That was how we talked now. Tension first. Understanding later, if at all.
She blamed me. I knew it even if she never said it. A part of me let her. I didn't correct her when she slammed doors. Nor did I argue when she muttered under her breath. I absorbed it the same way I absorbed everything else. She didn't just look at me. She watched me. Like she was still deciding what kind of mother I was gonna be now.
"It's her attitude I don't like," Juelz said from the table.
I carried their plates over that held grits, eggs, and bacon, laid out just the way they liked it. Juelz turned seven last month and had inherited Evie's mouth without asking permission. He said what he thought without thinking and didn't care about the consequences. "Hush, Juelz," Jezel said quickly, waving him off. "Mama, don't forget to sign our planners this morning," she added, smiling up at me.
Jezel was my backbone. Nine years old and already holding things together in ways she shouldn't have had to. She didn't look at me with questions in her eyes. She didn't choose to measure my grief against her own. She loved me plain and simple. To her, I was still just Mama.
I nodded and went back to the counter, signing both planners without reading what was written inside. I'd learned to trust that if something was important, they'd tell me. I slid the planners back into their backpacks and hung them on the backs of the chairs.
Julise came back into the kitchen dressed down in a t-shirt and jeans with her jacket zipped all the way up. The dramatics were intentional. I let my eyes roll once and said nothing. "You didn't fix me breakfast?" she asked, hand on her hip.
I didn't turn around right away. I rinsed the spoon. Wiped the counter. Finished what I was doing before answering. "You know my rule already," I said finally. "I fix plates for whoever's at the table when foods served. If you want something to eat, fix it." She opened her mouth like she wanted to argue, then closed it again. "Meet me at the car in fifteen minutes," I added, already walking off. I left her standing there because if I stayed,I might've said something I couldn't take back. And I'd learned that silence was safer than honesty most days.
In the hallway, the house felt too quiet for that early in the morning. I paused outside Juliana's room without meaning to. The door stayed closed the same way I left it. Not locked. Just untouched. Like opening it would restart something I barely survived the first time. I stood there long enough to feel the weight press down behind my ribs. I turned away before my hand could lift on its own and walked into my bedroom. The mirror above the dresser caught me mid-step, and I stopped again. Different pause. Same heaviness.
I stared at myself like I was trying to recognize someone I used to know. Straight up and down. No softness left anywhere that didn't serve a purpose. My body didn't look like it had carried four children. It didn't look like it had ever held a baby against it long enough to memorize the weight. I damn sure didn't look like anything had changed me. Sometimes that felt like a compliment. Other times it felt like proof.
I pulled a knit hat down over my short cut, fingers brushing hair that had grown out just enough to look unfinished. I had an appointment scheduled later. It was nothing fancy, just a clean-up. Another maintenance task and thing on the list that kept me moving forward without asking why. I didn't linger in the mirror. Didn't check my face too closely. There were lines there now that hadn't been before; they had shown up when I wasn't paying attention. I learned early not to stare too long at things that might ask something of me.
I grabbed my keys and purse and headed back toward the kitchen, already bracing myself for another day of holding everything together without being asked how heavy it felt. It didn't matter, though. That had been my life.
I met Jules when I was fourteen. That was the age I learned how to look grown without being it. I learned quickly how to talk like I knew what I wanted, even though all I really knew was what I didn't. My home wasn't bad. It just wasn't mine.
We moved from Florida to Louisiana, but I never understood why. We just up and left one day. My mama spent her life scrubbing toilets and bathrooms at the health department for little to nothing. She came home smelling like bleach and tiredness, hands raw, back aching in ways she never complained about. My daddy worked for the dog pound, chasing down strays and putting on a hard face like the world hadn't already taken enough from him. We weren't dirt poor. We always had just enough. Enough food. Enough clothes. Enough house. But "just enough" started feeling like a ceiling I was already pressing my head against.
Jules was the opposite of that. He was Flashy without trying and known without asking. His name carried weight before he ever stepped into a room. When I saw him for the first time, something in me settled like it had finally found where it belonged. I fell in love fast and loud and without permission. We were inseparable after that. By age sixteen, I'd decided I was grown and knew enough to make permanent choices with only temporary understanding. I didn't want to be away from him. I wasn't trying to imagine a future that didn't include the way he looked at me like I was already chosen.
My parents didn't say much about him. Not directly. But silence has its own language, and I understood it well enough. They knew his family history and the kind of shadow that followed his last name. My daddy knew of Nash’s family andwould often bring him up or try to force him on me, but I didn't want that. Nash was always cool, but he could never be Jules.
When school let out that summer, I went home and packed a bag. My mama was sitting in her rocking chair in the living room, tears sliding down her face like she'd already seen the end of the story. My daddy had just walked in from work, uniform still on, shoulders heavy. Nobody yelled or begged. "If you leave here, Nia," my daddy said, voice flat, eyes tired, "don't come back. Not when he put his hands on you. Not when he leave you pregnant."
I didn't argue with my daddy. I walked out that day and never returned.
For two months, Evie and Saint didn't even know I was living in their house. I stayed quiet and tucked away. When they found out, all hell broke loose. Evie raised hell all day and all night. She cursed me out so bad you would've thought I was her daughter. When I told them I couldn't go back home, they let me stay. That was the first time I learned what it meant to be absorbed into something bigger than yourself. The St. Jean name wrapped around you and dared you to survive it without asking questions. I did.
The car line crawled forward at the school, kids spilling out of cars with backpacks too big for their bodies. Jezel and Juelz climbed out, kissing my cheek quick before slamming the doors and running toward their friends. I waited until they were inside before pulling off, watching until the building swallowed them whole. Only then did I let myself exhale.
The road felt longer without them talking in the backseat. The radio stayed off. I didn't need music. Didn't need anyone else's voice filling the space. My own thoughts were loudenough. I drove the same way every morning once the kids were dropped off, past the church with the faded sign that still promised deliverance, past the corner store that never quite opened on time, past the stretch of road where the pavement dipped just enough to make your stomach lift if you didn't slow down. Muscle memory took over. My hands rested lightly on the steering wheel, my foot hovering easily over the brake, my mind doing that drifting thing it did when nothing urgent demanded it. Routine didn't fix anything, but it made things quieter. It gave grief somewhere to sit without spilling over.
The car filled with the low hum of the road, tires whispering against asphalt still cool from the night air. I didn't have the radio on. I rarely did anymore. Music had started asking questions I didn't have answers for. Every song sounded like a memory I wasn't prepared to revisit.
I was thinking about the grocery list and whether we were low on milk again. I replayed Julise's attitude this morning and the way Jezel had smiled at me like she was trying to keep us both afloat. I thought about how Juelz had been sleeping with the light on again, claiming monsters but never saying whose.
I wasn't thinking about Jules. That's what I told myself.
The phone rang through the car speakers, sharp and sudden enough to make me flinch. The sound cut through my thoughts, leaving everything else scattered. I glanced at the screen and felt something in my chest tighten in awareness.
It was Mr. Simnole, Jules' lawyer. He didn't call often. When he did, it was usually brief. Logistics. Updates that felt too heavy for voicemail. Sometimes he passed messages for the kids on birthdays, holidays, moments Jules wanted marked even from the other side of concrete and steel.
I answered before the second ring finished. "Hello?"
"Mrs. St. Jean," Mr. Simnole said, his voice steady in that practiced way people use when they don't want to sound like the bearer of anything disruptive. "I hope you're doing alright."
That question never landed the way people thought it would. I didn't pause to consider it. "I'm doing okay," I said, because that was what I always said. "What can I do for you?"
There was a small breath on the other end of the line, controlled but deliberate. The kind people take when they're about to shift something in your world and want to soften the impact. "I'm calling because I need to know if you can be at the prison around five today to pick up Mr. St. Jean."
