Free Kind of Kin by Rilla Askew Page B

watched the time tick away. See, Lord? she told Him. Why can’t there ever be an easier way to do things! Though in fact Sweet knew she would have driven up here today anyway, even if she’d been able to reach Misty Dawn on the phone, because the only way to talk the girl into coming back with her was to do it in person. What she’d been practicing for two hours on the slow drive from Cedar was how to make it seem like Misty Dawn’s idea.
    It took another forty minutes before Sweet turned onto a run-down side street in North Tulsa, drove half a block, and stopped in front of Misty Dawn’s house—a tiny yellow rent house with a low roof and blue trim set well back from the road in the middle of a huge half-acre lot. Sweet hadn’t been here since last August, for the baby’s third birthday, when the yard had been filled with overlarge, overdecorated pickups and charcoal smoke and tinny fast music blaring from speakers. Now the yard was winter dead and empty except for two resin lawn chairs stacked together, a pink-and-lavender tricycle tipped on its side, and Juanito’s big white Dodge Ram parked close to the house. Sweet was relieved to see the truck. The cops had impounded it when they arrested him in November, but apparently Misty Dawn had managed to come up with the money to pay the towing and storage fees. Sweet cringed, remembering; that had been the topic of their last phone conversation, actually. Her niece had called just before Thanksgiving wanting to borrow five hundred dollars to get the truck back. Sweet didn’t have it to give her. Misty had said she understood, but had she really? A flicker of curtain in the front window caught Sweet’s eye. That was the trigger, finally, that made her get out and go to the door.
    She rapped on the frame—no answer, so she opened the screen and pounded on the wood. “Misty Dawn, it’s me, hon! Aunt Sweet!” The house only had four rooms, the small kitchen and bathroom here on the left side, a cramped living room and bedroom on the right. There was no way Misty Dawn didn’t hear. “I saw the curtain move!” Sweet called. “I know you’re up.” Still it was several minutes before her niece opened the door. A big girl, solidly built, with a beautiful face and long sand-colored hair, Misty Dawn stood in the doorway in jeans and a black T-shirt. “Hi,” she said, her voice faint, almost bored sounding.
    â€œHi,” Sweet said. There was an awkward pause. Misty Dawn held the door partway closed, the way you’d try to ward off Jehovah’s Witnesses. The blank look on the girl’s face confirmed what Sweet had expected—she didn’t know anything about her grandpa’s arrest. “I tried to call last night,” Sweet said, “but it didn’t go through.”
    â€œI ran out of minutes. I got to wait till payday to get another card.”
    â€œOh. I was worried you’d had to get a different phone.” Her niece stared at her. Not a good start. Last night, when she’d heard that recording, it had occurred to Sweet that the cops might have confiscated the TracFone, too, same as the pickup, when they arrested Juanito. The point being: How many times had Sweet tried to call Misty Dawn since her husband got deported three months ago? Up until last night, actually, not once. “Can I come in?”
    Misty slid her gaze past Sweet’s shoulder to the Taurus parked in the yard. “I was just getting ready to go to the store.”
    â€œOkay. I’ll take you. But I gotta come in first and use the bathroom. I’m about to pop.”
    Her niece pulled the door open, and Sweet hurried through the narrow kitchen into the bathroom. She could hear SpongeBob’s goofy voice burbling in the front room. Moments later, pumping liquid soap into her palm at the tiny lavatory, she was struck, as always, by what a meticulous housekeeper her niece had