155 - Vin and Tink
*Parenting is making mistakes for the right reasons and hoping that your kids will eventually forgive you. - Sid*
It would be Camille’s last Thanksgiving that she would be living in Louisiana. She tried to put her new cooking skills to use and assist Rosie and the other women. They promptly kicked her out of the kitchen and had her go watch football with the men.
Both Trigg and Darkness offered to fly Vin down for the holiday. He opted to stay in Massachusetts and Camille did not blame him at all. She was looking forward to next year when she would be back up there.
She loved the guys down here, even if it all did start off a little rocky and tense. After she called the old ladies out for their treatment of the club bunnies, they became friendly. Eh. The club girls had accepted her first when she did not judge them and was kind. Both of which she thought were bare basic human kindness.
Vin called from the Shack and ended up being caught in the middle of rolls being tossed across the room. Laughing, Camille just asked if it was Evie or Law. The phone was silent before he asked a question, unable to hide his surprise.
“This is normal?”
“This is worse than normal.”
“Momma C, you’re not helping any.”
With an amused laugh she simply moved on to tell him when they would be there the following month for Christmas. Once everything was settled, she handed over the phone to his sister. Nicki and Mitch took the phone to room that Camille still kept at the clubhouse. Darkness and Camille gave the siblings the privacy that they were needing.
Over the past year or so, they discovered that the kids’ lives had been tightly controlled. Nicki’s even more than either of the boys. Camille had read through Keisha’s journals before handing them over to Vin. They had been very enlightening, and she believed that the woman’s children deserved to understand why she made the choices that she did.
Her professional life had been closely watched and scrutinized. After she gave birth to Vin, while working through her residency, she had a mental break due to post partem depression. She had been hospitalized for two weeks and medicated after that. When her male supervisors and instructors began to question her need of the mod stabilizers, she weaned herself of them.
More than one entry addressed the irony of her trying to live her life without the need for any type of mood stabilizer while prescribing them to patients and recommending treatment with a psychologist. She suffered from anxiety, and it was made worse when she had Nicki.
Only a week before they were flying up for Christmas and New Years Eve, Vin called Camille in the middle of the night and admitted that he was in the bathroom of the dorm room that he shared with Colton. Just as he had suspected, she had been awake and in her office.
“Did you read all of my mom’s journals?”
Camille moved from her desk chair to the day bed and gently stroked Tink as he lay sleeping on the dark comforter. “I have. I’m pretty sure that I know what you’ve recently read.”
“I have a half sibling somewhere,” he said softly. “She never even found out what it was.”
“Do you want to look into it?”
“I don’t know. I think…” he took a deep breath and then let it out as a heavy sigh. “I think that’s a decision that Nicki needs to make.”
“Okay, but I don’t want to tell her yet. She… she has some more healing to do before she is ready for that conversation.”
“Yeah…” she heard the sniffle, and it broke her heart. “It was her uncles. Do you think…” there was another deep sigh. “Do you think that’s why mom always sent Nicki up to her room to watch the younger kids?”
“It’s possible. That may also be why your mom always had her doing chores when the family was around. If she was busy and had things to get done, Nicki wasn’t around the men that abused Keisha.”
“The… It’s… Damn it. I see her in a completely different way now. She was… she was mean… and cruel but she was trying to protect us. Protect Nicki.”
A heavy silence fell between them and the miles and states between them stretched out even further. It was times like this that she was older with more life experience. There was only so much that you could pull from reading books and therapy. Getting up, she moved towards her small refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water.
“Have you talked to Oma about this?” Camille asked as she sat back down on the day bed.
Tink stretched beside her, pressing his back against the side of her leg. He let out a loud breath and then yawned before closing his eyes. She wished that she could sleep as well as he could. Hell, as well as just about everyone else in the house could. Glancing out the window, she saw that Darkness was out in his woodshop.
“No,” he let out a deep breath. “I don’t know if I want anyone in the family or the club to know.”
“I get that,” she agreed.
Her eyes fell on a picture of her and her best friend, Priscilla. They were both on the horses from the North Star Ranch. They stood on either side of the Hereford bull named after Celt. Smiling, the solution came to her.
“There’s two people that I can suggest that you go talk to. Celt, because you can give him five bucks, he’ll claim it as a retainer and then ask you a few legal questions and claim anything that you tell him under the client and lawyer privilege or whatever it is.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Okay, have you met Carly?”
He chuckled, “Yeah, Colton drags me out to the ranch on the Sundays that we’re home.”
She laughed, “How’s Celt the Cow doing?”
“He’s doing good,” Vin chuckled. “Colton takes pictures of him every time that we are out.”
“I’m sure he does.”
Tink twitched in his sleep and gave a little yelp. Camille reached over, resting a hand on his ribs, and he settled down. If only settling her oldest adoptive son was just as easy.
“Anything that you tell her stays between you, Carly and the cows.”
“She won’t tell you anything?”
“Only what you say that she can. If you tell her that she can’t tell me, she won’t. That woman knows more secrets about central Mass than the FBI could ever dream of.”
Moving her hand off Tink, she grabbed her water, spilling a little as she opened it one-handed. Tink yelped when the cold water hit his head, and he fell off the bed. Camille laughed as the confused dog stood up and looked around him. She snorted as she put the lid back on the bottle afraid that she would spill more.
“Tink just fell off the bed,” she said, making Vin laugh out loud.
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