Vince was pumped, regaling his brothers with what had happened at the hospital. Not only had Inez immediately recognized him, her entire being had lit up upon seeing him.
She’d then succinctly and honestly, told him she didn’t need him for tricks or balloons, she simply liked him being there.
After some minor joking, they’d began to talk about Inez’s life.
That’s when Vince’s stoicism had started to crumble.
Hearing about all the things she’d gone through? From her perspective? It made him want to cry.
Inez was only six, but at three years old, Vince found out, she’d witnessed the deaths of her parents. She relayed those circumstances almost unemotionally.
One night, seemingly unprovoked, her father had grabbed a knife from the kitchen table where they’d all been eating dinner, and had stabbed her mother to death before walking away. Moments later Inez had heard a gunshot. When she’d slipped from her chair and gone to see what had happened, she’d foundher father lying in a pool of blood, having shot himself in the head.
Vince had gently asked the “why” of it, but Inez didn’t know. Nobody had ever told her.
Inez had calmly gone on to recall walking to a neighbor’s house.
After that, all she remembered was chaos, flashing lights, and a woman coming to take her away.
The most emotion Inez had exhibited, was when she’d talked about a beloved stuffed bear, Murphy, that she’d had to leave behind because the social worker who’d temporarily been charged with removing Inez from the scene, hadn’t retrieved the stuffie for her when she’d packed up Inez’s “necessities”.
Inez had cried for it, but the woman had ignored her pleas.
Vince had seen red at that point.
Unfeeling bitch.
He vowed to find out just who the woman was, and what had happened to the contents of Inez’s family home. Technically, a court-appointed trustee would have been put in charge of any inheritance Inez might receive when she reached her majority. Which meant everything from the childhood home Inez had described had to be stored somewhere.
Vince hoped that information would be available to him. If not, Tex would be able to dig up anything Vince would need.
Vince wanted that stuffed bear back in Inez’s hands, stat.
The little girl had then gone on to tell him about the four foster placements she’d had in the three years since she’d been a ward of the state.
The first had ended fairly quickly because a previous, older foster child had come forward and credibly accused the family of being…bad people. Inez didn’t understand exactly what that had meant, and she’d been sad to leave that home because she’d had a foster sister who had read her beloved fairy-tales to her.
Inez had been shuffled on, to actuallylikethe next home to which she’d been assigned. But the foster couple had found out, a year after taking Inez in, that they were pregnant with twins, and that the pregnancy was classified as high risk.
So, her foster parents had “returned her”.
Inez’s words, not Vince’s.
More tears had to be suppressed.
In the third home to which she’d been sent, Inez had been the only foster to an older couple, and had settled in pretty well, trying to be extra good so she wouldn’t have to move again. But then she’d gotten sick. Really sick.
Once the foster parents had been apprised of Inez’s cancer diagnosis, they’d decided they couldn’t handle the pressures that went along with the degree of caretaking that would be required, and had once again, thrown Inez back into the system.
Her current placement, out of all of them, was the one that made Vince bite the inside of his cheek to keep from screaming.
Inez had been there for a little over three months, and was clearly nothing more than a number to the people who’d taken her in. She was one of six foster siblings, and neither of the parents nor any of the other kids paid attention to her. At all.
The chatty, bitchy social worker to whom Inez had been assigned; the one who ferried her to and from appointments, took care of all the logistics, but didn’t really engage with Inez.
Vincent could at least take a small amount of comfort in the fact that the case-worker wasn’t completely incompetent, and that nobody in Inez’s current living situation was mean or abusive.
Still, it was all incredibly sad.