Uncensored (New York Unraveled #5)

4. Trystan

Tryncle.

That's what Aldrich used to call me. When he was just learning to speak, he would mesh two words together. Tryncle was his version of 'Trystan' and 'Uncle'. Even when he started speaking clearly, it stuck and I was always known by that name from then on. Calling me Tryncle again that day was the first sign of familiarity he had shown me. Sure, he was always excited to play with me when I came over. But he was six; he'd be excited to see anyone who brought him toys. The affection wasn't there. Not until his unexpected breakdown.

That day changed a lot of things. He clung to me tightly and didn't let me go, no matter how much I assured him that I would be back the next day to play with him again. Ginger asked me to stay the night so he wouldn't freak out. I was surprised she offered, especially after what I'd said to her. If she really did hate me, her worry for my nephew trumped that.

I gently rocked Aldrich to sleep. I didn't understand much of what he was muttering; only a few words here and there like 'Tryncle' and 'don't go' and 'scared'. Whatever it was that had frightened the little guy so badly, it definitely wasn't the breaking of a lamp.

Once he was asleep, I tucked him under the sheets and ducked out. Ginger was sitting on the floor in the living room, sipping wine and tapping on her phone. When she saw me, she took the second glass she had kept there and poured some for me.

"He's finally sleeping," I said quietly and gently nudged the alcohol away from me. After the whole shebang of hurting her while drunk, I wasn't taking my chances. And I'd promised I'd be a better guardian. I wasn't going to fuck it up by reverting to my old habits.

Ginger nodded but I doubted she heard me, distracted as she was. "The sound of the lamp crashing probably triggered bad memories for him," she murmured.

I touched her arm comfortingly. She seemed more distraught than I was. "Hey," I said softly, "He's okay now."

"I know," she said with a sigh. "Still, it's really hard to be on the other side of the door. To hear him crying and not be able to do anything."

Anybody with halfway functioning eyes could tell you that the woman adored Aldrich but it still surprised me how much she did. I had seen mothers who didn't have that amount of empathy for their own children. Hell, my own didn't care about me more than one would about exotic pets to parade around. Ginger had been with Al for only a few months, yet she found the heart to be more distraught about him than anybody else in her situation would have been.

She took him to Ajax the next day. She was more than sure that he would take one look at him, wave a magic wand and -voilà!- he's cured. He seemed like a great and accomplished guy but he wasn't a fairy godmother in a puffy purple dress. We waited two hours for him to finish doing whatever he was doing. The verdict was that he wasn't sure. "I'll keep looking into it," he said, although it sounded like he had a pretty fair idea but he didn't want to tell us yet.

A few days after the incident, Ginger called me to the orphanage. She sounded like her normal polite self, except this time it had no fake cheery spin to it. That's how I knew something was wrong- when she stopped trying to mask her blatant dislike of me.

I found her sitting on the stairs beside the reception that led up to Ajax's office, her hands tucked between her legs like she was trying to warm them, her head drooping down. Elaine was surreptitiously glancing at her from the reception. When her eyes landed on me, she gave me a glare of warning before nodding towards Ginger.

"Hey, are you okay?" I said, hesitantly placing a hand on her shoulder.

She glanced up at me and licked her lips slowly as if she was mulling over her words carefully. Her mouth opened slightly to speak but her eyes flicked behind me and froze. A curly haired kid in his early teens with reddened eyes was dragging his feet through the door with some effort. I had been in his situation enough to know how drunk he was. The last rays of the sun hadn't even completely disappeared yet and the kid was drunk enough to not be able to walk in a straight line.