When Val pulled up outside of Thirjane’s house, she honked the horn and waved at little Tyrian standing in the doorway. He was holding his iPad and looking at Val’s car sitting in his grandmother’s long driveway like he wanted to run out and say something to her. When Val thought about it, she realized that she was sitting in Jamison’s old car and that Tyrian probably remembered it and was thinking of his dad.
Just then, Thirjane showed up in the doorway and pulled Tyrian away, snatching the iPad away, and saying something that didn’t look kind from Val’s perspective in the car.
“That bitch is crazy,” Val said.
Kerry showed up at the door in country-club worthy khakis and a plaid shirt with a ruffle collar. She was back to looking sophisticated and neat and the beige tote tucked beneath her arms and Dockers on her feet were the final declaration of her return.
Val spied as Kerry seemed to parade to the car like an everyday Black American Princess who’d never been arrested, locked up, and charged with anything other than a traffic ticket.
Kerry walked up to the driver’s-side window with a welcoming smile to greet Val and kissed her on the cheek before climbing into the car. It was like they were college sisters apart for years, going off on a trip where the other “sistergirls” were waiting with lemon-drop cocktails and tales of kids in private school and husbands who couldn’t get enough of them.
Driving out of the complex, Val imagined that the above-mentioned might be the case. Her past and present erased in a new reality, where something other than the current situation would cause Kerry to befriend her. Val had two parents at home just around the corner from Thirjane’s house. Their names were Milton and Marjorie Wilshire. They were retired. Aging with gray hair, but graceful, elegant. They drove an old Mercedes-Benz. Contributed to the local Negro College Fund, especially to those girls attending Spelman College, where their only daughter, Valerie Bethanny Wilshire, had graduated with honors, earning a degree in art history after pledging whatever sorority Kerry belonged to. That’s how Kerry and Valerie met. Sorortity sisters. Sorors.
“Thank you for coming to get me out of that house,” Kerry said. “My mother’s positively driving me crazy. Everything is always a problem with her and she seems even worse right now. I don’t know what it is. But Mrs. Janie Jackson is about to make me kill her.”
“Careful what you speak into existence,” Val replied. “Has she said anything to you about Jamison? About the case?”
“Not really. She’s been glued to those news stations all day and night, trying to get information about the DA. It’s like she’s addicted to every little detail about the investigation. Funny how she’s so interested now, but when I was in jail, it was like she was too busy.” Kerry’s tone dallied in disappointment.
Val pulled onto the highway, driving in the direction of Dahlonega.
“If she’s so bad, why not leave? Just go home,” Val said.
“I am—I will. I’m working on it. Just want to take it slow for Tyrian. He was already forced to leave his home when I went to jail and for three months his grandmother’s house was all he knew. And she moved all of his things there, so it’s kind of like home for him. And he just stopped wetting the bed again. I want to give him some time to adjust to me being home and then we’ll go back,” Kerry explained. “And I’m not really excited about being in the house anyway.”
“Why?”
“Oh, well . . .” Kerry hesitated.
“What? What about your house?”
“Jamison—he was there before he died. He came over.” Kerry looked out of the window. This happened when Jamison was still married to Val. After his mother had died, he’d come to her house for consoling, a shoulder to cry on that would turn into him confessing his love for Kerry—his being in love with Kerry—a love that he’d said had never left him, not after their split, not even when he’d married Val.
“Oh,” Val half-verbalized. She could still hear the pretext in Kerry’s voice, her withholding or fear of letting something out. They drove a mile or so in silence as they remembered those days before and after Mother Taylor’s death. Though they were far apart, it was shared history. Soon Val spoke. “We haven’t talked about it—about Jamison, but I know. He loved you. And that’s fine. I know that. And I know you loved him too.”
Kerry couldn’t deny these charges.
“Of course, he went to you when his mother died,” Val went on. “He was tied to you in a way he was never tied to me. You two were friends. We never were.” Val stayed in the slow lane as she spoke; still, cars were moving from behind her car and passing in the next lane. “He trusted you. You know? Like there were times when things were going on with him in the mayor’s office—with that whole Ras thing, especially—I knew he needed someone to talk to.” Val glanced over at Kerry. “I always wondered if he was talking to you.”
Kerry remembered Jamison coming to her with the information about Ras when he was arrested. She’d been so coarse with him, so angry she could hardly look him in the eyes. She was still so angry with him.
“And if he wasn’t talking to you, I knew it was only a matter of time before he did,” Val said. “And then, only a matter of time before he—” Val looked over at Kerry suggestively.
“What? Sex? No—never.” Kerry sounded surprised by the suggestion. Like no ex-wife had ever slept with her ex-husband after he’d remarried. “Fooling around? When he was married to you? No.” She laughed. “Our connection was never really based in that. We . . . like—we had good sex, but not like—what I’m sure he and you—like you—” she stumbled.
“What? Sex with me?” Val didn’t look surprised. “Jamison was crazy in bed. Like a madman.”
“What? Really?” Kerry remembered Jamison lying on top of her—that was how they commonly had sex. He always kissed her neck softly. He’d whisper about his love in her ear. Then he’d have an orgasm. She did sometimes.
“Girl,” Val said, sounding really chatty, “that man would get some coke in him and turn into a porn star.” She laughed at a memory of Jamison tearing out every single hair extension glued to her scalp as he held her from behind in a parked car.
“Coke? Jamison used cocaine? Drugs?” Kerry asked.
“Yes,” Val confirmed. “But not like a drug addict. Just like once a week, maybe twice, so he could—you know.”
“No. I don’t,” Kerry said awkwardly. It was like she was hearing about someone she didn’t know.
“Coke is the original Viagra. Long and strong. Men like Jamison use it to keep it up. That and to forget who they are, their limitations. You want a happy man? Put a line of coke between your titties and let him snort it up. That’ll keep his ass at home.”
“Okay. Too much information,” Kerry said.
“I’m just sharing tips,” Val said, unashamed. “It’s not like he was your man then. He was single and for the taking. And I took.” Val paused to be sure she was getting out everything she wanted to in the needed exchange. “Something I never understood about you was how angry you were with me.”
“What do you mean, angry with you? I was never angry with you.”
Val scrunched up her face at Kerry. “Chile, please don’t lie. You can’t save the devil from the jury,” she said, repeating one of Mama Fee’s old sayings.
“What?” Kerry laughed. “I am not lying. I never hated you.”
Val rolled her eyes playfully to make it clear she wasn’t taking this exchange too seriously, but she had to let Kerry know how she’d felt. “You were acting like I was the woman who stole him from you. Like I was some kind of side piece. And I never was. I was a lot of things to Jamison. I wasn’t a lot of things to Jamison. But a side piece was never one of them. And I wasn’t his mistress.”
Kerry nodded along. “Good point.”
“So, why were you like that? Why did you act like that to me?”
Kerry thought for a minute. “I could say a lot of things. Maybe I didn’t like your long, fake nails—”
“What? Wasn’t nothing wrong with my nails!” Val declared.
“Girl, French tips on dragon-lady nails? It was just horrible. And I didn’t even get to the clear heels you wore to the office. And your titties hanging out everywhere! Dear God!” Kerry pretended to clutch imaginary pearls around her neck.
“Umm, your ex-husband loved those nails and those heels and those breasts,” Val countered and they both laughed.
“Really, though, if you want the truth, I think maybe I was just jealous of you,” Kerry admitted sincerely and maybe to herself for the first time.
“Jealous of me?” Val was admitting something to herself for the first time with irony in her voice. It sounded something like, How could the woman I was so jealous of have been jealous of me?
“You’re beautiful,” Kerry blurted out.
“I’m just—”
“No, wait.” Kerry stopped Val from trying to lower her compliment. Now she was the one who had to let something out. “You’re not just beautiful. You’re stunning. Alluring. Sexual. Just sensuous.”
“But look where that got me.”
“Let me finish. But you’re not only that, Val.” Kerry reached over and placed her hand on Val’s leg for a second to emphasize the candidness in her speech. “You’re also free. And daring. And bold. You give a fuck!” Kerry shouted that last line in the car and they laughed together again. “You cursed me out. You cursed Jamison out. You cursed Mother Taylor out! You play by your own rules and I admire that so much.” Val said the words from her heart, but she wasn’t thinking of a single one before it came out. “And I know all of that daring is the only reason you could even think to help me when I was in jail. Funny, right? All the reasons I hated you early on were the reasons you could try to help me get out. Who else would help their dead husband’s ex get out of jail?” Kerry frowned at Val. “Come on. Only someone who makes her own rules and doesn’t care what people have to say about it.”
“Plenty of people would,” Val revealed.
“But you kept your promise to me. As crazy as it was, you kept it. And I don’t even think I could’ve. I’m sure I couldn’t have,” Kerry said. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” Val said.
“Right.”
“Right.”
“Good.”
Val looked at Kerry and repeated, “Good.”
Kerry shifted her weight on her seat and looked at the highway sign for clarity on where they were in their journey. They were nearly halfway to Dahlonega.
“Damn, this is a long way out,” Kerry said, changing the subject. “Why do you think Leaf wanted to meet us way out here?”
“Who knows. Poor little white boy sounds like he thinks the world is about to end. All I know is what I told you—he had some big news about Jamison’s case and he wanted to speak to both of us,” Val replied. She’d already told Kerry most of the other stuff Leaf had revealed to her—everything except for the information about Thirjane.
“Well, it better be good,” Kerry said. “Got us driving all the way out here. He knows black people don’t venture this far out of the perimeter. No telling what kinds of crazy folks are out here. Might run into a Klan meeting and have to call Reverend Markel Hutchins to come and get us out of the country.”
When Leaf heard footsteps coming up the front steps of the old woodsy cabin he’d been locked up in for days, his instincts automatically told him they weren’t from the company he’d invited. He noted one tap on each wooden step and that indicated one person was arriving to the utilitarian tuck-away he often knew as a summer home as a child. There was also no talking or chatter—which would be odd for the two black women he was expecting. He hadn’t heard tires turn into the drive, the sound of a car’s engine humming and then shutting off, or the doors opening and closing. This was a problem.
Standing in the back bedroom of the cabin, just getting ready to slide his shoes on, he looked to the corner beside the bed where he’d set his shotgun, but then remembered that he’d left it downstairs in the bedroom in the cellar after cleaning it.
“You move and I’ll blow your head right the fuck off!”
The above command came with the feeling of a cool bit of steel pressed at the back of Leaf’s cerebellum.
“How’d you find me?” Leaf turned around slowly and was face-to-face with Delgado.
“Does it matter?” Delgado immediately started searching Leaf’s body for weapons.
Leaf noticed that Delgado’s hair was so wet he could see his scalp and it was pink, nearly red. The coloring matched the feverish tint on his forehead and cheeks too.
“I guess it depends on why you’re here. If you’re here to take me in—”
“I’m not here to take you in,” Delgado replied quickly.
“Then there’s no harm in telling. Not if I’m a dead man. Dead men don’t tell secrets,” Leaf said. “Who sent you?”
“I sent me,” Delgado answered through bated breath. He looked haggard. Unsteady.
“Come on. I know you have orders.”
“I do. And you had orders too. You shouldn’t have gotten involved. There was no reason for you to go poking your nose around places where it doesn’t belong. You know that.”
“Taylor was my case. I was responsible for what happened. I couldn’t just walk away,” Leaf said, following Delgado’s directions to sit on the bed. He could hear him breathing.
“You were supposed to walk away when they told you to walk away. But you didn’t listen. I told you—I tried to tell you to just leave it alone.” That heat Delgado had felt in his stomach after drinking Mama Fee’s tea was now lava flowing through his veins. When he left the house in Atlanta, he knew he had to get to Leaf before Val did. He drove north at top speed with the windows open, telling himself he wasn’t as sick as he felt. He popped one of his blood-pressure pills; said he’d give it time. After a few minutes, he felt a little better, but then the heat started its havoc again and when he got to the dirt road leading to the cabin where the ping the Bureau had surreptitiously hidden in Leaf’s second secret phone sent out a signal, the pulsating and throbbing had overtaken nearly every sense and function he had—all but duty. He had to finish the job.
“Leave it alone?” Leaf shook his head. “This was the one time when I couldn’t. You know, I keep thinking about that. Why I couldn’t. Why I can’t just walk away. And I’m realizing that after all my years in the Bureau, all my calls, all the secrets, all the lies I’ve kept under lock and key, I couldn’t do it with this one because of how anxious everyone seems to be about me doing just that—letting it go. It’s almost like they assumed I wouldn’t. Like they knew I couldn’t. That promotion. The office. The accolades. All to try to pacify me. And then I’m like—why? What’s so important that the man tracking a man had a man tracking him? You ever wonder who’s tracking you?”
“Cut the shit,” Delgado said. “No one’s tracking me.”
“You sure? Or you just think you’re sure? Want to believe that?”
“Maybe someone is.” Delgado wiped his forehead and then readjusted his grip on the gun. “Why does it matter?”
“Because this can’t fail. Because something big—bigger than me; bigger than you—is at stake. I read through all those files. Every one. Mine and yours. This has nothing to do with Taylor or Cade. This isn’t some sting or probe. That’s just a show to get you and me going. Get us to lock people up. Shoot each other and walk away thinking we really did something,” Leaf said and added sarcastically, “That we contributed to our society. Saved our society from each other. But that’s not what this is. See, we’re really saving their society for them.”
It was impossible for Delgado to unravel these high ideas, speculations based in an untenable mythos that was in no way a part of the very solid foundation that structured his thoughts. That wasn’t helped by the foggy mind where Leaf’s speech sounded something like an old black woman humming. Delgado blinked. Pointed the gun and nearly pulled the trigger.
“Stay still,” he ordered, though Leaf hadn’t moved. Delgado staggered left and right.
“You okay?” Leaf asked, watching his captor and trying to figure out when and how he could make a move to turn the tables and get away.
“Shut the fuck up!” Delgado spat. “And stay still!”
The gun waved at three and four different versions of Leaf moving around in the room.
The heat in Delgado’s veins pushed up, over, around, and through his heart and made it shudder like he’d just jumped off a building.
“Get up!” he said to Leaf.
“What? Where are we going?”
“I need the files. The ones you had stolen from my computer,” Delgado said. “Where’s the zip drive?”
There was no sense in denying having the files. Of course, Delgado knew Leaf had access.
“Downstairs,” Leaf said, remembering where he’d set his shotgun. “In the cellar. Follow me downstairs and I’ll give you everything.”
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