“The nurses told me you were family,” she said, her voice not quite a question as she patted Mason’s hand and gazed back at him.
“No,” I said, falling back on a partial truth. “I’m a medic. I worked on Mason when he was injured.”
She nodded, not taking her eyes from him. Reassured, I sat down in the chair, wondering what part she played in all of this. “I, um, kind of fibbed and told the nurses we were related so they wouldn’t think Iwastooweird for coming to visit him all the time,” I admitted. “He didn’t seem to have any family, and it felt wrong to leave him in here alone.”
“Really?” she asked, turning her eyes back to me. “I’m sure people in your line of work check on their patients all the time. Nothing ‘weird’ about that!” She smiled gently at me. “My husband used to follow up with people he ran into through work all the time. Goodness! That man couldn’t go anywhere without running into someone he knew!” She paused for a few minutes, lost in thought, but then she roused herself, “I’m so glad you were there for Mason when he needed it.”
“He seemed like a good kid who had something really shitty happen to him,” I said, then paused, blushing. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have used that kind of language. My moms would kick my as—butt.” I said, lamely trying to recover.
She laughed heartily at my attempt at politeness.
“Don’t worry about me, dear. My husband was a police officer. I’ve heard about every swear word invented, and some that I think he made up just to see if I’d notice!”
She laughed again, but my heart rate, which had started to calm down as we’d talked, started racing again when she mentioned her husband was a cop.
I was so screwed.
“So, uh, how do you know Mason?” I asked, fidgeting in my seat as I tried to figure my way out of this.
“He saved my granddaughter’s life,” she said simply, looking back at Mason’s still form.
“Your granddaughter?” I asked, surprised.
She nodded, smiling gently. “Her name is Zem. Zemtira, actually. She said she was named after me.” Her voice wavered slightly as she spoke.
“She’s such a sweet little girl,” she continued. “Nothing like her mother. Nina, my daughter, was a wild child. So lively, so crazy. She could lighten up a room just by walking in the door. But she got mixed up with a bad crowd,” Tira sighed.
“We raised Nina well, taught her right from wrong. She knew better than to touch drugs. All it took was one bad choice and she was hooked on crack before her sixteenth birthday.
“Wetriedto get her help, but nothing seemed to get through to her. We tried.Lord knows, we tried! She ran away from the last rehab center we got her into. That was almost ten years ago. The only thing she took with her was a stuffed wolf she’d had since she was a baby. We…” she paused, her eyes glimmering with unshed tears, and sighed. “We didn’t even know she got pregnant.”
“T-they found her a few weeks ago, in a tiny little apartment in Milwaukee. It kills me she was so close this whole time… Her landlord had stopped in because she hadn’t paid the rent. Apparently, she had o-overdosed,” she stuttered for a moment, her voice thick with emotion.
After a while she continued. “Her fingerprints were matched to the missing person’s report that her daddy and I had filed when she disappeared from rehab,” she sighed.
“The detective was very sweet, the one working her missing person’s case. He knew his news was a blow to me, but it just about killed me when he asked if I knew what had happened to her daughter. A daughter I didn’t even know she had.”
I swallowed hard. The thought of a child in the clutches of men like Ricky and Dreyven made me physically ill.
She smiled gently at Mason, idly brushing a stray hair out of his eyes, then, continued her story.
“The detectives had found evidence of a little girl living in the house, and her neighbors confirmed she had a daughter, but no one knew what had happened to her after her mama died. Or at least, no one who would talk to the police. Then, out of the blue, I got this… this phone call, in the middle of the night, from a terrified young man telling me my grandbaby was on a bus on her way to Solon Springs,” she sighed. “That’s where we live, Solon Springs. He sounded so… so frightened… terrified, really, but so determined, like he was going to make damn sure this little girl was going to get back to me, no matter what.”
Tira rummaged around in her purse, pulling out a new-looking photo of a gorgeous little girl around nine or ten years old. She had the same hair and startlingly blue eyes as her grandmother, and clutched a tattered stuffed animal in her arms that vaguely resembled a wolf.
“Zem told us Mason snuck her out of the apartment, past the man who was holding both of them. She said he told her stories about being superheroes and escaping the evil troll.” She patted Mason’s arm absently as she spoke.
“Zem didn’t say it, she may not have even known, but from what the detective was able to find out, it sounds like the boy used all his money to buy her a ticket to get back to me.” She sighed. “The ticket agent we talked to told us that two men came through a day later asking about him and Zem.”
Tears welled up in her eyes.
“They think that’s who did this to him. He gave me back a granddaughter I didn’t even know I had, and this is what those monsters did to him.” Tears began to slide down her wrinkled cheeks.
The urge to comfort her was overwhelming, but I wasn’t sure how. Finally, I did what I would have done if it had been my own grandmother. I stood and wrapped my arms around her shoulders, squeezing gently and patting her back awkwardly. After a few minutes I felt her gather herself, so I released her and sat back down.
“That same detective, Detective Jarreau, found out about this young man being brought in to the hospital after the attack. He was ‘officially’ a John Doe at first, I suppose, until you identified him, but they sent us a picture of him and Zem recognized him, even though… even though he was so hurt.” She glanced at Mason, his face still showing the signs of the beating he’d taken.
“The doctors told me what was done to him. The damage…” she sighed, shuddering at the thought of what Mason’s life had been like. “They said it wasn’t just recent. He has so many older injuries. He’s been… abused… his whole life, the doctors said. We think… we think that’s what those men planned to do to Zem.”
