“This isn’t the way to Mr. Jackson’s,” I mumble, staring out of the passenger window of Aunt Faye’s car at the tall townhomes squeezed onto the lot where the Auto Depot used to be.
She sighs. “Yeah…we’re not going to Mr. Jackson’s. I told him I’d be by later this week.”
“So, where are we going?”
“To run an errand.”
That painful silence settles between us again while we pass Lockwood. She smells loud. The skunky scent clings to her clothes and hair.
I crack the passenger window to let the warm outside air filter in and glance at her out of my peripheral. “Uncle Kenny know you smoke weed with Ms. Vera when you’re upset with him?”
She squeezes the steering wheel, keeping her hands at ten and two. “Lovie…”
“I’m not being a smartass. I just want to know.”
“No…he doesn’t.”
We roll up to the red light at Bayou Bend, and my body angles itself toward the sidewalk, yearning for a piece of Rich, but LaTanya isn’t weaving in and out of traffic with her cup. My eyes dart from the bus stop to an empty parking lot where a few people are sprawled out underneath blankets.
“She’s probably over at the Green’s rooming house. Senior pays for her room there,” she mutters. “It’s decent.”
My shoulders drop. “So all those times you stopped and gave her money, it was because you knew her…”
“I would’ve given her money regardless because she’s a woman, but yes. The first time I met her was at the Mitchell’s down in the Bottoms. Lorraine was having a barbecue for her husband’s birthday, and LaTanya was there—pretty, with skin the color of sugarcane molasses, and so drunk she could hardly walk straight. I wanted to hate her when I first saw her. I wanted to hate hersodamn bad. I remember Senior left me in the kitchen to go talk to Mr. Mitchell and LaTanya waltzed up to me in her halter top and low-rise jeans—looking me up and down like she was gonna swing.” She snorts out a laugh. “Then she asked me if I had held and kissed her baby goodnight beforeme and Senior left the house. I told her I had snuck and done it when Senior was waiting for me in the truck. I thought she wanted to argue about me taking care of her kid, or I figured she might’ve been jealous that I was dating Senior.”
There’s a lightness in her voice I’ve never heard—not even when her and Uncle Kenny were on good terms.
She sputters out a low laugh. “Do you know that lady flung her drunk ass in my arms and told me to keep doing what I was doing because her baby needed that? She said he needed a nice woman in his life to hold him because she couldn’t. I learned that night that LaTanya’s not a fighter.”
I smirk. “So Rich is the product of a lover and a fighter?”
She lets out another quiet laugh and tosses her head against the headrest. “Yeah, I guess he is.”
She pushes on the gas pedal, and we glide through LaTanya’s intersection, leaving their memories behind. That painful silence comes back and settles between us again.
Aunt Faye clears her throat. “So, what’s your plan?”
“For?”
“For AJ and that NDA. Kenny texted me and said Blake called him.”
“Rich said not to sign anything, so I won’t. AJ should move on and Blake should lose Uncle Kenny’s number.”
“You can’t live and die by what Rich says. Y’all ain’t together.”
“You live and die by what Senior says, and y’all aren’t together. As a matter of fact, you go to Beatrice’s and sit by his bedside every week, and y’all aren’t together. That’s why I’ve been cleaning Mrs. Farris’ place alone. It’s why I cleaned Rich’s house alone when I first came home because you were at the Barnes’ ranch—living and dying by whatever Senior ingrained in you.”
I cut my eyes at her, waiting for an explosion of emotions to burst out of her like they did when her and Uncle Kenny argued,but she props her arm on the window and drops her head in her hand instead.
“I know about everything—Jamari, the debt, Melo Barnes—all of it.”
She stares at the back of the pickup truck in front of us with a stone-like expression.
“Are you gonna say anything?” I ask.
“What am I supposed to say? What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know. Something.Anything.Tell me it’s all gonna work itself out like you told me it would the second time AJ cheated. Tell me Rich will wake up one day and answer my calls and say he was just overreacting. Tell me something.” My throat and chest tighten. “I…I just need something.”
