“I can’t, Lovie.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s been twenty years and I’m still here fighting for his daddy to tell me the same shit! To tell me he’s been overreacting all this damn time! To tell me I can take care of him!” She slaps the steering wheel, and my body jerks. “IloveRich, but Sonia would roll over in her grave if I encouraged you to chase a man who killed somebody. Yes, what Jamari did to Arnez was horrific, but Rich took a life. This ain’t some movie where things get wrapped up with a neat lil’ bow in the end. This is the real world. I told you to be careful with him. I warned you.”
That light and dark feeling materializes again. It floats in that uncomfortable silence that keeps lingering between us. I feel it in the pit of my stomach along with that word—killed.
“The best thing for you to do is to move on from RichandAJ,” she murmurs in a trembling voice. “Blake said they’d give Kenny a new AC unit and punching bags for the gym if we signed that agreement, right?”
I nod, wrapping my arms around my middle to make that feeling settle as it thrashes against the bottom of my stomach.
“Forget that AC unit and those punching bags. Make him payyou. Take him to the goddamn cleaners for putting his hands on you and silencing you afterward. It won’t fix your head or your heart, but dammit he owes you. You take whatever money you can get out of him and go back to school, get yourself a car, a nice townhouse in midtown or something. Just get away from here.”
She drives into Heritage Bank’s half-empty parking lot and pulls into the first space she sees.
“But what if I can’t?” I ask, pressing down on my stomach.
“Youcan.”
“I…I can’t leave Rich here to fight this alone.”
“Rich is a grown man.”
“But I’m the strong one out of the two of us. That doesn’t mean he’s weak…it just means that…that my brain is different. Mentally, I’m the tough one.” I shake my head, glancing down at my trembling hands.
“Lovie, I…I’ll be here with Rich. I’m not gonna leave him high and dry. I love him like a son.”
“But he’s never had anybody to love him completely—not maternally, but in a relentless, unyielding way that only a lover can.Ilove him.”
“AndIlove his daddy, but look where that got me—living and dying by his every word while he holds a piece of me hostage. He has me so messed up in the head that I’m here after he told me not to do this.” She shoves the car’s gear into park, then points toward the quiet entrance of the bank. “I’m here—desperate and fighting for a way to come up with two million dollars to pay off Melo Barnes for his son because of that piece of me he keeps with him. I’m about to ruin my marriage over him and that missing piece to my heart he just won’t give back.”
She lets out a quiet choke and stares at me with bloodshot eyes. “Rich is his daddy’s son. I can’t tell you that you can undothirty years of bullshit ingrained in his head, and I can’t sit here and tell you he’s gonna get away with what he did. I just can’t.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SIX
LOVIE
Half a mil.
That’s how much money the loan officer at Heritage Bank said Aunt Faye and Uncle Kenny could get for Worthing.
“Maybe six hundred thousand. I wouldn’t put you at a mil, Mrs. Fairchild. These are just rough numbers, of course. We’d have to get an appraisal, and get you and Mr. Fairchild’s financials,” he droned.
And both of their signatures.
He said nothing can happen without Kenny Fairchild’s signature.
“Take this term sheet home and go over the numbers with him. See how he feels about us moving forward. Maybe you guys can take out another mortgage on the house to get you closer to this number you’re trying to reach.”
So we left Heritage Bank worse off than when we arrived, and that painful silence that sat between us grew louder until Mama butted in. I heard her in the awkward lull after our meeting with the loan officer when he said, “Tell Mr. Fairchild I said hello.” Then I heard her above the music playing on the radio and inthe heavy breaths we took on the way home. Afterward, I heard her in the gusts of wind as I left out of our front door after Aunt Faye locked herself in her and Uncle Kenny’s room. She even sat with me in the backseat of another Uber because I’m running again. But I think Rich would say this time it’s okay because I’m running to our problem instead of away from it.
I stare up at Beatrice’s house.
Dark clouds hover over it in a gloomy haze.
I reach out and unlatch her front gate, signaling to my Uber driver that this house is the right one since I couldn’t remember her exact address. I just knew she lived at the very end of Joliet—right before the dead end.
