* * *
Later, Tonya was sitting in bed reading the novel she wanted to finish to find out who had killed the beauty queen when her cell phone rang. It was Darius returning her call. She picked it up before it rang again. “Hello.”
“Hey, Tee. I just got your voice mail message.”
“I called you because I need to tell you something.”
“What is it?”
“I want to tell you in person.”
A sigh came through the earpiece. “I can’t come tonight, because I’m bone tired and I’m about to go to bed.”
“Then it can wait until we see each other.”
“Come on, Tonya. Let’s not play games. Tell me now or forget it.”
There was something in Darius’s voice that indicated something was bothering him, and because she never wanted to be his analyst, she decided not to ask. “I’m moving to New Orleans.”
“When did you decide this?”
Tonya closed the book. “I told you when I came back from New Orleans this summer that I was thinking of moving down there.”
“Thinking, Tonya! Thinking is a lot different from actually making a decision.”
She counted slowly to ten. “You’re right. And I’ve made a decision to move to New Orleans, because there’s nothing keeping me here.”
“What about me?”
“What about you, Darius?”
“Don’t I mean anything to you?”
“Yes. You’re my friend.” She wanted to tell him he would never be more than a friend because she could not see herself living with or being married to him. There were occasions when he would stop talking altogether, and Tonya would be forced to tell him to leave.
“I’m your friend because you won’t allow me to be more than that.”
Tonya bit back the acerbic words on the tip of her tongue. “You knew when we started seeing each other that I didn’t want a commitment.”
“That’s probably because you were sleeping with someone else whenever you told me you couldn’t see me.”
“Good night and good-bye.” She ended the call. Tonya did not want to believe Darius had accused her of cheating on him. She stared at the phone in her hand. Seconds later she blocked his number. He wasn’t able to get into her building unless she let him in, and luckily he didn’t have the number to her landline.
“Never again,” she whispered.
Tonya now knew for certain she had made the right decision to start over in a new state, where she could control her own destiny. She would become Eustace’s apprentice, and once she opened the supper club, she planned to incorporate what she had learned from him with the dishes she had perfected while working at other restaurants.
She opened the book again, and when she finally closed it she was shocked by the ending. The beauty queen’s murder wasn’t a murder but a suicide. All the clues pointed to her lover, who had refused to leave his wealthy wife to marry her. Tonya placed the book on the bedside table, turned off the lamp, and pulled up the sheet and blanket over her shoulders.
Nydia had given her an A-plus on dinner, while she promised to teach her how to makepasteles—tamales filled with pork, chickpeas, yucca, olives, capers, and other spices—mofongo, alcapurría, andcoquito.
Sleep was elusive as Tonya found her mind filled with all that had happened earlier that day. She would become an innkeeper, Nydia planned to move in November first, and she had lost a lover.It’s all for the best, her inner voice reminded her. Once she believed in her instincts, she was able to fall asleep and not wake up again until ribbons of sunlight slipped between the slats of the window blinds.
* * *
She lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. It was a brand new day and the beginning of a new life for her. And in another three months she would leave her home state to put down roots in another one. She had told Darius there was nothing in New York to keep her there. Her parents were in Florida, and her daughter planned to live in Georgia. Moving to New Orleans meant she would be closer to her loved ones.
Sitting up and swinging her legs over the side of the bed, Tonya headed for the bathroom humming her favorite song: “O Happy Day.”
