“I know. Jordy told me. And the way she died, my goodness.” Shay looked at Matty. “That had to be devastating for you.”
Matty’s eyebrows raised, as if she’d just said the understatement of the year. “Yeah, you can say that,” he said with a smile that had nothing to do with humor. “The same doctor who had called me to his office to tell me the somber news was her lover, and was in on the scam, and that’s what it was, a scam, the whole time.”
Shay shook her head. “That is so bogus,” she said. “How could Dr. Graham be like that? She wanted you that badly?”
“It wasn’t about me. Alex would have said so, but it really had nothing to do with me.
It was all about her, all about what she wanted and her tunnel vision getting it.”
“She was a mess.”
“Yes, she was,” Matty admitted. “But despite all of that, she still didn’t deserve what ultimately happened to her.”
Didn’t deserve it? Shay wasn’t sure if she agreed with that, but she didn’t say anything. Matty apparently actually loved that witch.
“Tell me about Dre,” Matty said. “That’s his name, right?”
“DeAndre, yes.” Shay tried to smile. “He’s a good kid, Matty, he really is, but he’s a handful.”
“Problems?”
“He idolizes this gangster, some dude named Burma, and it’s just been one thing after another. I try to get him to see where fooling around with a loser like that would lead. But he doesn’t listen to me.”
“According to the police,” Matty said, “they believe DeAndre was targeted because of his affiliation with this Burma character. It was a payback. Apparently somebody in Burma’s posse had disrespected some other gang and they wanted retribution.”
“By trying to kill Dre and everybody in his home?”
“That’s how they roll, Shay,” Matty said. “They don’t give a damn about themselves, you know they don’t give one about you and DeAndre.”
Shay shook her head. “I tried to tell him to leave those kind of people alone. Lord knows I tried. But he thinks I don’t know anything.”
Matty pulled her closer. “I’m sorry you had to deal with all of that by yourself, Shay.” Shay looked at him. “It’s not your fault, Matty. You know that, right?” Matty didn’t respond, he simply continued to caress her shoulder.
Shay turned her body all the way toward him. “Matty, how can you blame yourself?
You didn’t even know Dre existed!”
Matty leaned forward, unable to staunch the tears that were attempting to appear.
“What is it?” Shay wanted to know. How in this world could he blame himself?
“I should have tried harder to find you.”
“But you searched for me. Jordy told me so.”
“I searched for one year. Just one year, Shay. And that was something like fourteen years ago.”
“But you didn’t know anything about Dre. You didn’t know I was pregnant. You didn’t know I wasn’t taking my birth control the way I should have.”
“You was a kid, come on, and I had you underneath me almost every single night. I should have been checking on that.”
“Oh, Matty, get real. You talk like I was some air-headed fool. I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. Yeah, I was a little irresponsible, I wasn’t paying attention like I should have, but that was on me. That’s my fault, not yours.”
“I understand where you’re coming from, Shay, I understand it. But the fact still remains you have had to raise my child alone. That’s a fact. And nothing, not what you say, not what no-one else says is going to change that fact.” He exhaled. Looked at Shay.
“You’re coming back to Baltimore with me. You get that, right?” Then he added, terrified of being hurt again. “At least until DeAndre recovers.”
“Yes, of course, I’ll be there for that.”
Matty stared at her. “And after that?”
Shay didn’t know what to say. “I don’t know,” she said. “My life is here now. My business is here now.”
“DSI will handle Destiny going forward, Shay.”
Shay began shaking her head before he could finish. “No.”
“Listen to me--”
“No, Matty. That’s all I have. I’m not letting you or anybody else just take it away from me.”
“I’m not taking it away from you. You will keep one hundred percent controlling interest.” Shay looked at him. “DSI will manage it only.” Tears began to fall from Shay’s eyes. She frowned. “You’ll do that for me?” Matty looked at her. “Of course I will, Shay. You’re the love of my life. And the mother of my only child.”
Shay moved up to him and he wrapped her in his arms. They leaned back, holding onto each other.
SIXTEEN
It was, for both of them, the day of truth. DeAndre had been transported to Johns Hopkins and was progressing extremely well. After consulting his doctor, Matty had agreed to hold back, to stay out of the picture, until the boy was completely out of danger. He was now medically out of danger. And Matty arrived in his hospital room for the first time.
Shay was already there, seated beside Dre’s bed. She had moved into the hospital, staying with her son day and night, ever since they arrived in Baltimore. Matty had been meeting up with her in the hospital cafeteria every day, begging her to come to the house to at least get a good night’s sleep. But she refused. She also agreed with the doctor that they should take their time telling Dre about Matty.
And as Matty came into the room, he could tell on her face that she was doubtful that even now was the time.
“Good afternoon,” he said to Shay. DeAndre was in bed, feeling better than he’d felt since the moment before the shooting. He had already sensed that something was up, his mother had been too distracted the last day or so. Now he figured this man who just entered had everything to do with it.
“Hi,” Shay said, attempting to suppress the natural elation she felt every time she saw Matty.
Matty, too, moved gingerly. He looked at his son, fully awake, for the first time. He looked so familiar that it stunned him. His heart dropped.
Shay looked at DeAndre too. She had a bad feeling that this was not going to go well, but she knew there was no other way. He had to know. “Dre,” she said, “I want you to meet Matty Driscoll.”
Dre looked at Matty, his striking green eyes wide and alert. “’Sup?” he said to Matty.
“Dre,” Shay said, and then swallowed hard. She didn’t know how to say it. She looked to Matty.
“I’m your father, Dre,” Matty said without hesitation. He stared DeAndre straight in his eyes, man to man. DeAndre didn’t blink.
Shay looked at her son. “You heard him, Dre? He’s your father. I know I told you he was dead.” It sounded so real, so wrong, so typical of the kind of colossal errors in judgment she made throughout her life that she just knew her son would hate her for this. But he didn’t say a word. He just stared at Matty.
“I know it’s going to be hard for you to forgive me son,” Shay continued. “I was so scared and alone, I didn’t know what else to say. Matty was in a difficult situation then and I didn’t want to add to his grief. That’s why I didn’t tell him about you. He just found out too.
The night of the shooting was when I told him.”
DeAndre still said nothing. Matty placed his hands in his pant pockets. He could not recall ever being this nervous.
“Listen, son,” Matty started, but DeAndre stopped him.
“Don’t you call me that!” DeAndre exploded, his finger pointing directly at Matty.
“Don’t you ever call me that!”
“Dre, what’s wrong with you?” Shay asked him, stunned. “I told you he just found out.”
“He better stay away from me, that’s all he better do. I don’t wanna have nothing to do with him!”
“Dre! He just found out, what are you talking about? You can’t blame him for this.”
“Yeah, he just found out
all right. But I’ll bet ‘cha he ain’t just found out about his white kids, I’ll bet you that.”
Shay was confused. “What white kids? What are you talking about?”
“It’s all right, Shay,” Matty said. “The boy’s just upset.”
“Don’t you call me boy!” DeAndre exploded again.
“I’ll call you anything I damn well please!” Matty fired back. Then he calmed back down. “I know you’re upset, but I am your father.”
“DNA say so?” DeAndre wanted to know.
“DNA?” Shay asked. “Boy, you better not be going there.”
“Who says he my father? Hun? Who say so? Him? That don’t mean it’s true.”
“I say he’s your father, fool! And I should know. I wasn’t with any other man sixteen years ago!”
“Well, whatever, he just better stay out of my way.”
“Don’t you dare---”
“Shay, it’s all right,” Matty attempted to reassure her, although his heart was tearing apart. “This is heavy news and he needs time to take it in.”
“You stay away from me!” DeAndre yelled at Matty. “You hear me!” A nurse hurried in. “Is everything all right in here? I could hear you down the hall, young man.”
“Get him out of this room now,” DeAndre ordered, prompting the nurse to look at Matty.
“I’m leaving,” Matty said and Shay stood to her feet.
“Matty,” she started, but he held up a hand, attempted to smile.
“It’s all right, Shay. Truly it is.” Then he hesitated. “Come see me later?” he asked her.
All Shay could do was nod. Matty left out of the room.
When the nurse also left, Shay sat on the edge of DeAndre’s bed and looked at him.
DeAndre looked at his mother and his anger turned into pain right before her very eyes. He fell into her arms sobbing almost uncontrollably. Shay closed her eyes. What a mess, she thought. What a mess she’d made of this boy’s life.
***
Later that evening they were outside on the balcony of Matty’s home, with Shay standing at the railing sipping wine, and Matty seated on the lounger in shorts and an open shirt. He, too, was sipping wine, although it tasted like paste to him. All he could think about was DeAndre, and that sadness in that boy’s eyes, that pain.
Shay turned and looked at him. She had taken a long bath and put on one of Matty’s dress shirts. She looked radiant, it seemed to him.
“The doctor said he can be released by the end of the week.”
“I know,” Matty said.
This surprised Shay. “You know? How do you know? I just found out before I came here.”
“I spoke with him earlier. We talk everyday about DeAndre’s condition. He told me then. I’ve got to be in Memphis tomorrow, but I’ll be back Thursday night come hell or high water. I’ll be there when he’s released.”
Shay exhaled. “He wants to go back to Philly,” she said.
“So those gang friends of his can finish the job? No way.”
“But he’s lived in Philly most of his life, Matty. We can’t just uproot him like this.”
“We can and we will. He doesn’t get a vote.”
“But he’ll hate us more if we even try it.”
“Then he’ll have to hate us,” Matty said this at a cost. All he wanted was a little peace in his life, but he continued to turn up confusion, drama, pain. “He’s staying here, both of you are staying here. With me.”
Shay looked at the wine in her glass. She didn’t know what she was going to do at this point. She wanted to be with Matty, but it was all so confusing now. And Dre just seemed to despise him.
“Come here, Shay,” Matty said, feeling her anguish.
She walked over to the lounger and sat down beside him. He took her drink and his and put them both on the side table. Then he threw his arms around her and held her tightly.
“It’s not going to be easy, Shay. It’s going to take a lot of time. But I will be a father to our son. I’ll make up for every day I’ve missed in his life. I promise you that.” Shay looked at Matty. She knew it was true. And she kissed him.
But Matty had been craving her too desperately to be satisfied with a kiss. He pulled her onto his lap, straddling her as she faced him, and kissed her passionately. As they kissed, he removed his shirt from his body, and then the shirt she wore from hers. He slid down his shorts, rendering them both naked, and at first just held her against him.
He looked at her, his blue eyes so tired they worried Shay. “I love you, Shanita,” he said to her.
Shay stared at him. “I love you too, Matty,” she said.
And that was enough. He continued kissing her as he entered her. When they joined, he felt as if he wanted to cry. It felt as if so many years had been wasted, so many lonely days when his woman and his child were within a hundred miles of him for more than a dozen years, and he was living a separate, wasted life so close, but so far away. It felt so painful, so unfair, so wrenching. He moved deeper and deeper and deeper inside of her, to make sure she felt every inch of him, and they he began to find their rhythm.
Shay held on, thrilled to be on the ride too, unable to stop feeling as if she was on the ride of her life. She lay against his chest as he rode in and out of her, over and over, like a dance that started out as a slow drag, but was now the watusi. She loved this man. She loved how this man felt inside of her. But what if Dre continued to despise him? What would she do then?
“Oh, Matty, what are we going to do?” she asked him as the intensity of his gyrations began to sear her.
“Ride me, Shay,” Matty said, moving in and out, in and out. “Just close your eyes and ride.”
And Shay did. She decided to just do it, to just close her eyes and ride.
SEVENTEEN
They arrived at the hospital on the day of DeAndre’s release with a sense of purpose, a sense that they had to be the grownups here and take complete charge of Dre’s life. Before Dre ruined what was left of it. But when they went into his room and found it empty, and hurried to the nurse’s station to find out where they had moved him, they were in for a rude awakening.
“He was released,” the nurse said, confused by their question.
“Released?” Shay said, even more confused by her answer. “But we’re his parents.
Who did you release him to?”
“His older brother.”
Shay looked at Matty.
“Describe this brother,” Matty asked the nurse.
“Kind of short, with dreads, light-complexioned, oh, and he had a gold grill in his mouth.”
Matty looked at Shay. “Burma?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Burma,” she said and immediately pulled out her cell phone.
“He said he was his brother,” the nurse explained nervously. “I had no reason to dispute him.”
“Understood,” Matty said.
But DeAndre wasn’t answering his cell phone. Shay was beginning to panic.
“Come on,” Matty said, hurrying her out of the hospital, getting Jordy on his own cell phone as he did.
“He’s gone back to Philadelphia, Matty,” Shay insisted. “He’s determined to defy us.”
“I know,” Matty said, holding onto Shay as they ran all the way to his car, a silver Bentley. “We’re going back, too.”
***
Shay knew the usual spots where Burma and his boys loved to hang, and Matty drove them to every one. But all to no avail. They even went by Shay’s house, to see if DeAndre was there, but he wasn’t. To her surprise, however, her home had been completely renovated, with the broken glass and evidence of what the police said were “hundreds of rounds of bullet holes,” no longer present. She looked at Matty when they got back into his car.
“You did this, didn’t you?”
For Matty, however, that small gesture wasn’t even worth responding to. DeAndre was on his mind. “I need you to think harder, Shay,” he said. “Is there anywhere else DeAn
dre could be?”
“Other than with Burma, no. That’s who he hung out with, or at least tried to when I wasn’t paying attention.”
Matty backed out of the driveway again. “We’ll just have to double back, check the usual spots again, and just keep looking,” he said and headed, once again, for the hood.
It was a long, drawn-out search, with Shay growing more and more antsy, especially since DeAndre’s cell phone was now going straight to voice mail. Until they approached a housing project off Broad Street, and Shay spotted Burma’s old-style Chevy.
“I think that’s him, Matty,” she said, pointing in the direction of the car. Matty’s car immediately crossed over and drove to the end of the street, a few feet behind the Chevy. Just as he did, Burma and two of his boys jumped from Burma’s car and began running, guns at their side, toward another group of unsuspecting young men who were sitting at a picnic table, laughing and eating outside a rib joint. When DeAndre jumped out of the backseat of the car, Shay’s heart dropped.
“Oh, my Lord, Matty, it’s Dre! I’ve got to stop him! I’ve got to stop him!” But Matty wasn’t listening to her. He was already unbuckling his seatbelt and jumping from the car, ordering Shay to stay put.
But their concern that DeAndre was about to participate in some gangland shooting was completely unfounded. DeAndre was terrified. He all but begged Burma not to do it, not to seek revenge on the men Burma believed had orchestrated the drive-by of Dre’s house. It was his life, his house, DeAndre had attempted to impress upon his friend, and he didn’t want revenge.
But his desire had nothing to do with it. It was gang pride, Burma said, and nobody messes with his boys without itching for a fight. Now DeAndre was nearly paralyzed where he stood, his hands on the top of his head, his every instinct telling him to run, but his feet wouldn’t cooperate.
Until he felt a strong hand, a firm grip, on his arm. When he turned and realized it was Matty Driscoll, his father, he nearly collapsed into him. But Matty had no time for sentiment.
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