I also didn’t like that he’d sat around taking calls instead of helping with Thanksgiving dinner prep on Wednesday night.
Or that dig he’d made about Noelle needing to watch her weight when he told us this morning that he’d been called to the hospital for an emergency surgery. It reminded me of how Dennis used to pick at me for not losing the weight fast enough after Noelle was born.
Bradford had insisted that we wait for him to eat but hadn’t ended up getting back until four, which meant I had to scarf everything down so I could make my six o’clock bus back to Minneapolis.
Sure, Bradford was a doctor who’d just been promoted to head of surgery, but that didn’t mean the pompous jerk actually deserved my sweet and brilliant daughter.
Still, I was the last person to give anyone relationship advice after the way things had ended with Noelle’s father.
A chill went up my spine, thinking of that dark time. I’d had plenty of money, a big house, and a husband who everyone on the outside assumed was Prince Charming. But after Noelle’s birth, my dream life had become a nightmare of resignedhumiliation and carefully hidden bruises—one I never fully told my youngest daughter about.
Then or now.
“Not everyone’s like my dad, you know.”
Ironically, Noelle’s assertion pulled me out of my worried thoughts about her current boyfriend being a little too much like her father.
“You’re only fifty-five. If you’re not going to move back to Gemidgee, maybe it’s time for you to start getting out there. Find someone to settle down with. You could even get married again—like that one woman from Enjenue and the lead singer of Death Buddha. I mean, the dating pool in Minneapolis has got to be better than the one in Gemidgee.”
Not necessarily. A few of my fellow divorcees at the Black Heritage Museum had warned me off dating. Apparently, the guys around our age who weren’t trying to turn you into a side piece were either looking for a nurse or a purse.
Besides, even though it had been ten years since the divorce, just the thought of a man touching me filled my stomach with nausea.
Still, for Noelle’s sake, I said, “Maybe. Maybe next year will be a fresh start for me.”
The bus driver honked, signaling final boarding.
“Sorry, honey, I’ve got to get on this bus.”
“Okay. I’ll call you next week to make plans for Christmas.” Noelle gave me another quick hug. “Text me when you get home safely.”
“I will,” I promised, scurrying toward the bus.
Little did I know that would be my first lie to her of many in the coming months.
After the city bus dropped me off a few blocks from my two-story apartment building, I put on my Walking Home playlist, which was mostly a boatload of Tina Turner and Joni Mitchell songs.
But in another fit of irony, the random shuffle chose “I Count My Blessings,” that first collaboration between West Nygard and Reina Smith, one of the singers from Enjenue—a ’90s girl group whose single album I listened to nonstop back when I’d been a UMG senior majoring in Fine Arts.
I’d focused on sculpting, and I’d already convinced the music department to place my thesis project,Purple Reign—a life-sized, purple-veined soapstone depiction of Prince, with angel wings made of music notes—in their lobby when I was done.
The only thing was, I’d never finished that sculpture. I’d discovered I was pregnant with Holly when I began throwing up nonstop halfway through my chiseling efforts. The voice that had told me the Prince statue was hidden inside that block of soapstone went silent and was replaced with more practical concerns. Like the cost of formula and diapers.
Costs I’d mostly had to bear alone after Holly’s bartender father, Naheem, died in a motorcycle accident shortly after she was born, without so much as a life insurance policy to his name.
Leaving me wide open and vulnerable to the aspiring politician who’d strolled into the department store where I was working while struggling to get by as a single mother.
Dennis had seemed like a dream come true when he asked me out. I’d just helped him pick an emergency replacement shirt after he spilled coffee on himself right before a big speech about financial preparedness he was supposed to give at UMG.
I’d warned him against asking me out. “This is a rare super-normal-looking season for me. I’m growing my hair back out after an unfortunate home dye job.”
“What color were you going for?” he’d asked.
“Hot pink.”
He’d just given me a smooth smile. “Well, lucky, I caught you when I did. In my opinion, your natural color suits you way better.”
Back then, I’d thought his acceptance of me looking what I felt was my opposite-of-a-cool-artist worst was a sign of his innate goodness.
