Vince stared at Hershel. Him he didn’t like. That much he knew. “She’s hardly a nobody,” he said.
“You get my drift. What are you doing with her?”
It wasn’t lost on Vince, either, that he and Ricki were an odd couple in many ways. If couple was the word. It was too soon to go there, and they both knew it. “She’s a remarkable woman,” Vince said.
Hershel chuckled. “I’m sure she is. On her back. How old are you?”
Vince was about to fire back at Hershel for his little nasty remark about Ricki, but Ricki hit her knee against his knee. The last thing she needed was some testosterone battle.
Vince heeded her knee hit and held his tongue. “I’m forty,” he said.
“She’s not even thirty yet,” Hershel proclaimed. “Sounds like some cradle-robbing to me. But you still haven’t answered my question. What is a man like you doing with a girl like Rasheda?”
Vince wanted to lash out again, but he held on again. For Ricki. “It’s a long story,” he said.
“Oh I’ll bet it is,” Hershel responded as he looked accusatorily at his daughter.
Which angered Vince. And he couldn’t hold back any longer. “Whether you believe it or not, you have a wonderful daughter,” he fired back. “I’m honored to have gotten to know her.”
Davey and Mamie looked at Vince. And although Ricki felt warm inside to hear him, oranybody,say something so nice about her, she knew her father. He would view any kindness toward her as an affront to him. That was how he treated her and her siblings when they were kids. They didn’t deserve compliments in his eyes. He wanted them to be tough and hard like him, and that excluded anything positive.
“You praise her now because you apparently haven’t known her very long,” Hershel shot back. “But stick around. Your tune will change.”
Vince looked at Ricki’s mother. Why didn’t she speak up for her daughter? And although she was pretending to eat and be distracted by the food, he could see where she was simply moving the food around on her plate. She wasn’t eating at all. But whenever Mamie would look up, Vince also could see care and concern in her mother’s eyes, even if she was attempting to hide it.
Ricki saw it too. Her mother was her father’s prisoner in many ways. But her mother could have gotten out of that prison many times, and didn’t. She couldn’t get over that part either.
But Hershel moved on. He looked at Ricki. “Davey said you have something to tell us.”
“I do.”
Mamie looked up. “What is it about?” she asked her daughter.
“It’s about Erica, Mommy. I wanted to be the first to tell you and Daddy.”
“The first?” asked her father. “You think we don’t know what she did? She murdered that doctor. Everybody knows that.”
“Not that. What I’m talking about just happened.”
Hershel and Mamie were confused. “What just happened?” Mamie asked.
Ricki had to balance herself. Vince stopped worrying about her parents and placed his arm around Ricki’s waist. It was the help she needed to continue. “She’s dead, Mommy,” Ricki said as tears stained her eyes. “Erica’s dead.”
At first the silence in the house was deafening. Even Davey, who was standing behind his father, sat down in a chair against the wall. “Dead?” he said. Then he looked at his sister.
“What do you mean she’s dead?” her mother asked. “She’s in jail.”
“They said she . . . They said she . . .” Ricki covered her mouth. She couldn’t even say the words.
So Vince said them for her. “The police are saying Erica hung herself this morning.”
Hershel sat straight back in his chair. “What?”
Mamie let out a cry so guttural that Ricki jumped up from her chair and went and comforted her mother.
Hershel looked at Vince. “She’sdead? My child isdead?”
Vince was surprised by Hershel’s concern, but it was definitely there. “Yes sir,” he said.
