.” Over and out. But—“How old is he?”

Stupid, Cheyenne thought. She didn’t want to know. She didn’t care. The entire conversation was like rolling naked in poison oak. But her mind’s eye—insolent and defiant and gleefully giving her the finger—drew him in startling, painful clarity: thin, like Georgia had been; all angles and sharp edges. Narrow and slight in his mother’s shadow, a whisper to her scream. Hushed and anxious in a prison of rusting iron bars and inhuman chill.

Yeah, sure, why not?

“Just make it up as you go,” she told herself.

“I’m sorry?”

“Nothing.”

Smith/Jones sighed. “Rafferty is currently ten years old.”

“Ten,” Cheyenne echoed tonelessly. At ten, she’d been shooting craps and sneaking into R rated movies. Vandalizing freeway underpasses and drinking stolen beer—with this kid’s mother.

Goddamn irony. Someday she would figure that shite out. But not today.

“Miss Elias, even with the best of foster families Rafferty’s existence will be…difficult. Children are all too often lost within the system and left to fend for themselves. I would urge you to take some time and consider this. A decision need not be made immediately.”

You must learn to control your impulses, Cheyenne. They do you more harm than good.

Bite me, Phil.

“I don’t want him.” The words were harsh, stark, unflinching. Truth. Next to her, Chuck whined softly. “Not today or tomorrow.”

“I see.” Smith/Jones went cold. “Well, I apologize for bothering you. I will let family services know you have no wish to serve as Rafferty’s guardian, and they will act accordingly. Good day, Miss Elias.”

And then he was gone.

Cheyenne stared down at her phone. Then she turned and threw it into the sagebrush.