I blank my mind to the memories and follow him to the rear of the house, deliciously scented with spicy meat sauce.
“Mick!” Isabelle stops layering the tortillas to rush toward me. “I thought I heard your voice.” Her pretty smile is bright, but the semicircles beneath her eyes are more pronounced than they were three days ago.
“Hey, Bells.” I catch her up in a bear hug, giving her an extra squeeze. I pray I’ve done the right thing, because I’m about to rip open a Pandora’s box.
“Coke?” Victor asks me, his head in the fridge; oblivious to what’s in store.
“Sure.” I remove my jacket and drape it over the back of the chair. Then I sit, running my hand through my hair. It’s opportune that Dwayde and Gabi aren’t home. I need to do this now. Before I share a meal with them.
Victor flips the lids off the Coke bottles and slides one across the kitchen table. He lowers his long, wiry body to straddle the opposite chair and eyeballs me. After thirty years, we’re more brothers than friends, and he can read me well. “What’s on your mind, Mick?”
I take a swig of cola, wishing that it were something stronger. My gaze moves from Victor, his narrowed eyes set in his probing cop expression, to Isabelle, preparing the meal, and then back to Victor. I struggle with how best to phrase it, but no amount of sugarcoating is going to make this go down easy. Better to just get it said, I decide, and blurt out my confession without preamble: “I went to see Deeana today about taking the case.”
Everything goes still.
As if in freeze frame, the bottle angling toward Victor’s mouth stops midway. Isabelle’s hand pauses on the oven door handle, and for one countless moment the quiet is deafening. I can hear only the erratic beats of my heart.
Then things go back into motion. Isabelle turns toward me and Victor slams his bottle down on the table with enough force to rattle the salt and pepper shakers. “Christ! I made it clear that I didn’t want her representing Dwayde.” Each word is threaded through clenched teeth.
“You did, but Dee’s the best choice,” I argue in my defense and begin ticking off the reasons on my fingers. “She comes highly recommended by your lawyer and Dwayde’s social worker. She has the credentials and experience. Her practice is exclusively custody and guardianship cases, so she knows all the legal ins and outs. I was at her office, Victor. I saw the drawings and thank you cards from kids posted on the wall.
“You know Dee’s background. Helping children is more than just a job to her. Having been a foster kid herself, she’ll be able to relate to Dwayde. Plus, she’s as tough as ever and has the balls to stand up to his grandparents’ high-powered attorney. If not for our past, you would have already hired her.”
“But we do have a past,” Victor counters, “and you’d be smart to remember that.”
“I remember just fine, but it has nothing to do with Dwayde.”
“Maybe not. But it has everything to do with you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, certain I’m not going to like the answer.
“I think you know.”
Jaw muscles ticking, I curve my hand around the bottle. “Why don’t you spell it out for me just the same?”
“All right, I will,” he says, as if relishing the chance to knock some sense into me. “When Dee took off, you were a fucked-up mess.”
“Victor!” Isabelle interjects.
“I’m not going to coddle him, Isabelle,” he continues without taking his hard gaze off me. “I never thought I’d see the day when you’d stop writing. Or when you’d start drinking like your old man.”
Those first few years after Dee left are tattooed on my soul. I don’t need Victor’s swift kick in the nuts to remind me of when sleep wouldn’t come unless I was passed out drunk. When getting through the next hour wasn’t possible without a shot of Jack Daniels. When no matter how much booze fogged my brain or how many willing bodies I used to exorcise Dee, I still couldn’t forget.
“I know you loved her, Mick. We all did. But you took it the hardest. And it still affects you, man. That’s why you don’t stick with one woman. It’s why you chose to follow your father’s ambitions instead of your own. It’s why you haven’t written in years.”
The armchair psychology grates on me, mainly because it’s true. Swirling the last of my cola, I say with a nonchalance I’m not close to feeling, “Let me know when you’ve finished your analysis,Doctor, so we can get back to the matter at hand.”
“Refute it, then,” Victor challenges me. “Better yet, tell me you saw Dee today and didn’t feel a damn thing.”
“I went to see Dee today only to hire her,” I repeat, sidestepping the question.
Victor snorts with derision. “I don’t know which pisses me off more. That you took it upon yourself to go hire my son the very lawyer I told you I didn’t want or that I can see you’re already halfway back in love with her.”
Temper as vicious as a pit bull snaps at my throat. Springing to my feet, I brace my palms on the table and lean forward. Victor shoots out of his chair just as fast, and we square off, nose to nose.
Good.I’m itching for a fight. It’s what I know. “What I feel or what I do about Deeana is none of your fucking business.”
“It involves my son so I’m making it my business.”
