One
Vaughn
They don’t tell you what happens when you’re not next of kin. There are so many ways for the authorities and the family to keep you in the dark when you and your partners don’t put anything in writing. When you keep your declarations private, that privacy comes with consequences. It takes three days for me to find out that Corrine isn’t just missing, she’s dead. And then I have to tell Shaw.
I can’t get the details my brain needs to paint the full picture and I’m not crazy enough to press her twenty-two-year-old brother for more information when he finally tells me why Corrine hasn’t returned from her weekend trip with her girls. There had been no trip. Just another man and a motel off 93 North. Both she and the man she’d been with are gone now, shot to death in the bed they’d shared. The shooter has taken his own life in the very same room. That is all Nathan says when he calls to tell me Corrine isn’t coming back to the apartment we share in Boston’s Back Bay. That’s all the information I have to give Shaw when I tell him we’ll never see her again.
Now I’m sitting in the front seat of my Escalade as a few more mourners make their way up the short steps leading to her mother’s home in Roxbury. I shouldn’t be here. I never meant to come. That’s what I tell myself. That’s what I told Nathan when he told me to stay away. I just needed the address, because no matter how their mother feels about me or Shaw, Corrine Johnson was the love of our lives. Shaw and I weren’t invited to the service, but I can’t let this day pass, this moment, without at least trying to express my condolences to Corrine’s family. I’d planned to send flowers, but I’d waited until the last minute to order them. Drinking myself stupid as I’d listened to Shaw fighting his tears through my cell’s speaker function.
I found a florist nearby, thinking I’d drop them at the gravesite after the interment, but I don’t know where they’d laid her to rest. I only have the address to the house. I think of the night, two years ago, the first time I stood at the bottom of those short steps, waiting for Mrs. Johnson to welcome us into her home. The four of us cramming our way into the front room. Taking her gracious offers for drinks, unable to ignore the way she was glancing between Shaw and I.
The sound of Corrine’s nervous laugh when her mother finally came out with it and said, “So, which one of you is the boyfriend?”
Corrine had kept her eyes on her mother and her voice steady. “Both of them, mommy. The three of us are together.”
“Mrs. Johnson—” I started. But I didn’t get much further. I am still sure her screech of “What?! No. Absolutely not!” could be heard for blocks. Corrine did her best to explain that she knew—we all knew—it was an unusual relationship, but the three of us were in love. Mrs. Johnson wasn’t having it though, even when Shaw tried to tell her how much Corrine meant to him and how much I meant to the both of them. That had been her breaking point. Doesn’t matter how grown or successful you are, you can only push a Black mother so far before she’ll let you know exactly what you’renotgoing to do. She didn’t raise Corrine this way, she let us know. There were some colorful words I wanted to forget on the spot. Words that hurt Shaw in very specific ways, words that reminded him of the way his own father had rejected him.
She took turns passing the blame between him and me. Me for using the fact that I was a successful attorney as a distraction. And Shaw for, I don’t know the fuck what. His obvious good looks that he must use to get whatever he wanted, from whoever he encountered, the Lord Jesus Christ’s desires for his Earthly children be damned. Before long though, she concluded that we were both sexual deviants out to manipulate her beautiful, intelligent daughter who had nothing but the brightest future ahead of her. A future with darling children and a husband. One husband. There was no way in hell she’d be spending her time shacking up with two men. Men grown enough to know that what they were doing wasn’t right.
She said all this thinking Corrine and I had met at a work event. She had no clue that we met at a rope bondage demonstration thrown by my former dungeon master. She didn’t know thatCorrinewas the one who refused to be denied, the one who wanted Shaw and I both. All or nothing. But none of that mattered. We’d told her what was important. We loved each other. We wanted a future together, the three of us. Mrs. Johnson was not having it.
Corrine came to our defense and that’s when I’d known it was time for me and Shaw to go. Corrine insisted on staying behind. “I fucked up,” she said as she ushered us back down those short steps. “Let me talk to her alone. She’ll come around.”
Mrs. Johnson didn’t come around. Ever. We won over her baby brother, Nathan, and her cousin, Justine. A few of her friends were on board when they saw how well we treated her and how happy she was. But Mrs. Johnson banned us from her home and all family functions. She told Corrine she didn’t want to hear about us. She didn’t want to see us. She wanted her daughter to want more for herself than fleeting erotic entanglements. Corrine’s words. Not Mrs. Johnson’s.
My mother overcompensated. Insisted that the three of us come to her when we needed motherly love. Shaw took her up on the offer, but Corrine was hesitant. “Your mom is so… she’s a goddess,” she told me. “I hope you don’t expect me to live up to Lynetta Coleman. My beans and rice will never be that good,” she joked. At least I thought she was joking at the time. While Shaw was calling her Lynetta as soon as my mom requested it, Corrine never fully warmed to my mom. She stayed overly polite like an intrusive guest afraid to overstay their welcome.
And now Corrine is gone, her last moments on this Earth spent in the arms of a man who isn’t me or Shaw.
I’ve tried for days not to think of that motherfucker. What his name is, what he looks like, what it is about him that stopped Corrine from telling Shaw and me the truth. What did she need that we weren’t giving her?
I let out a deep breath and tell myself to go home. Or better yet, call in for the rest of the week and go to Shaw’s. Selfishly, I cut off the ignition and step out of my car, pulling my trench coat tight around my six-foot-six frame as I face the frigid February wind. There’s no snow on the ground, but it’s still cold as fuck. I grip the bouquet of white lilies and roses in my other hand as I make my way across the street. The front door opens before I step onto the opposite sidewalk and a Black dude around my age steps out on the tiny porch, tugging on his coat over a security guard uniform. Mrs. Johnson is right behind him.
She freezes as I approach the walkway.
“What in the hell are you doing here?”
“Auntie!” The guy calls out as she shoves him out of the way and marches toward me. Mrs. Johnson isn’t a small woman, but most people are short beside me. I stand still, bracing myself for the next thing that will tumble out of her mouth. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Nathan coming out of the front door. I keep my focus on his mother as she storms down the walkway.
“Mrs. Johnson, I’m sorry to show up like this—”
“You damn right, you’re sorry. With your sorry, perverted ass. You really think you can show up here today, of all days. Like you’re someone anyone in this family wants to see.”
Just in time, I see her hand rearing back. Maybe I owe her the release of slapping the shit out of me, but I know the fire in her eyes. I’d only seen it once before when my aunt caught my uncle cheating. That sort of rage doesn’t end with a slap. Mrs. Johnson wants to fight me. She’s hurting in a way I’ll never understand, burying her oldest child way before her time. I don’t blame her. She swings at me as I lean back, avoiding the first blow. I step to the curb, knowing all I can do is retreat. She stops in her tracks, but she’s still seething.
“You wanna bother someone? Go bother Josh Delinsky’s family. He was just like you. All you bum-ass, no-good motherfuckers just wanted to use my baby girl. None of you wanted to make an honest woman out of her. Just take, take, and now my baby girl is gone. I hope you're happy, Vaughn. You selfish—” I miss the last word as she charges toward me again, even though her son and her nephew are now trying to get between us. Still doesn’t make her message any less clear. All of this is my fault.
“Mommy,” Nathan begs. “Stop.”
“Everything okay here, folks?”
I turn to see two obvious cops in their matching black slacks and ill-fitting peacoats. The shorter of the two has a pathetic-looking bouquet of wildflowers in his hand. The taller one has a mustache that makes it clear he’s down to violate all kinds of civil rights. He eyes me as his partner steps up on the sidewalk.
“My guy was just leaving,” Corrine’s cousin says, giving me that look, like ‘no matter the situation, brotha to brotha, I don’t want to deal with the cops right now.’
“What’s your name son?” White-Supremacist Stache says like he’s my dad’s age and not a hot ten years older than me.
“I was just leaving,” I say as I hand the flowers I have with me to Nathan. Before he can take them, Mrs. Johnson slaps them out of my hand.
