“It’s what Ma wants,” said Dray. “We’re doing it for her.”
“Quit lying,” said Minka. “All our asses still scared of Pop. We’re doing it because we have no choice.”
Then the parlor door opened and Matty walked into the living room. But he looked ghostly.
Which confused Hawk because he knew it couldn’t be about Amber’s wedding. Matty didn’t give a damn about that girl either. “What is it?” he asked his brother when he walked in. When they saw that look on his face, they all hurried over to him.
Matty’s hazel eyes looked bloodshot red. He’d been crying?Matty? He never cried! Not ever.
Now Hawk and his siblings were really worried. “What’s happened? Matty, tell us what’s happened?”
Matty placed his hands in his pockets. “It’s Mother,” he said.
Their mother? It was about theirmother? Even the usually nonchalant Minka was concerned. “What about Ma?” he asked Matty.
Hawk could see that Matty had one of thosewhere do I beginlooks on his face. So Matty decided to just tell it to them straight. “She’s been kidnapped.”
When they heard those words, it made no sense to any of them. Even Babs, who ended her call when she saw the state of her brother, couldn’t understand it. Kidnapped? Theirmother? What on earth was he talking about?
But not one of them asked a question. They were speechless.
But Matty wasn’t about to discuss it off the cuff anyway. The Websters were a duty-first kind of family, with the duty being to each other whether right or wrong or in distress. And their mother, if what he said was true, was in severe distress.
He led his siblings toward the family parlor room, and they like foot soldiers followed him to where their father, their patriarch, was holed up.
CHAPTER TWELVE
As soon as the children of William and Resheda Webster entered the parlor, it felt strange to Hawk. They were the official Websters, the only children of the wife of William Webster. But it was strange because they all also knew there were several moreWebstersand the various baby mamas that birthed them right inside the banquet hall which was right inside their childhood home.
Just the thought of such a mess would normally piss off Hawk to such an extent that it would cause that deep-seated, burning disdain he had for his father to surface. But after what Matty had told him about his mother, he didn’t give a shit about any of that.
He looked for his father as he looked around, and he immediately saw him across the room. A tall, well-built white man in his always-pristine tailored suit, he usually looked twenty years younger than his fifty-eight years.Is that your brother, was always the refrain of ladies whenever Hawk or any of his other siblings went anywhere with their father. First, they were shocked that a black man could have such a white father. And then the question of whether that was his sibling would come up.
But nobody would be saying that today. The man looked devastated beyond measure. Even more distraught, Hawk felt, than his siblings looked. He looked every single second of his fifty-eight years.
He hurried to him. “Pop, what’s happened? Where’s Ma?”
It was only when Hawk actually walked up to him did William Webster realize his oldest son had entered the small room. But when he looked at Hawk, he looked lost.
Hawk’s heart squeezed when he looked at him. His father’s eyes were a bluish-green, but if the light hit them a certain way they looked violet. But as he stared at his son, all Hawk saw was pain. Wild-eyed pain. He looked as if he was in such a state of anxiety and dismay that he could hardly contain his distress.
Which astounded Hawk. William Webster was not the kind of man to give a damn about anybody but himself the way he behaved, but he looked absolutely mortified to Hawk. Which terrified Hawk even more. “Where’s our mother?”
William shook his head. “She’s been abducted, son. They took her. Someone has taken her.”
Hawk frowned. Hearing it from his father somehow made it more real to him. “But how could somebody just take her? Do they know who? What happened?”
As soon as he asked those questions, that side door opened and Amber Webster, the twenty-one-year-old bride-to-be and William’s out-of-wedlock daughter, entered the room.
And she entered hot. “What are you people doing?” she asked angrily as her blue eyes darted from her father to her half-siblings. “You’re ruining my rehearsal by not participating. We’re waiting on y’all. And why was the police here and they wouldn’t tell us anything? We’re a part of this family too. What was that all about?”
Matty, who usually kept his cool, was getting pissed. “Didn’t I tell you there was a family crisis involving our mother, Amber? Didn’t I already tell you that?”
“And didn’t I tell you, Matty, that this is my wedding rehearsal and I don’t care what’s going on with your mother? Didn’t I already tell you that?”
“Okay now,” said Minka, who stood next to the entrance, “she’s about to get her ass dragged up in here. She’s about to get dragged.”
“She’s not my mother,” said Amber. “Why should I care what’s going on with her?” Then she pleaded with her father. “Daddy, come walk me down the aisle so we can finish rehearsals. You don’t care about her anyways. She’s just an old bitch!”
