Released (Caged 3)

“Yeah? Tria doesn’t really talk about her.” I inhaled water vapor and blew it out in rings.

“She came to the island once,” he said. “It wasn’t long after Tria’s dad died—less than a year. Leo thought Dana was hoping to get the pension benefits from his death, but the adoption was already final, so there wasn’t anything she could do. She gave up her rights to Tria when Tria’s dad was still alive.”

Brandon took a puff off the e-cig and turned it around to look at the little red light at the tip.

“She messed up the place,” he continued. “She threw a coffee table and wrecked the kitchen and then pretty much left. I saw her for about three minutes as she was coming out of the house and I was walking by. She threw rocks at me just for being there before she got in a rundown Chevy and left, and I was just a kid, too—younger than Tria.”

“That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Brandon agreed.

We stood there and puffed for a while. The weird thing about electronic cigarettes is they don’t really have an end until the battery needs to be recharged. “Smoking” can go on for a half hour because it doesn’t burn out in five minutes like a normal cigarette would. Of course, I didn’t smell like an ashtray all the time anymore, and Baby Katie wasn’t getting exposed to that shit, so it was all good.

Leaning forward a little, I looked into the front window and saw Nikki rocking the baby in her arms while Tria was still on the phone.

“She’s a natural with a kid,” I said and then immediately regretted it. “I mean, she does really well with the baby.”

That wasn’t any better.

“It’s all right,” Brandon said with a half-smile. “You don’t have to avoid the topic. We’re used to it.”

“Sorry, man.”

“Don’t be,” he said. “We’ll figure it out.”

They had been seeing a fertility doctor and wanted to try in-vitro fertilization to see if Nikki could get pregnant that way. However, the price tag was kind of insane. Brandon was trying to talk the insurance company into covering it but wasn’t having much luck.

I couldn’t help but think about the kind of money my family had and if we might be able to do something about it. I wasn’t sure

if Brandon and Nikki would accept, though. Even bringing it up might piss them off—they were proud people.

I turned when I heard the door open, and Tria rolled her eyes at our pretend smokes.

“Remind me not to do that again,” she said. “She went from asking if I needed money for the baby to asking me for money. She never even said anything about wanting to meet Baby Katie; she just kept changing the subject to money.”

Tria leaned up against me, and I wrapped an arm around her.

“Is Baby Katie sleeping?”

“Yeah, she likes Nikki’s arms.”

I glanced at Brandon and saw a sad half smile cross his lips. I had to stop myself from saying something else about how great Nikki was with Baby Katie. I didn’t think it would sound right.

“Still want to go out for dinner?” I asked, and Tria nodded.

“You better,” Nikki said from the doorway. “I came all this way to babysit just so you two could have a night on the town.”

While I cuddled Baby Katie and told her we wouldn’t be gone too long, Tria went in to grab her purse. I couldn’t come up with names for it any more—it had been totally dwarfed by Beelzebub’s Diaper Bag. In fact, three or four of Tria’s purses could fit in that thing. I refused to carry it. I’d shove a little diaper in my jacket pocket and just leave the damn thing at home.

Like Baby Katie really needed an entire set of plastic blocks, books, a tiny manicure set, four changing pads, three blankets, an extra hat, and a nose-siphon everywhere she went. Tria probably could have fit a pack-and-play in there, too, but Baby Katie wasn’t big enough to use it yet. Besides, she was only ever put down in her pumpkin seat when we were in a car. The rest of the time someone was holding her.

The thought made me smile again.

Damon pulled up to the front of the house, and I took Tria’s hand to lead her to the back seat of the Rolls. For better or worse, we had gotten used to having someone to drive us around if we didn’t want to take the bus all over the place. Damon didn’t mind, and Michael didn’t need him on the weekends much.

I tried to justify it by saying he was on the clock anyway, but mostly I was just getting a little spoiled again. It hadn’t taken much of a leap for me to go from refusing any kind of help at all to accepting some, at least, when Baby Katie was born. The car had been the first and easiest to get used to; I never did like riding the bus.

“Hey, do you mind if we make a little pit stop?” I asked.