Slim nods, shifting her weight to one foot.
“God, you look just like Sonia.” Beatrice smiles. “She was the prettiest thing walking at Wesley… and your daddy…he…he was perfect. He was the perfect gentleman before…you know?—”
“Yeah,” Slim mutters. “Mamawaspretty.”
The air is stickier, and I feel the same way I felt when Smitty knew all that stuff about Slim that I didn’t—about New York and that ballplayer. Now Beatrice just talked about her mama and daddy as if she knows why they don’t exist anymore and I feel like I should already know that too.
Beatrice reaches out, taking the cake box from her hands. “Thanks for the dessert.”
She pats Slim’s cheek, smiling at her gently.
She’s acting like I’ve never fucked her in this very kitchen because time, age, and experience made it easy for her to remind me she wasn’t mine and I wasn’t hers any chance she got. She wouldn’t tell me off for busting in her house with another woman; she’d just show me how fucked up I had her later on when it was just me and her and I wanted one of those hugs that always lead to us fucking.
“So what’s up, B?” I ask.
She sits the cake box on the table, running her finger along it. “I…I wanted to talk to you about something.”
I glance at Slim out of the corner of my eye and wait for her to excuse herself, but she’s stuck to my side in a way she shouldn’t be. She threads her fingers together in front of her middle and tilts her head like she’s waiting for Beatrice to spit out whatever she’s been holding on to while she played nice and reminisced. She’s acting like we’re a package and that Beatrice should wanna talk to her too.
“You wanna go out on the porch with Tamryn, Slim?” I ask her, rubbing the back of my neck.
She looks me dead in my eyes and blinks two slow, innocent blinks that make me bite my lip.
“Nope. I’ll stay here with you,” she replies in a featherlight tone.
I let out a chuckle under my breath while Beatrice watches us with a tight smile. “I think you shou?—”
“It’s fine, Pup. She’s good. I doubt she wanna breathe all that smoke in and deal with all them old busters and their attitudes.”
“Everything good around here, right?” I ask. “I ain’t miss nothing last week, did I? I painted the ceilings in all the bedrooms like you wanted.”
“You know…” Beatrice scratches the back of her neck, glancing away. “I’m still kinda going through it after what happened with Aisha. You know I don’t like burdening you with this type of stuff, but it’s…it’s getting heavy these days.”
Thatwas her name.
That was Tamryn’s mama’s name—Aisha.
The days after she died last year were a blur—I remember sending Arnez to the funeral home to pay the rest of the balance Beatrice told me she owed for her services, and I remember fucking Beatrice to sleep every Saturday after wind-down time because Tamryn told me she was staying up for days at a time.
“You know if I could fix it I would,” I reply.
“I know, Pup. You tell me all the time.”
I did—mostly while I had my dick inside her.
She rubs the back of her neck where she scratched it and glances at Slim again. “That was my baby—my oldest. She was supposed to outlive me.”
Slim sucks in a quiet breath, and her heel drags across the floor as she shuffles even closer to me.
“I…you know, I’m still tryna understand it all—death, dying, how to go on from here as a parent. One day she was here in my living room and then the next day the cops are coming up to my door talking about she’s gone.” Beatrice shakes her head. “Andnow Tamryn’s daddy says he wants to take her, but she won’t go. She said she ain’t leaving me here alone.”
I let out a breath as quiet as the one Slim sucked in.
“I don’t even know why she wants to stay here—some days I can’t even look at her without crying because she looks so much like Aisha. Her daddy’s got that big ole’ house out in The Woodlands and he’s got his wife and kids so she’ll have some brothers and sisters, but…but she’s stuck to me… and this place.”
When I was little, I used to watch from the crack in our living room blinds while Senior listened to distraught mamas and praying grandmothers saying similar things on our porch. There was always this weird strain in their voices that made me press my ear to the window to listen closer. That same strain clings to Beatrice’s.
“Kids like to stick with what’s familiar, B. What Tamryn know about The Woodlands?” I ask.
