“It’s never just one camp, right? If you think he’s going to do something with this, it will take a lot. More than I can do. Why don’t you just keep him? I mean, you can do that, right? Like if I agree to let you have him?”
I shook away the thought.
“Is she okay?”
Is she happy, is she alone, is she unhappy…
I knew what having my mother as a parent felt like. Was my sister experiencing that now? Was that why I was here? Had Felicia given my sister away too…
“She’s okay.” He smiled and I relaxed.
“She here? Is that what this is about? She gave her to you?”
“No. She didn’t give Rylee to us. She left her,” my mother said from behind me. I threw a glance over my shoulder, frowning because I know like fuck she didn’t say what I thought she said.
“What the hell do you mean she left her?”
I turned completely and Miranda Tyler, my mother, walked into my space, quietly demanding a hug. Without thought, I wrapped my arms around her. When she let go and filled the stool next to the one I occupied, I turned my body in her direction. She proceeded to explain everything about how they’d found out about Rylee, had been paying her tuition for the past year, and the teacher she had been pawned off on after Felicia left her. Just up and disappeared, leaving Rylee to fend for herself at six years old. A gotdamn child and she’d left her.
There was no way to feel anything for this woman but anger.
“Would you like to see a picture?”
I yanked a hand down my face. “Yeah, you got one.”
My mother smiled and I saw she already loved my sister. That same smile I knew meant Rylee owned her heart.
“I’ll be right back.” She left the kitchen and my gaze moved toward my father who gauged me before he spoke. “You okay, son?”
“No. How the fuck can I be? I know what her life is or what it was…”Wasbecause I didn’t care what it took, she would never have to be in that place again. I didn’t know what that meant or what it would look like but I was going to make things right for my sister.
“You’re angry.”
“Hell yeah I’m angry. She didn’t want me. Why the hell would she have another kid? Make that shit make sense.” My tone was clipped and laced with venom. My father allowed me to express those feelings with no judgment.
“I don’t have an answer to that question and you can’t focus on things you can’t change. She’s here and she needs you. The three of us need to figure out what we’re going to do for Rylee,” my father stated calmly with finality. He had always been a man focused on solutions and not the problem. He’d raised me to be the same but this situation sent me to places I hadn’t visited in a long time. It was hard to separate the two.
“Yeah, I hear you,” I mumbled.
My mother returned to the space beside me with her phone. She held the device up and swiped through a few photos of who I assumed was Rylee. All of them were in school settings, taken from a distance, except the last one, a closeup of Rylee smiling from ear to ear holding up some type of certificate. Her energy attached to me, killing my anger and making me smile too. She looked happy, big ass curly ponytails sprouting from the sides of her head. Dimples in her cheeks matched mine and her two bottom teeth were missing.
She was pretty as hell and had my entire face.
“So what do I need to do?”
My mother’s expression turned serious. “I’ve made some calls, and since you’re her blood relative… Well, the only one we know of, you can request temporary custody and we’ll keep her.”
“No, I’m not doing that.”
“Sweetheart, if you don’t, she’s going to end up in the system and I know that’s not what you want.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’ll get custody but she’s going with me.”
“Son, that’s not a good idea. You don’t have time to keep up with a six-year-old,” she rushed out.
“I’ll find the time,” I said before even considering how I was going to incorporate being a professional football player along with being a big brother guardian but I would figure it out.
“You don’t just find time…” my father stated calmly.