“Welcome. I’m Kayana Johnson.”
“And I’m Cherie Thompson, and thank you for allowing me to join you.”
“As I told Leah, the more the merrier when it comes to talking about books. Please come in before someone walks by and thinks we’re open for business.” Kayana closed and locked the door behind Cherie. “I’ve set up a table for us on the patio where we can talk and share a light repast. I wanted to hold out serving beverages until I asked what you’d like to drink.”
Leah and Cherie shared a look. “Do we have a choice between alcoholic and pop?” the redhead asked.
“Yes. I was thinking about making a pitcher of sour apple martinis—that is, unless you’d prefer something else. And I also have wine and beer on hand.”
“I’m good with the martini,” Cherie said.
“I’ll also have the martini,” Leah said in agreement.
“Y’all make yourselves comfortable on the patio while I whip up the cocktails.”
Waiting until the two women retreated to the patio overlooking the rear of the restaurant, Kayana walked into the kitchen and reached for a bottle of vodka, sour apple liqueur, and butterscotch schnapps. Opening the refrigerator, she took out a bottle of cranberry juice and a chilled glass pitcher. She measured the liquid into a shaker, along with ice cubes, and shook it until condensation formed on the outside of the shaker, then strained it into the pitcher. She went back to the fridge to get three chilled martini glasses, which she then placed then on a wicker tray with the pitcher.
When Derrick had decided to add cocktails to the menu, Kayana had had to brush up on her knowledge of mixing drinks. When married, she’d become the consummate hostess for the many dinner parties she and James hosted, planning the menus and occasionally preparing the food. Most times, she assumed the role of mixologist because it meant not having to engage in inane chitchat with her phony in-laws.
Kayana carried the tray to patio and set it on the table with the cheese and fruit. “Don’t be shy, ladies. Eat, drink, and be merry.”
Leah reached for a plate and speared slices of caprese and several grapes. “Everything looks too pretty to eat.”
Cherie picked up her plate. “It looks as if you went to a lot of work for us to just talk about books.”
Kayana halted filling the glasses with the chilled cocktail. “I didn’t know if Leah had eaten dinner, so I decided to offer her something to eat.”
Cherie lowered her eyes, apparently acknowledging she had been summarily chastised. “Perhaps I spoke out of turn. It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’ve prepared, but if we’re going to meet again like this, then I’d like to bring something. I was raised to never go to someone’s home empty-handed.”
“I believe we all have been raised to do the same,” Leah added. “However, I am more than appreciative of the offer, because I did not eat dinner.”
“There you go,” Kayana said smugly, as she continued to fill the martini glasses, handing one to Cherie and one to Leah. She sat and raised her glass. “I’d like to propose a toast to the inaugural meeting of our Seaside Café Book Club.” She touched glasses with Leah and then Cherie before taking a sip.
Cherie pressed a hand to her chest. “Whoa! This is really strong.”
Leah looked over the rim of her glass at Cherie. “Perhaps Kayana should’ve carded you before serving you that drink.”
Cherie narrowed a pair of large, slanting, clear-brown eyes and glared at Leah. “Very funny.”
Setting down her glass, Leah speared an olive and popped it into her mouth. “How old are you?”
“I just turned thirty-three.”
Kayana stared at Cherie. “You look a lot younger than that.”
“I may look young, but right about now I feel twice that age.”
“Did you come to the island with someone?”
Cherie shook her head. “No.”
“Bad breakup.” Kayana’s question was a statement.
“Something like that.”
Knowing it was time to stop delving into Cherie’s personal life, Kayana picked up a plate and filled it with fruit, crackers, and pâté. “I think we should get to know a little bit about one another before we begin talking about what types of books we want to read. Leah, do you want to go first?”
Leah took another sip of her drink before touching a napkin to the corners of her mouth. “I’m Leah Berkley Kent from Richmond, Virginia. I’m the mother of twenty-seven-year-old twin sons who both just passed the bar exam. Right now, they’re traveling abroad for the summer with their father. I’m forty-eight, a teacher by profession, and I recently celebrated my twenty-eighth wedding anniversary.”
Kayana noted that Leah had said her sons were traveling with their father rather than her husband. She’d counseled enough women to pick up on certain words and phrases whenever they referred to their significant other. And she didn’t have to have the intelligence quotient of a nuclear physicist to glean that Leah wasn’t an underpaid schoolteacher who lived from paycheck to paycheck, because most of the summer rentals on the island ranged from twelve hundred upward to eighteen hundred a week, and the eternity band of diamonds on her left hand totaled at least two or maybe even three carats.
Cherie stared at the red liquid in her glass. “You married very young.”
Leah pressed her lips tightly together as if to stifle the first thing that came to her mind. “Yes, I did.” She paused. “Cherie, you’re next.”
Cherie set down her glass, inhaled an audible breath before letting it out slowly. “I’m Cherie Thompson. You already know that I’m thirty-three. I’ve never been married and don’t have any children. I have an undergraduate degree in early-childhood development, and I’m currently on leave from my position as a parent coordinator at a Connecticut childcare center. I plan to hang out here until just before the Labor Day weekend. And, before you ask, I’m not involved with anyone.”
Leah chewed and swallowed a plump ripe strawberry. “Are you opposed to marriage?”
The air shimmered with friction as Cherie glared at Leah. “Just because I’m not married doesn’t mean I’m opposed to it.”
Kayana didn’t know what it was, but she detected somewhat of a power struggle between the other two women and wondered if it had something to do with Leah’s attempt to be maternal. After all, her sons weren’t much younger than Cherie. “I guess it’s my turn,” she announced, hoping to diffuse what was becoming a tense situation. “I’m forty-six, divorced, and I’ve never had any children. In my former life, I was a hospital psychiatric social worker, but I gave it up to assist my brother in running this venerable establishment that has been in our family for more than thirty years.”
“Did you grow up here?” Leah questioned.
“Yes. My family is a direct descendant of the man for whom the island is named, and the Johnsons are one of the oldest families to inhabit Coates Island.”
“Please tell us about him.” Cherie’s eyes were as bright as newly minted pennies. It was apparent she’d gotten over Leah questioning her about marriage.
“Yes, please do,” Leah chimed in.
Kayana thought it odd they wanted to hear about her family’s history rather than talk about books. “Half is true and the other half legend, but there is factual evidence that Draymond Coates was an eighteenth-century pirate who found safety in coves throughout the Caribbean to moor his smaller, faster ship, the Black Dragon, from British warships that sought to capture him and his crew and return their plunder to the Crown.”
“Was he British or an American?” Cherie asked Kayana.
“He was a British subject. Draymond was only twenty when he was caught stealing a farmer’s hog. He was jailed, and then exiled from England as an indentured servant to a family who owned a sugarcane plantation in Jamaica, where he’d worked alongside African slaves making sugar, molasses, and rum. He escaped after six years and joined up with a band of miscreants who preferred stealing to working. After a while, he
and a small group of criminals commandeered a British merchant ship, cast out the captain and crew on a deserted island, and renamed it the Black Dragon.”
“Did they ever capture him?” Leah asked.
“No, because he had Mother Nature on his side. His preying on British merchant ships finally ended when the Black Dragon went down during a hurricane and all onboard perished except Draymond Coates. Historical records claim the legendary brigand washed up on the beach and was taken in by a family of free people of color. He recovered, changed his name to Duncan Johnson, and married one of the young women; they had eight children together, with six surviving to adulthood. Even though it states they were married, the fact is black folks knew it wasn’t legal, because marriage between whites and blacks was forbidden at that time, but she was so fair in coloring, she could pass for white.”
A slight frown furrowed Cherie’s smooth forehead. “Do you know for certain that you are a direct descendant of a pirate?”
“Yes, because my sister searched an ancestry website, and she was able to go as far back as Draymond Coates’s grandparents, who were born in Hampshire, England. Remember, he married a free woman of color, so she and their children were recorded in the census.”
“What makes you believe part of it is a legend?” Leah questioned.
“Historical records claim that when his ship sank, it was carrying a cargo of gold coin and jewelry estimated to be worth two million dollars in today’s money. Salvagers spent years searching the area where the Black Dragon went down, and when they finally located it, there were no gold coin or jewels, leading them to believe the captain had buried his treasure somewhere in the Bahamas before the hurricane blew him off course after he’d attempted to sail back to Jamaica. And here again, it may be a legend, but there was talk that when Draymond washed up on shore, the people who rescued him said he’d sewn emeralds and other precious jewels into the waistband of his trousers.”
“That should have made him quite a wealthy man,” Leah commented.
“I’m not certain what he did with the stones, but he made his living as a blacksmith—a trade he’d learned from his father and grandfather before he was shipped to the West Indies. He had a thriving business that allowed him to build a modest home for his wife and children.”
Picking up a knife, Cherie spread a small amount of pâté on a cracker. “What I don’t understand is if North Carolina was part of the British Empire, couldn’t they have arrested him here?”
Kayana shook her head. “No, because by that time the colonies had declared their independence from England, and Britain’s focus was sending thousands of well-trained soldiers to America to quell the rebellion rather than find and hang a pirate.”
Cherie applauded softly. “That’s sounds like a plot for a historical romance novel.”
Kayana suddenly had the opening she needed to broach the reason for their meeting. “Do you read romance novels, Cherie?”
The young woman lowered her eyes. “I occasionally do.”
“I read them more than occasionally,” Leah admitted.
Cherie shot Leah a questioning stare. “But . . . but why would you? You’re married.”
A rush of color suffused Leah’s face, as the redness on her nose blended into the blush. “Just because I’m married, you think I shouldn’t read romance novels?”
Again, Kayana sensed tension between the two women and knew that if it continued, their book discussions would be fraught with hostility. “I think we should settle something right now before we go any further. I’d hoped we would be able to read and discuss books with a modicum of respect for one another’s opinions. I don’t like judging folks, and I’d like the same from others when it comes to me. And as mature, educated women, there is no need to be at one another’s throats because someone says something that rubs the other one the wrong way.”
“Aren’t you the social worker?” Cherie chided, sneering.
The fragile hold Kayana had on her temper snapped as she rounded on Cherie. “I don’t know what your problem is, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to allow you to insult me and anyone I’ve invited to my home. Either you get your personal shit together, or you can walk the hell out of here and never come back.”
She and Cherie competed in what Kayana thought of as a stare-down. She had met a lot of young women like Cherie when she was a social work intern, and most times, their hostility and negative attitudes came from personal relationships with the men in their lives. Some of them were the third or even fourth baby mama and there was always baby mama drama, or they’d discovered he was married or had cheated on them. She’d wanted to tell them to just walk away and their lives would be less stressful, but that would not have solved their dilemmas.
Kayana felt her heart turn over when she saw tears fill Cherie’s eyes. It was apparent her tough-girl stance was nothing more than a façade. And then she remembered her saying she had taken a leave from her employment, which probably meant she needed to take a break in order achieve a semblance of balance in her life.
“If you need some time for yourself before you decide if you want to become a part of our book club, then I suggest you do that, because Leah and I could always use a third opinion.”
Reaching for a cocktail napkin, Cherie dabbed her eyes. “Look, I’m sorry.” She forced a smile. “It seems as if I’m doing a lot of apologizing lately.”
“I’m a witness to that,” Leah said under her breath.
Kayana wanted to tell Leah to let it go and not continue to antagonize Cherie. “Well, Cherie, what do you want to do? Are you in or out?”
She sniffled. “I’m in.”
“Good. That calls for another toast. Cherie, do you want to make it?”
Smiling through unshed tears, she raised her glass. “Here’s to a summer filled with delicious food, excellent cocktails, new friends, and lastly, but not the least, interesting books.”
“Here, here!” Leah and Kayana chorused.
“Perhaps we need to eat and drink a bit more before we start talking about what we want to read this summer,” Kayana suggested.
Leah drained her glass. “I like the sound of that.”
Picking up the pitcher, Kayana refilled Leah’s and then topped off Cherie’s and her own. “It looks as if I need to mix up another batch of martinis.”
“Do you mind if I watch you make them?” Leah asked.
“Of course not. Come with me.”
Cherie popped another cracker topped with pâté into her mouth. “You’d better hurry because I intend to eat up everything on this table before you get back.”
Kayana and Leah shared a smile as they left the patio and walked toward the kitchen. “I think I’ll add a little more cranberry juice this time to make it less potent. I can’t have you and Cherie getting arrested for public intoxication.”
Leah sat on a stool near the prep table, watching Kayana as she measured the ingredients for the cocktail. “I can assure you that I’ll need at least three or more drinks before I’m over the limit to be deemed legally drunk. Don’t look at me like that, Kayana. I’m not an alcoholic, but it isn’t often I get time to myself to let off some steam.”
Kayana gave the schoolteacher a direct stare. “Do your sons still live at home?”
“No. They attended college and law school in New York City, and they still have an apartment there. When I asked, now that they’ve passed the bar, if they were coming back home to practice, both claimed it would be like culture shock after living in the Big Apple for ten years. My boys are rather closemouthed whenever I ask either of them if they’re involved with a young woman.”
“At their age, they have time before they consider marriage or even starting a family.”
“You’re right, but I find it odd that they’ve never talked to me about the women they’ve dated.”
“Are you saying you believe your sons are gay?”
Leah shook her head. “No. They’re straight.”
“If the
y’re straight, then why are you so concerned about who they’re dating?”
“I don’t know. I suppose it’s just that I miss my boys.”
Kayana noticed Leah had referred to them as boys. They weren’t boys but twentysomething men. She knew she was thinking with her therapist head, but wondered if perhaps their mother had been the smothering type and that they just wanted to get far away from her and live their own lives. She wanted to ask Leah about her relationship with her husband, but decided against it; she did not want to delve into Cherie’s or Leah’s private lives because then they might expect the same from her.
And Kayana knew she had to stop relating to her book club companions as a therapist. After all, Cherie and Leah were adult women who didn’t need her analyzing everything they did or said. The days when she provided counseling for patients and their families were behind her. She’d also shared a private practice with another social worker in downtown Atlanta, but only part-time. She would fill in whenever the other therapist exceeded the limit she’d determined for her caseload or whenever Mariah went on vacation. She had been filling in for Mariah when she witnessed James and his mistress coming out of the boutique hotel. It was apparent he’d forgotten she would be in the Buckhead neighborhood that evening seeing clients.
Kayana had to admit that she was a creature of habit. While living in Atlanta, she had risen at the same time every day, weekends notwithstanding, to work out in their home gym. On the days she had to go into the hospital, she left early enough to avoid the horrendous Atlanta traffic jams. She wasn’t scheduled to begin working until 8:00 a.m., but she could always be found in her office between 6:30 and 7:00.
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