Chapter
One
AVEN COMPTON
Desperation made for strange homecomings. The last place I wanted to be at 2:03 a.m. was on my sister Raina’s front porch with two overstuffed suitcases, a twist-out hanging on by a prayer, and an ankle throbbing with each shift of my weight. I’d run out of options somewhere between my Atlanta eviction and the layover in Miami, which stretched so long I swore the airline was punishing me.
I stood with my finger over the doorbell, calculating the likelihood of Raina actually murdering me versus making me wish I were dead. The mental math wasn’t looking good. I knocked instead, softer than I should have, like somehow it would make my unannounced arrival less offensive.
The porch light flicked on with alarming quickness. Raina must’ve still been up, which was worse. At least if I had woken her, she would be too groggy to gather her thoughts for a proper read. I straightened my spine, sucked in my stomach, and tried to look less like a woman whose credit score was circling the drain.
Raina opened the door with a “Don’t play with me” look on her face. Her bonnet was secured around her edges, armscrossed like she was guarding the gates to success itself, and her eyes… Lord, those eyes narrowed into slits that could slice a person’s dignity clean in half.
“You cannot be serious right now,” Raina said, her voice low but sharp as a blade. She didn’t step aside to let me in. She just stood there taking inventory of my disheveled state.
I attempted a smile. “Surprise, surprise?”
Raina’s nostrils flared. “A surprise is receiving balloons on your birthday. This is a situation.” She gestured at my entire existence.
“Can I at least come in before you tell me off? My feet are killing me, and I think your neighbor across the street is recording this for his social media.”
She looked past me to the dark house across the way, then back at me with suspicion. Raina sighed the kind of sigh that started somewhere around her ankles and worked its way up through generations of Black maternal disappointment. She stepped aside just barely enough for me to squeeze through with my bags.
The house was quiet and smelled like the scented candles Raina had been using since I could remember. Some things never changed, even when everything else did.
“You want to tell me why you’re at my door at two in the morning looking like you escaped from Alcatraz? Why couldn’t you pick up a phone to let somebody know you were coming? I got kids sleeping upstairs, Aven, five of them,” Raina whispered harshly, closing the door behind me.
“Four… Junior is at Howard,” I corrected automatically.
“Don’t correct me about my own children. I still pay his phone bill, so he counts. What is all this? Are you moving in now? After a year of ‘living your best life’ and sending nothing but Facepage pictures from beaches we couldn’t pronounce?” She pointed at my bags.
I winced. The knot in my throat grew larger. “It’s temporary. Just until I?—”
“Until you what? Find yourself again? Get back on your feet? Write the great American novel?”
Each question was like a tiny dart hitting exposed skin, and I blew out air.
“Why didn’t you call?”
“I lost my phone charger,” I replied. I looked down at the dead cell phone in my hand.
“Grown women don’t show up at two in the morning with no plan, no job, and no charger.” She glanced at my hand.
“Can I borrow a charger?”
“Mmhmm.” Raina’s eyes traveled from my face down to my scuffed sneakers and back up again. “You look tired, Aven, skinny, and like you haven’t deep conditioned in a month of Sundays.”
That was Raina-speak for “I’m worried about you,” but I wasn’t ready for her concern. It would break me faster than her criticism.
“The flight was trash. We had layovers in Miami, Panama, and I’m pretty sure we circled hell waiting room before landing. They served us stale peanuts rationed from thefirstBush administration,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.
Raina wasn’t biting on my humor.
I shrugged. “I didn’t call because you would’ve talked me out of coming.”
“Damn right I would have. You can’t keep running every time something goes wrong, Aven. That’s not how adult life works.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from being disrespectful. “I’m not running. I’m… regrouping.”
