Keenan entered his home, and a familiar eerie silence welcomed him. He’d felt the same shudder travel up his spine as on that day he’d walked into his half empty home and Evangeline had left them.
Keenan had called his mother on his way home from Donovan’s office and asked if she’d let Tommy stay over tonight, so he could have time with Ryleigh to explain himself.
After calling out her name, he got no response. He ran up the stairs to check her bedroom. His heart raced when she wasn’t there. He yanked her closet open and a sigh of relief escaped him. Her clothes were still there.
He’d acted like a total jerk towards her. Raising his voice like that? Ignoring her obviously hurt feelings when he’d demanded her to quit fighting?
While sitting alone in his cousin’s office after Donovan had left, Keenan had time to reflect on his reaction. He’d lashed out at Ryleigh, while he should have saved his anger for the true target of his wrath; Evangeline.
The anger after hearing for what kind of miserable life she’d left him and their son had made him furious before intense sadness washed over him. His son would have to hear the ugly truth at one time in his life.
Keenan would have to tell his son his mother had caught up with the wrong crowd and grew an addiction to drugs. In order to maintain her habit, she’d left with the part of their savings she could access, sold almost half of their furniture for a quick buck to follow her boyfriend slash drug dealer to New York.
He would leave out the part where her boyfriend turned her into a prostitute and got her arrested for stealing some guy’s Rolex at a sleazy hotel.
Keenan paced Ryleigh’s bedroom floor while calling her phone again. At first, he’d wanted to give them both some time to cool off, but when she didn’t pick up any of his calls; he got worried. It had been two hours since she’d left his cousin’s office with tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Fuck!” Keenan kicked his boot against her bedroom door.
When the doorbell rang, he flew over the stairs in his haste to open the front door.
“Oh, it’s you…”
Declan and Deirdre shared a look, both pulling one eyebrow.
“Ah, it’s true then… You’ve fucked things up,” Deirdre said before she wormed her small body between him and the doorway frame.
“Sure, come in, why don’t ye?” Keenan grumbled.
“I’m guessing Ryleigh isn’t here?” Declan said.
“That would be correct.”
Deirdre walked straight over to the kitchen and grabbed them all a beer. Instead of lounging in the living room, Keenan took a seat on a barstool and rested his elbows on the kitchen counter. This would be a brief visit if he had anything to say about it.
“Ma asked me to check up on you, Keen.”
He nodded at his sister. He could not be mad at her for caring about him.
“And Don called me, Cuz. I’m sorry,” Declan said.
“Did you know your brother’s has tracked down Evangeline almost a year ago?” Keenan asked Declan but got an immediate response from Deirdre.
“Evangeline? He knows where she is?” She placed a hand on Keenan’s arm, her eyebrows squished together. She glanced over at Declan and back at Keenan.
“Yeah. But when he tried to tell me, I didn’t let him finish and said that she didn’t want to be found for a reason. He decided to tell me when the timing was right.” Keenan took another pull from his beer.
“What? Why didn’t he tell you? He could have helped you get her back, he—”
“Dee…” Keenan looked up to the ceiling and back to her again.
He continued after a beat of silence, “I just knew something big was going on with her. And truthfully, in the beginning after she’d left, I thought she loved us enough to come back to us. But the joke’s on me. She didn’t love us at all.”
“I’m so sorry, Keen. I know we all have been skeptic, cynical even, but now that you know where she is, maybe you can—”
He placed his hand on Deirdre’s hand that still rested on his arm. Her bottom lip wobbled as she spoke, and he couldn’t bear to see another family member cry over Evangeline.
“No, please don’t cry. We’ve done enough crying over her.”