“What?”
“What?” she echoes.
I furrow my brows in confusion. “What?”
She gives me a look that says,girl, really?“Hellooo?Dante?”
My cheeks instantly redden. “Oh.”
Ebony laughs. “I can’t say I entirely blame you for last night. Having sex in unconventional places is so much fun,” she says quietly, wagging her eyebrows suggestively.
“Have you and Chris…?” I trail off, but she knows exactly what I’m asking.
“Only once—in his office.”
I gasp and scoot closer to her. “Really?You never told me that, sis.”
She waves a dismissive hand. “It was so long ago, but it was probably the best we’ve ever had,” she admits.
“Is that when my nephew was conceived?” I ask in a teasingly stern way.
She nods. “Sure is.”
Ebony and I sit on the couch for a long time talking about relationships. There were men she’d dated that I had no idea she had been with before she met Chris, and if our parents had known, they’d have beat the shit out of her.
Eventually, we make it to my relationship with Evan, and I finally tell her everything he did to me while we were together.
She cries for me and promises to ask questions from now on so this doesn’t happen again. I reassure her that Dante is one of the good guys, and that he’d never do anything to hurt me.
Do I tell her he’d kill for me? Nope, and I certainly don’t tell her that he already has and that he’s the man who murdered Evan. That’s a secret that I’ll take to my grave, so Evan’s case will never be solved by the police.
After our heart-to-heart, I make the three of us sandwiches for lunch. We sit at the dining room table and listen to Matthew’s crazy toddler stories while we eat. When we’re done, Ebony asks me to watch him so she can go to the grocery store.
“I’ll be back soon,” Ebony says to Matthew as she slips on her shoes and grabs her keys. “Be good for Auntie, okay? I have to go to the store and get us some more food. You’re going to be a good listener while I’m gone, right?”
Matthew smiles and nods. I chuckle as she kisses his forehead.
“You really don’t have to go out, Ebony,” I say as she slings her purse over her shoulder. “I don’t want my being here to inconvenience you.”
After making sure she has everything she needs, she opens the front door and steps out onto the porch. “A childfree trip to the grocery store isn’t an inconvenience—it’s abreak, sis.”
She closes the door behind her, and I watch through the small window as she gets into her car and drives away. I turn back around to find Matthew excitedly playing with his Dalmatian that I won for him last night.
“Can we go outside?” he asks hopefully.
I chuckle. “Sure thing, kid.”
Ebony and Chris were in the middle of renovating their backyard before he got too busy with work and never finished, so it’s not safe to play back there. I go over the outside rules with Matthew, reiterating that he’s not allowed to leave the front yard for anything, not even to “walk” the Dalmatian.
“If you want to walk your dog, you and Aunt Essy will go together,” I say as I open the front door again. “Do you understand?”
He lets out an excited, “Yeah!” before running out to the yard.
I’m positive he’s still going to try and leave the yard, so I stand at the edge where it meets the street and walk back and forth. He does try to leave the yard a couple times when he sees a bunny or squirrel across the street, but for the most part, he stays close to the house.
Sighing, I look around the quaint little suburban street my sister’s family lives on. It’s like something out of a movie. Every single house looks exactly like one another: white picket fences, cream-colored paint, light brown roofs, and little black mailboxes with the red flags sticking up.
This could have been my life with Evan if he hadn’t been such an asshole, and we both made more money.
