Melanie had a baby.Melanie wasn’t even going to try to raise the baby.In many ways, it was a shocking, definitive act of love on her sister’s part, but Ellie couldn’t help feeling broken by it.That her sister was choosing drugs over her baby.
It isn’t that simple.You know it’s not.She isn’t going to bring this child into that chaotic ocean of her life and let her drown along with them.
“The social worker can speak to you both, if you like,” the nurse said.
“Yeah,” Clark said, nodding.
Ellie was transfixed then by the little bundle in his arms.Tiny and pink, scrunched up in that tightly wrapped blanket.She had a little cap on her head, and she was just … perfect.
“Has there been … medically …”
“She’s good,” Clark said.
They were now standing there alone in the room.She could clearly remember the last time she’d seen Clark.She’d been horrible, actually, and she felt bad about it, but not bad enough to apologize.Not even now, a year later.
Yeah, it had been about a year.
A year since she’d seen Clark, and Ty, and Melanie.They’d been in a motel parking lot, Ty and Melanie having a huge fight, the motel owner threatening to call the police.
Just come with me, Mel.
I can’t!
Of course she couldn’t, because Ellie wouldn’t enable her drug use.Of course she couldn’t, because even when they were monsters to each other, she and Ty were in the kind of toxic love written about in bad teen romances.
When Ty and Melanie had driven off and left her there with the angry motel owner and Clark, she’d lost it at him.
He’d paid the motel bill.
That still bothered her.They should have split it.
“She doesn’t have … They don’t think she has any issues from … You know that Melanie had to have been on drugs.”
Ellie was almost positive Melanie hadn’t been sober for more than thirty days in the last ten years.She hadn’t kept in close contact with her sister, but if Melanie had managed any extended sobriety, she would have told Ellie.
“The baby’s perfectly healthy.I’m sure there are things that might come up later, things they can’t look for now, but she doesn’t have any obvious problems.”
The relief she felt was extreme.“Thank God.Did you know?”
He shook his head.“No.I didn’t know.Ty called me right after she was born.Said there was no way they could look after her, and that he needed me to come and get her.”
“I must be on some form that Melanie filled out,” she said.She didn’t have a way of getting in touch with her sister.Melanie was more likely to have a burner phone than anything else.
“I’ll take her,” she said.
“You’re not just going to take her, Ellie.She’s my niece, just the same as yours.And I want to take care of her.”
“Clark,” she said, his name coming out of her mouth in a rush, tasting strange on her tongue.Of all the weird things about this moment, she didn’t need to go getting tangled up about Clark.“Your lifestyle is not conducive to raising a baby.”
“I’m retired from the rodeo.Didn’t you know?”
“Oh.I guess you must’ve taken me off your Christmas card list.”
“Funny.I just figured, in a small town, news travels quickly.I knew that you were back teaching at the high school.”
“Probably because my mom was bragging about it.”
She knew that, in general, her mother wasn’t completely happy with her decision to become a teacher.But considering her other child was a homeless drug addict, Nancy Parks was going to be bragging about that teaching job.
