“Look, all I can tell you is that some dude came in here pretending to be from an innocence project. Asking questions, showing pictures, threatening my family. He wasn’t no lawyer and he wasn’t no advocate. He was a killer. I could smell it on him. And he wanted me to confess to something so that his girl could walk free.”
“What girl?”
“Zainab Ali. She was locked up for killing her sister and he wanted me to admit that I did it so she could get out. And he made sure I understood what would happen to my daughter and my grandmother if I didn’t cooperate. Somehow he knew that Thad had me do it.”
My hands were shaking under the table. “This man. What did he look like?”
“Light skin, locs, blue eyes. Built like he’d been training his whole life to hurt people.”
Prime. He was describing Prime.
I sat in the rental car in the parking lot for an hour after that visit with my phone in my hand connecting dots I didn’t want to connect. I typed “Zahara Ali” into Google and the results filled my screen. Zahara Ali, murdered, case reopened, sister Zainab Ali exonerated after new confession. I scrolled further. Zahara Ali, survived by sisters Zainab and Mehar Ali.
I knew that name very well. She was the woman I wondered about with Thad. I’d seen her name pop up on his phone. He cheated on me with her. And now Quest was marrying her. Did Quest get jealous of his cousin’s side bitch and kill him for it?
Zainab Ali was Prime’s wife. The woman who was in prison for killing her own sister until Dubz confessed and set her free.
And Zahara. The sister who was murdered. The murder that Thad ordered.
I sat there staring at my phone screen and felt everything rearrange itself inside my chest. Quest didn’t cover Thad’s funeral out of family loyalty. He covered it out of guilt. He paid for the casket and the flowers and my groceries because he knew exactly what happened to the father of my children and he was buying my silence with generosity. The whole family knew. Prime, Quest, Mehar, all of them. They smiled in my face and shook my hand and called me family while they were sitting on the truth about what they did to Thad.
I put my phone down and gripped the steering wheel and stared at the prison walls in front of me and made a decision that I didn’t make with my brain. I made it with the part of me that carried two children for nine months and raised them alone andburied their father in a casket paid for by the people who put him in it.
Somebody was going to answer for this. I didn’t know how and I didn’t know when but I was going to make sure that family felt exactly what I’d been feeling every night since they lowered Thad into the ground.
I started the car and drove back to the airport with dry eyes and a plan forming somewhere behind my ribs that hadn’t fully taken shape yet but was growing by the mile.
53
Serenity
Rita was dipping her chicken strip into mashed potatoes and gravy like it was a gourmet pairing and honestly I wasn’t mad at it because they were delicious together. We were sitting at her kitchen table with two Popeyes boxes open between us, biscuits stacked on a napkin, and sweet tea in glasses because Rita refused to drink anything out of a Styrofoam cup in her own home. “I don’t care how it looks. I ain’t drinking from Styrofoam, I’m not an animal,” she’d said while transferring the tea into her good glasses. I loved this woman with my whole chest.
We’d just gotten back from her ophthalmologist appointment and the news was actually good for once. Dr. Patterson said her cataracts were operable and she was a strong candidate for laser surgery. If everything went well, she could have significantly improved vision within a few weeks of the procedure.
The baby was doing fine. Seven months in and every appointment was healthy despite everything my body had been through. The baby was strong. I was strong. And sitting at Rita’s table eating Popeyes on a Tuesday afternoon felt like the calmest my life had been since I was maybe fifteen years old.
I picked up my phone and texted Mehar.
Me: Have fun on your babymoon boo! Tell Quest to fly safe. Love you guys. Kiss my niece/nephew for me when yall land.
Mehar: We’re about to take off in like 10 min! I’ll text you when we land. Love you sis
“You happy, baby?” she asked without looking up as she focused on her food.
“Yeah, Grandma. I really am.”
“Good. You deserve it. After everything that happened with that boy and all that mess, you deserve to sit down and just be still for a minute.” She reached across the table, found my hand, and squeezed it. “I’m proud of you, Serenity. You came back from something that would’ve killed most people and you did it with my great-grandbaby in your belly. You’re going to have a long prosperous life.”
I squeezed her hand back and blinked the tears away because I was not about to cry over Popeyes and a compliment, but Rita had a gift for saying exactly what you needed to hear at exactly the moment you needed to hear it and my hormones were not cooperating with my desire to keep it together.
The knock came at 2:47 PM. I know the exact time because I’d just checked my phone to see if Mehar had texted that they were in the air yet.
Somebody knocked on the front door and I knew before I even stood up that it wasn’t family. Family walks in. Delivery people ring the bell. This was that slow, deliberate, we-got-all-day knock that police do when they already know you’re inside and aren’t going anywhere.
“I’ll get it,” I said, pushing back from the table.
“Who is it?” Rita called out behind me.
