“I wouldn’t complain. Wait until July and August.”
“Not complaining. Not at all.”
He returned to the task at hand. He wouldn’t complain about surveying in the heat of the summer either. Well, not too much. His cell phone buzzed from inside the top desk drawer where he’d stashed it. Pulling it out, he saw an unknown number. The happy feeling he’d been riding fell away. He swiped left on the screen to reject the call. That was the past. Momma G had made him swear to finish his degree and he had. He’d busted his ass to get out of there and now that she was gone, he had no reason to ever go back. They could call a billion times and he wasn’t going to answer. Drawing in and letting out a long, slow breath, he refocused on the job in front of him.
Later though, as he sat in traffic on the commute home, a thought exploded in his mind. What if it had been Tiana? Mickie had said she was thinking about the school project. Curiosity piqued, he reached for his phone at the next red light. Thumbed through to listen to the voice mail. It was a woman, but it wasn’t Tiana.
“Hi, DeShawn. My name is Gretchen and I am your mother’s sponsor in Narcotics Anonymous...”
He hit Delete before he could hear any more. Damn it. Now she’s giving out my name and number to other druggies? Slamming his hand against the steering wheel only fueled the frustration and anger. Why can’t they leave me alone? As traffic started moving, he merged into the right lane with a halfhearted wave in apology to the person he’d sort of cut off. Pulling into a parking spot in a strip mall, he put the car into Park and wiped at his face with both hands.
Maybe if he just talked to them. If he told them to go away, would they? He could be the bad guy. In fact, he’d willingly be the bad guy if it meant he was finally done with them. Staring without seeing out into the passing traffic, he became acutely aware of the anger that was coursing through his body. All the happiness and satisfaction with himself and his life were gone. Wiped away by a single phone call. He had to deal with this.
He needed to talk to Sadie. Now. Before this got out of hand. Looking around, he got his bearings. He’d driven all over the Charleston area in his four years as a member of the Cleaning Crew. Drop him anywhere and he could be back at the Crew office in less than fifteen minutes. Well, in this traffic, maybe thirty.
It was twenty. He glanced at his watch. As he pulled around to the parking lot on the side of the house, his stomach dropped. Sadie’s car wasn’t there. Now what? Go to the gym and run until you’re too tired to think about this anymore? A movement at the back door caught his attention. Molly. She locked the door behind her and turned to peer at his car over the tops of her glasses. He rolled down the window.
“DeShawn!” she called out in delight as she crossed the small lot to greet him.
He climbed out of the car to give her a hug. Just seeing her face made him feel better. If Sadie was a big sister figure to him, then Molly was certainly his substitute grandmother. Short, round, white hair, constantly reading romance novels at her desk, but she missed nothing. She could go from sweet grandmotherly love to drill sergeant tough in a heartbeat.
“I was looking for Sadie,” he said as he stepped back.
“Oh, it’s PTA night,” Molly said with a self-satisfied grin.
“PTA?” Parent-teacher thing?
“Exactly,” Molly said with a knowing smile, “Parent-Teacher Association. She’s at the elementary school with Wyatt and his daughter.”
He stared openmouthed at her. Sadie? At an elementary school meeting? “I... I,” he stuttered. He shook his head. “I can’t even process that information.”
Molly laughed. “It’s mind-boggling. What did you need, honey?”
It came back to him, cutting short the humor. “Nothing really. To talk.”
He felt her gaze on him but couldn’t quite meet it. She had a way of knowing things. “Well,” she said. “I was going to hop on the bus, but if you aren’t hurrying off anywhere, would you give an old lady a ride home?”
“Of course,” he said. Why hadn’t he known Molly rode the bus to work? He felt a little ashamed of himself. He and the guys should have been giving her rides home every day.
“Thank you. And I put a nice pot roast in the slow cooker this morning. If you’d like, there’s plenty for two.”
He followed her directions into the cozy Byrnes Down neighborhood. “I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“Same pot roast I made for First Friday dinners.”
That made him smile. On the first Friday of the month, Sadie and Molly would cook up a huge dinner for all the Crew members. It was family time.
“I’m also a fairly good listener,” Molly added.
“Okay. I can’t pass up your pot roast.”
“Good, you’re looking a bit skinny.”
At the front door, Molly turned to him. “Mind your step. Wee furry ones everywhere.”
“What?”
As he followed her into the tidy cottage-sized house, he was surrounded by tiny mewling kittens. One, two, three, four... “Molly? Are you a crazy cat lady?”
Ten. There were ten of them. And one grown-up cat slinking along a wall.
“Heavens, no! I’m a foster home for pregnant mommy cats. They stay with me until they have their babies and then go out for adoption when the kittens are old enough. I usually only do one litter at a time, but there was an emergency placement and I ended up with two momma cats and all their kittens.”
A tugging on his pant legs made him look down. Three of the tiny beasts were climbing him like a tree. As he bent to pick them off, two more started up his other leg. “I’m under attack!”
Molly’s laugh rang out and with a tug at his heart he realized how much he’d missed her. She was basically a white version of Momma G. “Let me get some cat food. They’ll leave you alone then.”
He followed her into the kitchen and sat at the small dining table while she attended to the cats. He’d never seen so many kittens in one place before. The mewling rose in pitch as the food was being prepared then complete chaos as they fought for a spot on the platters.
Molly sat beside him once she was finished. “Want one?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“They’ll be ready for adoption in a month or so.”
“I’m not a cat person.”
“Everyone is a cat person. You just have to meet the right cat.”
Nope. If he was going to get a pet, it’d be a big dog. “I’m concentrating on taking care of myself right now. Not sure I’m ready to be responsible for another life.”
Molly patted his hand and stood. “Let’s get that roast served up. I’m starving.”
Over dinner, she asked about his new job, his apartment, his love life, his health. Basically every exact same thing his grandmother would interrogate him about. He found himself relaxing into the comfort of it. After leaving the Crew, he felt he’d lost his family. But they were still family at heart.
“I’ll get these,” he said as Molly reached for his empty plate. As he cleared the table, Molly began to fill the sink with water. He paused. “Do you not use the dishwasher?”
“It’s broken. Makes a horrible racket when I turn it on. I just haven’t called anyone to come look at it yet.”
“Sounds like something stuck in the drain. Want me to take a look?”
“Would you?”
“Of course.”
Ten minutes later, he was disassembling the drain trap with two kittens inside the dishwasher with him, several more sitting on the open door and one perched on his shoulder. “Dude,” he said to the gray kitten sitting on his shoulder. “You really aren’t helping.”
“Cats are natural supervisors,” Molly said.
He looked at the kitten and it looked back at him with mint-green eyes. “Is that what you’re d
oing?”
He got a tiny little mew and it made him laugh.
“You were looking for Sadie,” Molly said. “Is something wrong? Could you talk to me?”
For a moment, he felt off-balance. He’d forgotten all about his mother and her mess. He turned his attention back to the dishwasher. “You know about my parents, right?”
“I know your grandmother raised you.”
He nodded, carefully placing the screws out of kitten reach on the counter above him. “Yeah, my parents were addicts. Back and forth with sobriety for years, but when I was about six months old, it got really bad and my grandmother took me away from them.”
“One of them come back?”
It was said with such a knowing, yet compassionate, tone that he looked up at her. “Yeah. My mother.”
Molly nodded. “Time for amends?”
He shrugged and pulled loose the drain trap. “Here’s your problem,” he said as he held out a small chunk of plastic. He put it on the counter above him and scooped up the screws. “I guess that’s what she wants. She gave my name and phone number to some lady who says she’s her sponsor. I’m guessing she called to say I should let my mother to talk to me. I just don’t know.”
There was a long silence as he put the drain trap back together. As he was removing kittens from the inside, Molly stood from where she’d been sitting at the dining room table. “Come sit in the living room with me.”
After disposing of the bit of plastic and washing his hands, he settled down on the opposite end of the sofa from Molly. She turned toward him with her hands clasped. “My former husband was an alcoholic.”
He blinked. He’d thought she was a widow. “Oh,” he said slowly.
“He would get sober for a year, slip up, drink for a year or two. It was a never-ending cycle. After about twenty years, we separated. I couldn’t do it anymore. It’s a horrible disease but you can’t help someone who doesn’t want help.”
He felt something, some sort of release. She understood. “That’s why when my grandmother died I just walked away from the entire family. Even though my aunts and uncles are great people, being with them exposes me to my parents and I just can’t do that anymore. I feel bad about it and I try to keep up with them on Facebook and stuff, but I can’t be there.”
Molly was nodding. “You have to take care of yourself first, DeShawn. You deserve a happy life. It’s not selfish, it’s self-preservation.”
“So, what is this amends stuff about?”
“Just that. The person acknowledges the harm they did to you, takes responsibility, apologizes.”
Thumping his head back against the couch, DeShawn stared up at the ceiling. “I don’t know if I can listen to that,” he said quietly.
He felt the cushions of the couch shift and Molly’s warm hand clasped his. “You don’t have to, DeShawn. Self-care first. This is why I had to separate from my husband. It became too much to hear him apologizing for the same acts over and over and over again without results. It became harmful to me to have to relive all the bad times. I said No more.”
“I get that,” he said. But there was still some squirmy, wrong feeling twisting in his gut. “But I still feel... I don’t know.”
“Guilty? Like you aren’t helping her recover or stay sober? Wondering if you say no and she goes back to using, it will be your fault?”
He stared at her. “That’s exactly it. I feel like I should give her a chance, but I just plain don’t want to. I’ve got my life on track—I’m in a really good place now. Do I want to go back and wallow in all that pain again?”
“Only you can answer that, DeShawn. Remember, it will also be a time for you to tell her exactly what impact her drug addiction had on you. Some people find that cathartic.”
Great. Back at square one. He shook his head. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Then don’t do anything until you do know. If you want, I will call the sponsor lady and tell her you are deciding what you want to do and to please not contact you again.”
He looked back to the ceiling. Was that a solution or would he be pushing responsibility off on someone else? “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll call her. I’ll tell her.”
A tugging on his pants leg made him look down. The little gray cat climbed up and sat on his lap. Mewed. Molly laughed.
“I think you’ve been claimed.”
He reached out and rubbed its tiny head and felt a low rumble. The kitten walked straight up his chest and sat on his shoulder, purring loudly in his ear. “I am not taking this kitten.”
Molly nodded. “Okay. Anything you say. I’ll hold him back for you. They’ll be ready to adopt in three or four weeks depending on their weight gain.”
He lifted the kitten off his shoulder and handed it to Molly. “Nope. Thank you for dinner. And the talk. But I’m not going to let you turn me into a crazy cat man.”
“Anything you say. Thank you for fixing my dishwasher. I do miss you. You should come to the Friday dinners.”
At the door, he hugged her and kissed her cheek. “Thank you,” he said again. “I mean it. Talking to you really helped. I don’t feel quite as crazy.”
“Anytime. I’m right here, okay? Me and your cat.”
CHAPTER SIX
HER CHEEKS WERE starting to hurt. The fake, polite smile she had plastered on her face was faltering. This was too much to ask for on a Monday night. The concentration she needed to keep from rolling her eyes was distracting her from keeping that smile in place. Discreetly checking the time on her phone, Tiana resisted the urge to sigh. Lily sat beside her, happily swinging her feet and drawing in a sketch pad. She checked the image. Another cat. Lily’s bedroom walls were covered in the evidence of her never-ending campaign to get a cat. When she’s old enough to scoop up cat poop, she can have one.
Reinforcing the smile, Tiana turned her attention back to the meeting. She’d never been to a PTA meeting before and if this was how they were, she’d never go back. These two damn women had been passive-aggressively discussing what the theme of the spring carnival should be for at least ten minutes. Felt like ten years. She wanted to jump up and scream, “How about springtime?”
Glancing around, she met eyes with another parent. The woman mimed putting a gun to her head and made a face. Tiana nodded. I put on a bra for this? Unfortunately, the price she was paying for getting Lily into the creative arts magnet school was parental involvement. She was required to attend so many meetings and do volunteer work in the classroom. She liked the volunteering. She loved that she could come have lunch with Lily when she wanted. She hated these meetings.
Lily looked up. “Are those women still talking?”
And not in her library voice. Heat flooded her face as others nearby turned to look. “Shh. Yes, honey. They are.”
“I think the theme should be cats.”
Oh Lord. Parental politics on one side. Cat demands on the other. I need a drink. A movement to her left caught her attention. Kasey plopped down beside her.
“Sorry I’m late,” Kasey whispered. “Had a fatal gunshot come in ten minutes before my shift ended.”
“Lucky. I had an impacted bowel end of my last shift,” Tiana whispered back. “Did you pick up an extra shift?” She already felt more relaxed. It was Kasey who pulled some strings to get Lily admitted to the charter school midyear.
“Just a couple of hours. Jordan wanted to leave early. She’s taking Shay to Disney for her birthday. So I covered for her.”
“Where’s Claire?” Lily asked, leaning forward to look over.
“She’s at home with her daddy,” Kasey explained.
Another bonus. Kasey and Jordan both had daughters about the same age as Lily and the three were already best friends. Great school. Great friends. Everything Tiana had been working so ha
rd to get for her daughter.
Kasey slid down the chair, stretching her legs forward and slipping her feet free of her clogs. “Ahhh,” she whispered, wiggling her toes. “Feels so good to sit down.” She looked up at the front of the room where the two mothers were still standing off. May Day vs. Baby Animals. “For the love of hearing your own voice. Those two. We’ll be here all night.”
Tiana slouched down so they were touching shoulders and leaned in. “It’s been at least fifteen minutes. Isn’t that against the Geneva convention or something?”
“Yeah. Pro tip, when you are asked to be on any sort of committee, ask who is in charge. If it is either of these two, run. I’ll give you a list of names. Who to avoid. Who is easy to work with.”
“Seriously. It’s a spring festival. The theme should be spring.”
They listened for a few more minutes. Kasey stood up and raised a hand. “I motion we table this discussion until the next meeting. I’m curious about the findings of the gender-neutral bathroom committee.”
About ten second the motions hit the air before Kasey even finished speaking. When she sat down, Tiana deployed her most epic side-eye. “Gender-neutral bathroom issue? Do you want to be here all night?”
An hour later, it was finally over. “Come on, girly girl. Let’s get you home,” Tiana said, taking Lily by the hand. As they crossed the parking lot, Tiana pointed up at the full moon. “Ugh.”
“I was ignoring that,” Kasey said. She shook a fist at the sky.
“Three to three. On a full moon night. Double ugh.”
“See you at three. Wear your roller skates. Oh, yeah! We’re taking Claire to see the Wildlife Expo exhibits this weekend. Y’all want to come with us?”
Tiana made a face. “Sure, but I got this thing on Saturday. We can go on Sunday.”
“What’s with the face? And define thing.”
The Littlest Boss Page 6