“You’ve never said it.”
Cherie extracted her hand and straddled his body. Resting her chin on his breastbone, she smiled down at him. “I love you, Reese Matthews, and I’m almost certain that one of these days, I’ll become Mrs. Matthews and the mother of your baby.”
“Baby? What about babies? I grew up an only child, and I always wanted a brother or sister.”
Reese had just given her the opening she needed to ask him about his mother. “You always talk about your grandmother, but never your mother.”
“That’s because I know so little about my mother. She died a few months after she had me.”
Cherie listened intently, struggling not to cry when Reese revealed what his mother had told his grandmother after she delivered a baby boy. “So she never told anyone who fathered her baby?”
Reese closed his eyes. “No. If she’d just met the guy at the party, then I doubt if they were familiar with each other. Off-campus and frat parties are breeding grounds for male students trolling for women to have sex with. I have photographs of my mother, and I look nothing like her, so I assume I resemble my father.”
“Did you ever take one of those DNA ancestry tests to see if you’re connected to someone you don’t know or never met?”
“No. And I don’t want to know. Gram and Papa were the best parents a kid could ask for. My grandfather wasn’t overly affectionate, but I knew he loved me and would say on occasion that he would walk through hellfire to protect me. I know he was disappointed that his daughter had dropped out of college, but at least he lived long enough to witness my college graduation. I’ve heard folks say he was never the same after losing his daughter. He stopped attending church services and spent all his free time in the woodshed.”
“What about your grandmother?” Cherie asked.
“My Gram was an angel. She was kind, gentle, and sometimes overly affectionate. She was known as a hugger and always had a kind word for everyone except Monica.”
“Who’s Monica?”
“She was my ex. I’d brought her home on leave to meet my family, and she openly insulted my grandparents when she complained about spending her vacation on Coates Island when we should’ve gone to the Caribbean.”
“She actually said that in their presence?”
“Yup. We were sitting at the dinner table, and when Papa asked her how she liked Coates Island, she didn’t even bother to hide her disdain; she said she’d prefer spending the holiday in the Caribbean rather than in a dead-ass town with a bunch of boring-ass folks. Papa got up from the table and walked out, and once I was alone with Gram, she warned me to divorce Monica because she was going to try to ruin my life.”
“Did she?” Cherie asked yet another question at the same time she rolled off Reese to lie beside him. Once again, she was shocked by Reese’s ex-wife’s out-of-control behavior. “If my older brother had brought a girl home and if she’d opened her mouth to say what your ex said, my Grammie would’ve reached across the table and slapped the taste out of her mouth. My grandmother spoiled the hell out of her grandchildren, but she was old-school and didn’t believe in sparing the rod. It was different with my mother; she didn’t believe in spanking her children, and that became a source of contention between the two of them.”
“Your grandmother spanked you?”
“What she called spanking was one slap on the behind. It never hurt, but we pretended to cry because we knew she would feel bad about punishing her grandbabies.”
Reese chuckled. “Did it work?”
“Every time.”
“So you guys didn’t mind making Grandmama feel guilty about punishing you?”
“Not at the time. It was only after she passed away that I realized how we’d manipulated her. I can honestly say we were good kids who didn’t get into trouble like some of the other kids in the neighborhood. We were in the house just before the streetlights came on, and there was a rule that we all had to share meals together. There was also a hard-and-fast rule that we weren’t allowed to have kids in the house when no adults were present, and if someone came over to study, we had to stay in the kitchen. The one time my mother discovered that Jamal had invited a girl over to study for an exam and they wound up in his bedroom, all hell broke loose. Mom told the girl to leave and never darken her door again, and then she read Jamal the riot act. Jamal was trying to plead his case that the girl insisted they go his bedroom even though he’d told her they had to stay in the kitchen, but my mother was past listening to reasoning. Her greatest fear was that her sons would get caught up in the cycle of fathering children out of wedlock, like so many other young men in the neighborhood. This girl must have had some fixation with Jamal, because a year later her name was mentioned after he was murdered.”
“You think she had him killed because if she couldn’t have him, then no one would?”
Cherie took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly. “I don’t know. What I do know is that Jamal had begun dating another girl at the high school, and they had enlisted together after they graduated.”
“Did this girl’s name ever come up in the police investigation?”
“I don’t know, Reese. The police came around asking questions, but after a couple of weeks, it was listed as a cold case. It was know nothing, see nothing, hear nothing, and say nothing, and after a while, Jamal Thompson’s name was added to the growing list of young men who have lost their lives due to street violence.”
“Now I truly understand what you had to do to save your younger brothers.”
“Jamal’s death hit my grandmother hard, and most folks said she died from grief. Starting a week after Jamal’s funeral, Grammie never left her apartment again and barely touched the food my mother left for her. Three months later, she was gone. The death certificate listed her death as natural causes, but I believed she willed herself to die because Grammie literally and figuratively worshipped her first grandchild.”
“Life is fickle, Cherie, that’s why we have to let the ones we love know they are loved. And I’m glad your mother is coming for a visit, because it must be lonely for her with her children living in different states.”
Cherie recalled her mother’s complaints, when she told her she was moving to North Carolina, that her children were deserting her. “I know,” she said in a hushed tone. “That’s why I’m going to try to convince her to move closer to me.”
