What She Left Behind ✔️

chapter thirty

A/N: Song for the chapter—"Broken Crown" by Mumford and Sons.

I will not speak of your sin
There was a way out for him
The mirror shows not
Your values are all shot

I bang on the door, feeling somewhat guilty for the commotion I am causing at eleven-thirty at night. Other tenants are probably fast asleep, but based on the elephants stomps I just heard, Carla and the guy she lives with—I think Ella said his name was Brock—are still wide awake.

A rail-thin man with greasy black hair opens the door. He checks me out from head to toe and frowns. "You're not Poncho."

"No, I'm not fucking Poncho. Is that your dealer or something?" I push past him and enter the drug den. "Carla! Carla, are you here?"

The redhead approaches me. Her eyes are tear-filled, her cheeks mascara-stained. She quickly wipes her face with the side of her hand and folds her skinny arms over her chest, as if trying to appear like she has her life together.

"Who the hell are you?" she asks.

"You barged into my home. I figured I'd do the same," I retaliate.

She nods her head in recognition. "Gemma Beaufort, right?"

"That's me."

"What are you doing here?"

"We need to talk," I reply, "about Raelyn."

"Brock, babe, can you... can you give us some privacy?" she calls to the greasy-haired man. "Go take a nap. I'll let you know when Poncho's here, okay?"

"Whatever," he mumbles, dragging himself down the hall.

Carla doesn't ask me to sit. She doesn't offer me a drink. We stand in the living room and stare each other down.

Unable to take the awkward silence any longer, I say, "Raelyn sent you videos before she died. What were they about? What did she say to you?"

"Why do you care?"

"She was my best friend. I'm... curious."

"It's no business of yours. Those videos are between me and my daughter."

I roll my eyes. "The daughter that you abandoned? The daughter that you were never there for? Even after you lost custody, you could have tried to get her back, but you never did. You chose drugs over Raelyn over and over again, every single time."

Carla flops down on the couch, lights a cigarette, and brings it to her lips. She takes a long puff before replying, "I never said I was a good mother. I was a shit mother. I'm trying to get my life together, though."

"Oh, yeah? Is that why Poncho is coming over? Is he bringing you your nightly fix?"

"He's coming for Brock, alright? Not me. I've been clean since December. Four and a half months. That's a new record for me."

I sit down beside her. "You stopped when Raelyn died, didn't you?"

"As soon as I found out," she confirms. "Something about losing a child makes everything else less important."

"Well, good for you." And I mean it. So far, this is the only positive thing that's come from my best friend's suicide. "I still don't think you're fit to take care of Evangeline, but good for you."

"I talked to my sponsor. She said taking in a six-year-old would set me back, so I decided to hold off on that for a while," she confesses. "Doesn't mean I don't want to get to know her, though. She is my granddaughter."

"No matter how good you are to Vange, it won't make up for all the ways you failed Raelyn," I say bluntly.

"Hey, I already admitted to being a shit mom. No need to rub salt in the fucking wound." She takes another puff of her cigarette. "Wanna know something? I was there for Raelyn. There was one time when not a god damn soul was there for her except me."

I snicker. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"About eight years ago," Carla begins, "she came to me. She was a mess, crying and shit. I asked her what was wrong. She told me something had happened and she didn't know what to do."

"Eight years ago...." I do the math in my head. "That's right around the time she got pregnant with Evangeline."

"Yep," she agrees. "Poor girl was a wreck. She told me the whole story. It took everything I had not to cry."

"Well, what did you say to her?" I ask. "What did you do?"

"I didn't know what to do. I offered to bring her to the hospital and help her take care of it."

"Take... take care of it? Are you talking an abortion?"

"No," she replies, inhaling what's left of her cigarette, "I'm talking about a rape kit."