Who Austen saw standing in her doorway was a tall, beautiful woman, wearing a sharp, tailor-made business suit. Beside her stood an even taller, well-built man, wearing a chauffeur’s uniform and dark glasses.
“Austen Greer,” the woman said. “My name is Sissy Winslow. May I come in? I have an important proposition for you.”
24
Loosening the gold diamond-print tie around my neck, I stared down at the criminal file of the young man I would be prosecuting. His name was Ra’Mond Williams. He was twenty-three years old. In his house was found $100,000 of marijuana.
He was charged with possession with intent to distribute. He had no prior offenses, but still, I would make it my business to ensure he served time in jail. If the warden wanted me to walk him to his cell myself, turn the key, and toss it down a sewer drain, I could do it and have no problems closing my eyes at night.
What I knew would keep me up about this case was the fact that the house where the drugs were found was not Ra’Mond’s, but his grandmother’s. Ra’Mond’s mother was in prison herself, had been for some time. Ra’Mond’s grandmother allowed the young man to live in her house, the house her late husband had paid off while working on the railroads. Not until police officers wearing armored vests, riot gear, and carrying high-powered weapons busted through her door did she know that her grandson was using her home for drug storage.
Ra’Mond’s grandmother had lived in that house for fifty years, but now it was scheduled to be seized by the city of Chicago.
I dragged a hand down my face and flipped the file closed. I was disgusted.
I wondered if I was placing myself in a similar situation welcoming a brother I did not know into my home. I had been up all night battling those thoughts, as well as the warnings Sissy gave me, which played over and over in my head. But I told myself I had done the right thing. He was my brother, and he needed a place to stay, to get back on his feet. It was what I wanted to do.
A knock came at the door.
“Come in,” I said, knowing who it was and wishing I had not interrupted his day by asking him to come over.
Tyler stepped through the door, looking as handsome as ever, wearing a million-dollar smile. Knowing me better than I always thought he did, he immediately walked across the room with concerned eyes and stood beside me.
“Baby, you okay? You look exhausted.” He leaned down and gave me a kiss on the lips. I know he meant for it to be longer, but I pulled away.
“I’m fine. Just tired is all. Didn’t sleep much last night.”
Tyler walked back around to the front of my desk and had a seat in the guest chair. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”
I looked in his eyes and saw how sincere his request was. It was one of the reasons I loved this man. “This was supposed to be a happy occasion when I told you this.”
“Told me what?”
“I mean, I put so much effort into—”
A wide smile brightened Tyler’s face. “You found your brother?”
“In prison,” I said, deflated. “Locked up for a crime he won’t tell me about.”
“You spoke to him.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He gets paroled tomorrow.”
Tyler sighed, a perplexed look on his face. “How are you going to play it? I mean, Cobi, you have options. You don’t owe—”
“He needs a place.”
“Cobi, what did you promise him?”
“I told him he could stay with me.”
“Sissy tore you a new one, huh?”
I couldn’t help but smile a little. “Of course. I mean, he’s in prison for a reason. I’m picking him up tomorrow and taking him to my house. I’m actually supposed to go there later today to see him and give him some information he asked me for. Am I crazy?”
Tyler smiled that comforting smile that always made me feel more relaxed. He stood and opened his arms. “Come here.”
I walked around my desk and into his embrace.
“In answer to your question, hell yes, you’re crazy. But you’re also caring, and thoughtful, and charitable, and if I were him, I would thank God that I had a brother like you. I’m sure you have nothing to worry about, and everything will be fine.”
“Famous last words,” I said.
“Famous last words.” Tyler smiled.
I wrapped my arms around him, smoothed my hands over the back muscles under his suit jacket. “I need to see you tonight.”
“I can’t. Taking the wife and girls to Cirque du Soleil.”
I leaned out of the hug without taking my arms from around him. “Tyler, what are we doing?”
“Don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?”
“This discussion. You have great news, you found your brother. You have that to deal with. And I have enough work to keep me locked up round the clock, so let’s not go back into the ‘What are we doing?’ discussion, okay? Can we just leave that alone for a while?”
25
Eric stood in the prison’s recreation room, leaning on his pool cue, waiting for Blac to take his shot at the eight ball.
Normally, Eric would’ve whupped Blac and left him with at least five balls on the table, but today Eric had things on his mind.
Wearing a white wife beater that contrasted sharply with his dark skin, Blac leaned over the table, sized up his shot, then looked up at Eric. “This yo’ ass. Eight ball, corner pocket.”
“Make the shot, then talk,” Eric said.
Blac held his pose stretched over the table, then stood straight and glanced down at his watch.
“Dude, what are you doin’?” Eric said, agitated. “You takin’ the shot or what?”
“Didn’t you say your brother was supposed to come here like an hour and half ago?”
“Yeah. So what? You takin’ the shot or not?”
Blac laid his stick on the table. “So, what’s up? Did he call and say he wasn’t coming?”
“No. But what does that have to do with you? Why you so concerned about whether or not this man show up?”
“I’m concerned because I’m your boy, and the other day you was all tiptoein’ on air, singing and dancing about how you got a brother and how you gonna live with him.”
“I wasn’t doin’ all that.”
“You need to find out what’s going on.”
“Maybe he realized he made a mistake by callin’ on me, by tellin’ me all that stuff and asking me to live at his place. And to tell you the truth, hell, I don’t blame him.” Eric turned, ready to walk out.
Blac rushed over, grabbed him by the arm. “So you just givin’ up on that?”
“Blac, what the hell you want me to do? Call him? I ain’t got his number. Go by his house? I don’t even know where that fool live. It’s over, okay.” Eric turned again and headed toward the rec room door.
Blac called out to him. “Yo. Just tell yourself he gonna be outside that gate tomorrow, waiting for you in a stretch Mercedes or somethin’. You gotta do that. The power of positive thinking and all that stuff, right?”
“Right,” Eric said, as he continued out the door.
26
Austen lay in her king-size cherrywood, four-poster bed, wearing nothing but a short T-shirt hiked up to expose her flat, smooth belly. The Egyptian cotton sheet lay just below her hips. Her right hand was beneath it, the tips of her two fingers pressing on that very sensitive place between her thighs.
She threw out her left hand toward the nightstand and blindly fumbled for the vibrator.
The last time she pleasured herself was two nights ago, and it had been pretty much every other night for the last month. It was all the stress she was feeling from watching her life and all that she had worked so hard for spiral down the drain.
But tonight, she was super stressed because of that woman who had the nerve to knock on her door earlier today.
“I don’t know who you are,” Austen said, after hearing the woman tell Austen
her name was Sissy Winslow. “What do you want?”
“Like I said, I have a proposition for you. May I come in, or will you have me conduct this business in the corridor?”
Austen wasn’t certain of what to do, she thought, looking this woman up and down. If she was a crook, she was a very successful one, because the clothes and jewelry she wore, Austen was sure, cost as much as some folks’ houses.
“I assure you, if you aren’t interested in what I have to say, I’ll leave. May I come in?”
Austen stepped aside and pulled the door all the way open.
“Wait out here, Harold,” Sissy said to the man beside her.
“Yes, Miss Winslow.”
Sissy Winslow stepped into the bare condo. Austen closed the door behind her.
“Beautiful place you have here,” Sissy said, walking casually through the large, open living room with the high ceilings, over to the glass wall of windows.
Austen watched her, glaring down at the woman’s pumps, with their blood-red soles.
The woman stopped in front of the windows. “Breathtaking,” she said. “Northeast view. Lake Michigan, and you can even see Evanston from here. It would be a shame to lose it, huh?”
“What did you say?” Austen was startled to hear those words come from the woman’s mouth.
Sissy turned to face Austen. “That is why these rooms are bare, right? You’re selling off all your furniture to pay the mortgage.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m buying all new furniture for—”
“Miss Greer, we need to be honest with each other if we’re going to work together.”
“Lady, I don’t know who you are and what you’re selling, but ain’t nobody said nothing about us working together.”
“I’m Sissy Winslow,” Sissy said, walking back over to Austen, her hand extended, as though she had not already introduced herself. “President and CEO of Winslow Hair Care Products, and what I’m selling you is your life back. Would you like me to tell you more, or would you rather I leave?”
As Austen lay in bed, she found that she was no longer in the mood to pleasure herself. It had been spoiled by that arrogant woman who recited Austen’s life story like she had written it.
She set the vibrator down on the nightstand and grabbed the folder Miss Winslow had given her. Inside were clippings from newspapers and magazines, with headlines that read, “Cobi Aiden Winslow to clerk for Illinois State Supreme Court Justice” and “Cobi Winslow Named Editor of The Harvard Law Review” and “Mr. Winslow Joins Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.”
There were pictures. This Cobi guy is handsome, Austen thought as she browsed the pages again. But she still couldn’t believe what this Sissy Winslow was asking of her.
“I should’ve kicked you the hell out of my place the second after I heard what you were offering.”
“But you didn’t, because you need it. Isn’t that correct?”
“Get out,” Austen said. “I’m not some high-priced prostitute.” She walked toward the door, preparing to put Sissy out.
“I don’t understand the correlation,” Sissy said. “There would be no sex. As I said, my brother is gay.”
“The answer is still no,” Austen said, grabbing the doorknob and pulling the door open.
“Stop.”
Austen halted, her hand still on the knob.
“I’ve done my research, as you can tell, and I like you. I think you’ll be good for Cobi. I’m prepared to sweeten the—”
“Not interested, Miss Winslow.”
“You’ve been in this beautiful home for four years now,” Sissy said, looking around as if in awe of its elegance. “The bank plans to foreclose on it in four days. In all honesty, it’s no longer even yours. Do what I ask you and we’ll buy it for you.”
Austen slowly pulled her hand away from the doorknob, considering the benefits of all that Miss Winslow was offering. “I don’t know.”
“That’s better than no. It’s progress,” Sissy said, turning toward the door. “Take a day, think about it, then call me and arrange for a meeting with me and my brother.” Sissy held out a gold-colored business card. “You have one day, Miss Greer, or the offer is off the table.”
As she lay in bed, the newspaper and magazine clippings spread out before her, she had no idea of what decision she’d make. With a frustrated swoop of her arm, Austen brushed the clippings and the folder to the carpet below, reached over, and clicked off the lamp.
27
One leather wallet,” the corrections officer, a broad-shouldered, shaved-head man said, passing Eric his wallet into an opening in the mesh fencing that separated him from the inventory room. The wallet had been taken away from Eric when he was arrested three years ago.
“One wristwatch.”
Eric picked up the watch and fastened it around his wrist. It had stopped working.
“You’re done,” the corrections officer said. “Go that way for fingerprinting.”
In the clothes that he had been arrested in, Eric walked down a long corridor with dirty walls toward the fingerprinting room.
A large woman wearing a white lab coat took Eric’s forefinger and pressed it into a pad saturated with ink, then rolled it over a piece of cardboard.
“Ya’ll fingerprinted me when I came in here three years ago,” Eric said. “Why we got to do this again?”
The big woman performed the same action with another of Eric’s fingers, looked up at him through thick glasses, and said, “Because we need to make sure we’re releasing the same man we locked up.”
“How am I not gonna be the same man?”
The woman opened her mouth to answer the question, when Eric said, “Just finish. I’ll do whatever to get out of here.”
But as Eric wiped his fingers free of ink with the moist napkin she gave him, he wondered what good getting out of there would really do him.
He knew it would never happen, but he could barely sleep last night for hoping that Jess would show up, or at least call to say that she had reconsidered that petition to take his parental rights away. He dreamt she would tell him she was happy he was getting out, and she and Maya would be there to receive him, or at home when he showed up. No call came.
After fingerprinting, Eric was directed to continue down the same corridor. It was the one he was brought into three years ago, cuffed and shackled after he had been convicted.
Back then, he knew exactly what his immediate future would hold. Now, walking down this same hallway in the opposite direction, he had no clue what the next hour would bring.
The evening sun was brighter than Eric had expected when another muscle-bound corrections officer walked Eric outside and toward the front gate of Joliet State Prison.
Eric walked in silence, his laundry bag over his shoulder, his empty wallet in his back pocket, his broken watch on his wrist.
When he and the officer approached the front gate, it was as Eric expected—no one there on the other side to meet him. The street was quiet. Not a single car passing by.
Eric turned to the CO, saw himself in the big man’s mirrored sunglasses. He looked for something to say, but all he could come up with was, “’Preciate it.”
“No problem,” the officer said. “We’ll be seeing you back here real soon, I’m sure.” He cracked a sarcastic smile, then raised an arm high in the air, triggering the locks on the gate.
The mechanical gate lurched, then rolled slowly open to one side, and Eric stepped out.
No money in his pocket, no destination planned, Eric turned right and started walking.
After two minutes, he stopped. It made no sense to walk any further, not knowing where he was going. That moment it all hit him. He was alone. And even though he had always been that way, from the day his mother dropped him off at that adoption agency, at least there was someone, or some entity—the government, at the very least—who felt responsible for him. After that, there had been girlfriends, or friends he could
rely on, but now there was no one.
Eric felt his knees tremble. What would he do? What was he going to do? No answer came to mind. Just when he thought about lowering himself to the ground and simply giving up, Eric heard a car horn honk behind him.
He turned, startled to see a large, black Mercedes idling at the corner.
Eric couldn’t believe it. It was just like Blac said. There behind the wheel, the spitting image of himself, sat his brother Cobi.
Eric walked over to the passenger door. When the window finished powering down, he leaned into the cabin of the car.
“You honking at me?” Eric said, afraid to smile just yet.
“Yeah,” Cobi said. He was wearing a suit and tie, like an Eric from an opposite universe. “Sorry I’m late. That Dan Ryan traffic can be a mofo.”
28
After ringing the doorbell, Austen stood on the porch of her mother’s house—the house she had grown up in.
When the door opened, Austen’s mother, a short woman with skin the color of toasted wheat, opened her arms for a hug. She wore a flower print housecoat over her blouse and slacks.
Austen gave her mother a hug. “How you been, Mommy?”
“I could’ve been kidnapped and held for ransom, for all you know, since you never come to see me,” Angela said, kissing Austen’s cheek.
“I was here just last week, Mommy.”
“I can never see my baby enough,” Angela said, play pinching Austen’s cheek. “I was making some tea. We can take it out back on the deck. It’s a nice evening.”
Outside, Austen’s mother sipped from one of her old porcelain teacups, the matching saucer balanced on her lap. She stared up at the sky as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Setting her cup back on the saucer, Angela said, “Not that I don’t love to see my daughter every opportunity I get, but what brings you here? I wasn’t expecting to see you for another few days.”
“Oh, I just wanted to tell you that the mortgage has been paid.”
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