Where's Ana?

Ugh. It never rains but it pours.

My mother called the other day, in a frantic state. After her hemming and hawing for awhile and a lot of "I don't want to bother you...." I was able to piece together this story.

Due to the poor choices my sister Kari has made in the past, she is 20 years old with two children, ages 2 and 5, with 2 different men, neither of whom she is currently with. Kari and my niece and nephew live with my mother (We have different dads, and Kari's father, like her two baby daddies, is not in the picture).

Kari was doing an ok job taking care of the kids, but relying on my mom heavily for help, and my mom was allowing that to happen. Then Kari got a new boyfriend, and she pretty much stopped taking care of the children. Kari would just sleep the entire time she was at home, and as soon as my mom would come home from work, Kari would leave the kids with my mom and then go off to places unknown.

Finally, my mom had had enough. She's 61 years old-- she doesn't want to have to take care of two babies. So she told Kari she had to move out. Her logic was that if Kari was living on her own, it would force her to take care of the kids.

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Maybe not the best decision, in hindsight.

Kari said she moved in with her boyfriend. That was a week ago. But then, my nephew's father, Drew, came to my mother's house.

Kari had dropped my nephew off for a visit and hadn't been back. THAT WAS A WEEK AGO. Holy crap, Kari has gone off the deep end.

"OK, so where's Kari?" I asked. And where's my niece, Ana?

My mother has no idea. Kari's boyfriend lives in a town 30 minutes away from where Kari works and from where Ana goes to preschool, and Kari doesn't have a car. My mother doesn't believe that Kari is staying with the boyfriend.

I told my mother that a more likely scenario is that she's staying with the boyfriend and not going to work.

My mother knows that Kari still must be in town, or at least traveling into town, because each time my mother comes home from work, she sees that Kari has been to the house during the day, picking up her mail and picking up more of her belongings. So she knows that Kari is ok.

But the question still remains-- where is Ana? And why did Kari leave Jacob (my nephew) and not return?

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My mother wanted me to find out where Kari was. I live 40 minutes away from all of this drama, so there wasn't a whole lot I could do. But I called Kari and left a message. Then I texted her. Then I went on Facebook, but I saw that she hadn't been on there since January (is Facebook not cool anymore?).

I went on Instagram, and saw that she had posted a photo there just week earlier, so I left a message for her to call me there, too.

That was two days ago. No response.

There are other people I could try to contact-- Jacob's dad, Kari's other half sister, etc.-- but I don't know that I need to do that.    We know that Jacob's ok, we  know that Kari's ok..... we assume that Ana is ok.  Likewise, there are things my mom could do-- go to the preschool to make sure Ana is attending, drive by Ana's job-- but my mother is stubborn. She wants Kari to apologize to her.

Yeah, right. Kari is 20. An apology isn't likely.