This Life: A Novel

by Maryann Reid

  “I forgive you, Mommy. I couldn’t let anyone hurt you like he did. I hate him,” Lionel said, his eyes swollen.

  She laid his head on her chest. “It’s okay. Feel what you feel. I’m here for you,” she said, brushing his hair with her hands as he cried. “I love you.”

  “I love you, too,” he said.

  Kenton and Margot left the room, followed by Suki, who laid a bouquet of flowers from the team on Blake’s nightstand. Blake smiled at her warmly.

  Now she and Lionel were left alone. Blake held him for at least fifteen minutes, and when she looked down, he had fallen asleep on her chest. For the first time in a while, she felt free and loved unconditionally.

  #

  November 12

  Miami, Florida

  When Blake checked out of the hospital, she boarded the next available flight to Miami.

  As she watched the city get smaller and smaller from the ascending plane, her stomach sank. With her mother seated next to her, she wondered what Jacinta was thinking. She hadn’t said many words and kept her rosary to her chest. She knew her mother was praying for her. She didn’t exactly expect a pat on the back for what she did, but she wanted something.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Jacinta, who sat with her red-colored rosary dangling between her fingers. “I ask God to forgive me every day.”

  Jacinta patted Blake’s hands. “I am praying for myself.”

  Blake tilted her head to the side. “What?”

  “I wish you had killed him earlier. I wish he was never born. I wish I could have seen you kill that hijo de la granputa!”

  A few passengers turned to look at them.

  Blake didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She put her arms around her mother, feeling her fragile head landing on her shoulders, her soft, gray curls tumbling down the side of her face. Jacinta’s body shook. “You almost died, mija. You almost died,” she wept.

  A flight attendant walked by and handed Blake a napkin for Jacinta. “Scared of flying, eh.” She half-smiled at Blake.

  Blake nodded. She had thought Jacinta’s silence was all about her, when her mother probably had gone through just as much pain as she did. Instead of being comforted by her mother’s words assuring her that her soul would be rescued from damnation after a thousand Hail Marys, she comforted her mother and let the warmth of her mother’s body heal her.

  #

  Several hours later, after Blake dropped her mom off at her condo, she went home. There was no one there but Kenton.

  “How are you?” he said, standing at her door in loose linen slacks and a white shirt. “Or is that a dumb question?”

  “Dumb,” Blake muttered as he took her bags and she flopped her body on the couch.

  He sat beside her. “Are you going to be okay?”

  The sounds of Miles Davis’s “So What” vibrated through the walls from the next room. He must have gotten his hands on my jazz collection, one of Daddy’s favorites. But Blake couldn’t bring herself to mention it. She let the ebbs and flows of the jazz melody calm and soothe her.

  “You know,” Kenton said, moving closer, his breath against her. “You don’t have to be strong for me.”

  Blake rubbed her head, hoping that the sleep that awaited her didn’t come with any more nightmares.

  “I’m okay, I said. Don’t you get it? I don’t have time to spend in a mental hospital or go over this a hundred times. I got shit I have to do.”

  Kenton kissed her forehead gently. “Let me make love to you.” He turned her face to his and landed a kiss on her mouth.

  She felt her body loosen. “I’m not in the mood,” she said, but she was. She wanted nothing more.

  “I don’t believe you.” He smiled.

  “Kenton,” she said, smiling, “I don’t know how to relax sometimes. I can’t. I killed a man.”

  Kenton rose and walked to the kitchen, reappearing in seconds with two glasses of wine. “Here,” he said. “Wine is for things you have to accept. You have to accept what happened and how it happened.”

  Blake gulped the wine down. Kenton handed her his glass and said, “And this too shall pass.”

  She took a long, satisfying sip. “People may forgive, but they won’t forget.”

  “What matters is that you forgive yourself. Fuck, people.”

  Blake held in her urge to laugh. She had never heard Kenton curse. She nodded in agreement and sipped again. She knew that she held the power switch to turn this all around, but not today.

  “You weren’t charged with anything. All the witnesses who saw the attack vouched that you fought for your life. Successfully, I might add.”

  “I’m sure there’s some karma somewhere for my ass.”

  “Blake, you did the right thing. Trust me.”

  “What about you? I know this won’t help your campaign at all.”

  “This will be old news by next week when they find something else. Okay?” He swept a few strands of hair away from her eyes. “If you keep looking guilty, people will treat you that way. Celebrate, Blake. You’re an inspiration.”

  “How?”

  Kenton pulled out a few letters. “These were sitting in the mailbox. Can’t be more than a few days old. I’m thinking this is fan mail.” He smiled.

  Blake opened the letters. They were from women thanking her for her courage. It was like the cloud over her began to float away. “This one,” she said, reading it closely, “is an invitation to speak at the Global Women Against Violence Summit next year.”

  He laughed. “Did you check your email yet?”

  Blake’s eyes darted to her phone, and she opened her email to find that it was jam-packed with invitations and emails of support. Her jaw dropped.

  “Now, can you see the other side of this? Don’t create a jail for yourself, when the rest of the world has already set you free.”

  Blake closed the email. “I’ll have Edith get to these in the morning,” she said, looking at the ground, humbled by what she read. “Among other things. God knows how much unfinished business there is. Wishman Spears.” She looked up at the ceiling. “That’ll be my last building.”

  “Blake?” Kenton looked up at her face. “How about we just focus on now, getting now right?”

  “Now hasn’t been right for a long time,” Blake said, shaking her head back and forth. “And I don’t know how to fix it anymore. I don’t think I want to.”

  “Come with me.” Kenton took her by the hand to the bedroom as Miles’s periodic lifts in tension seemed to fit Kenton’s unhurried, easy way about it all. There, he laid her on the bed and crawled next to her. Cocooned by his full-bodied embrace, Blake felt protected. He held the space for her to be herself—messy, vulnerable, and loved. Tears streamed down her nose, cheeks, and lips like water let out from a dam. Each tear came from the pit of her stomach and the deep anguish she hadn’t been able to let flow till now. She imagined each tear bringing her to a better understanding of her own self, not washing away, but blessing the good and bad of her past. Right then, a thin silver beam of light came through a slit in the curtains and penetrated the darkness. It was just enough to see.

  EPILOGUE

  One year later

  Blake stood in front of the towering Wishman Spears building with her team, including Thomas. She was snug in the middle with a pair of scissors about to cut her last ribbon, when a reporter asked, “Ms. Bertrand, what’s next for you?”

  Blake looked at the passersby and small group of investors who stood before her with TV cameras and newspaper reporters. “I have some plans, which I will reveal when the time is right. Now is the time to celebrate the opening of one of the most beautiful pieces of real estate the city has ever seen!” With that, Blake clipped the ribbon to signify that Wishman Spears was finally open for business.

  This was what Blake lived for, but the truth was, she had other plans already mapped out. She was moving quietly out of Miami with Kenton to create a real family for Lionel, and support Kenton’s ru
n for Senator. She thought it was an excellent way to give back, and if she had to vote for a Senator, it would be for Kenton Rhodes. Blake knew that he had lived under her spotlight for over a year, and she was okay with putting the shoe on the other foot.

  “You never looked better in McQueens,” Margot said to Blake.

  Blake kicked her foot back playfully. She was wearing the six-inch McQueen sandals she kept by her bed. “And I never felt better than I do today, except the day Lionel came back into my life.”

  “Are you ready to play the Senator’s wife?” whispered Margot in her ear.

  Blake laughed, for she didn’t exactly imagine herself being anybody’s anything. “We’re not getting married. I just agreed to go with him, and see what I can do.”

  “Knowing you, Blake, you will find yourself into something. Big.”

  “True,” Blake laughed. “But right now I’m just excited. I’ve got two awesome men in my life that care about me. I’m just finally glad I let them do that.”

  “It can be pretty hard for girls like us when our lives lose control.” Margot winked as she held Anna, Thomas’s lovely daughter that they had both easily adopted from an eager Robin.

  “It’s that craziness that little miracles seep through.” Blake lovingly eyed little Anna. “Sometimes I wonder why I worried so much.”