by Kris Jayne
Maybe she’d gone to Ava’s. Her friend lived at the end of the street. I could walk down there to check. What if—
Thunk, thunk, thunk.
The heavy knock on the door jerked me out of my doom spiral, and I hurried to the door, peeped out, and then swung the door open.
“Forget your key?” I asked. My left brow cocked upward, and I struggled not to be angry. At least, she was home.
Maya scooted past me with her backpack. “It’s at the bottom of my purse, and since you said you were home, I knew you could let me in.”
She dropped her bag over the back of the sofa, which sat opposite the bar-height counter that skirted the kitchen.
“I’m starving.”
“You didn’t eat wherever you went after school?” I didn’t want her return to become an inquisition.
Maya rolled her eyes and avoided mine. “I hate eating up Ava’s mom’s food all the time like a beggar.”
Ava’s mom, Sheryl, lived to cook and feed people. She would have insisted Maya eat a snack.
“So you were at Ava’s?” My voice steadied as I filtered out the disbelief.
Maya made a vague noise somewhere between affirmation and a grunt but still didn’t look at me. She stuffed a steamed pork dumpling in her mouth and lifted the tops on the foam takeout containers.
“Wash your hands before you go poking around. I’m not trying to catch hepatitis,” I said.
She smirked but headed for the sink.
“You’re welcome to bring Ava here if you want to eat up my food instead,” I suggested.
“Her mom doesn’t want us unsupervised.” Maya shut off the water and grabbed a plate.
A quick answer, but I still didn’t believe her about this afternoon.
“Maybe we can invite them for dinner. Ava and her parents.”
She wrinkled her nose and spooned some broccoli beef on a scoop of rice. “That’s too awkward.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re her parents. They have this whole family thing, and it’s just us.” Maya shrugged, then shot me some mischievous side eye. “Get a boyfriend first so the numbers even out.”
“I don’t need a boyfriend to invite a couple to dinner. There are lots of single parents in the world, you know.”
“Of course I know,” she shot back and flopped into a seat at the kitchen table. “Believe me.”
My stomach twisted. “Did you hear from your mother?”
She played with another pot sticker and said nothing.
“Maya?”
“She texted and picked me up from school. We went out.”
“Oh.” It was all I could say as fear and rage mingled, building from my feet and crawling up my legs until they burned.
“She’s back in town. She got a new place in Arlington. She didn’t want me to tell you until she got everything set up for me to go live with her,” Maya explained.
“But you’ve settled into school here, and you have friends.” A train of other objections and counterpoints threatened to run away from my mouth. I paused, dropped an egg roll on my plate, turned, and sat down. “Do you want to go live with your mom?”
Maya’s eyes clouded over. “No. She doesn’t even have her own place. She’s rooming with this weird friend. But she’s my mom.”
I drew in a ten-pound breath. “You don’t have to go just because she’s your mother.”
“She says I do. You don’t have rights.” Maya’s voice drifted toward a whimper.
“You have rights, Maya. You’re old enough to have a say, and if you want to go, I’ll support you. If you don’t, you can always stay here,” I said, struggling for diplomacy, but she should be able to make some of her own choices.
“I’m good here. School is good. I only have three more years.” Her statement turned into a plea.
“Of high school.”
She rolled her eyes again. “That’s what I meant, Ms. College Graduate.”
I smiled, cringing at the taunt her mother had leveled at me over the years. “Sorry.”
“No. It’s what I want too. I like living here. I like having Chinese food and hanging out at Ava’s. I was thinking I could file for hardship and get a job,” she said between chewing and stabbing at more food.
I hated that she felt she couldn’t wait until she was sixteen to get a job. She should have a childhood. Someone in this family deserved to have one. Still, I was glad to hear she had a plan. “You don’t have to work. I got you. You know that.”
“But I want to help out. Especially if you have to get a lawyer. You can’t afford that.”
Neither could Lisa probably, but I didn’t say that. If I pulled things off at work, I’d get the Star bonus and the promotion, and she wouldn’t have to worry about working or how I would pay for lawyers.
I took Maya’s hand. “Don’t worry. It won’t come to that.”
She picked at another dumpling, turning it over and over on her plate. “Yes. It will. She said she can get the police to bring me back. You’d have to pay a lawyer, and she can go to legal aid.”
“So I’ll get a lawyer. No judge is going to force you back to your mom when you’re here, settled, and doing better in school,” I assured her and skipped adding that this was the fifth or sixth time her mother had abandoned her for months at a time with me or Aunt Della. Plus, at fifteen, Maya did have a say in where she would live, but I didn’t want it to come to that either. I didn’t want her to have to stand in court and reject her mother.
I’d done that once, and it broke me. It broke my mother.
Mom did the best she could, working two jobs and raising two daughters, but she left Lisa and I alone. A lot. I had to admit that in court, and Mom briefly lost custody. She fought to get us back, but things between us were never the same.
After going to a foster family for a few weeks, my dad’s sister, Della, took us in for a year. Dad died when I was nine and Lisa was eleven, but he hadn’t been around much before that anyway. He and Mom never married—a fact that twisted her up for years. A long-haul trucker, he died in an accident on the road, and she was denied surviving spouse’s benefits. Lisa and I got $25,000 each when we turned eighteen.
I used mine to buy a car and help with college. Lisa used hers to leave home and do whatever it was she was doing until she came back a couple of years later, broke and with a dodgy boyfriend nipping at her heels.
Aunt Della helped with Maya, but she was older now and had her own troubles. Her husband was recovering from a stroke. And Mom was Mom. She’d put in her time raising kids and refused to “let Lisa off the hook” by swooping in to raise Maya.
Maybe she was right in a way, but that didn’t do her granddaughter any good. So I told Della to call me the next time Lisa left her there. She had.
Lisa never told us who Maya’s father was, but I remembered the squat, nervous man she’d dated around the time she got pregnant. He had those red, soupy eyes that always looked at you like he couldn’t see straight. Gerald something. I think it started with a T. That’s all I knew, and it was more than was listed on Maya’s birth certificate.
“Did she say anything else?” I asked.
“No.”
“And she’s staying with a friend? A woman?”
“Yeah. Her name is Clancy. She smiled too much and kept telling me how much fun it would be to live with them. She said she has a daughter my age, but she’s twelve.” Maya balked.
The edge of my mouth twitched into a smile. At that age, three years seemed like thirty.
“Did you go to their place?”
She nodded. “She wanted me to see it. It’s fine, but it’s all the way on the other side of town.”
I lived in a duplex on the edges of Preston Hollow, a neighborhood with much posher environs than my quiet street. The area high school here was decent—which wasn’t why I’d moved here. I hadn’t planned on having a teenager for a couple of decades if at all. I had an easy trek to the paper’s uptown offices, and now, the ch
oice worked out to Maya’s advantage.
“Well, don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to your mom, and we’ll work something out.” Meaning, I’d yell, threaten, and sue if I had to.
“Okay.” Maya mumbled the word so incoherently I almost wasn’t sure what she’d said. “I’m going to take my plate to my room. I have homework.”
“Okay,” I echoed.
Maya stood and slung her backpack over one shoulder before grabbing her plate and heading up the stairs. The loft had been my office and workout space, but I moved my desk and treadmill to the tiny spare bedroom on the main level to give Maya more space.
Left alone with my thoughts and my cashew chicken, I wondered what Lisa had planned before discarding all speculation. She was going to do what she was going to do. I needed to focus on what I was going to do, namely stay on track at work.
I had to figure out the connection between the Stars and this Carter Cross. It was something big. I could feel it. That was a much more lucrative—and much less emotionally draining—riddle to solve than my sister.
After dinner, I retreated to my bedroom.
I hauled the computer onto my lap and opened the browser again. Another shining image of Carter Cross, basketball star turned real estate mogul, blazed on the screen.
In nearly every image, he loomed over shorter, less interesting-looking men—from referees and sports reporters to business partners and community leaders.
His Duke player profile said he was six foot five. A shooting guard. All-American. NCAA player of the blah blah blah. A standout in college, but he ended up getting an MBA rather than going to the NBA. That he graduated at the top of his class while playing big-time basketball was impressive.
If I weren’t sure about that, every recent news article made sure to mention it. I guess that’s what happens when a sports god like him stayed local after graduation. Despite growing up in Dallas, he lived and worked in Raleigh for a commercial construction and engineering company, building skyscrapers, office parks, and factories.
Maybe the articles focused on his basketball glory because cement trucks and rebar were so boring.
I read yet another business journal article and clicked on an enigmatic photo of him sporting a polished, movie star smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Then, I flipped back to a version from his playing days when a broad stretch of youthful exuberance lit up his entire face.
More success, less joy these days, I supposed.
Maybe his company was doing business with the Stars. That would explain his having a meeting at the oil company.
I shook my head and kept paging through search results. A business deal didn’t square with why that meeting was about J.P. Star’s estate. No. He had to be a relative of some sort. A love child?
I shuddered and thought about the pictures I’d seen of his smart, vivacious mother who was decades younger than old man Star. Libby was right. The idea was disgusting, but his being a relative was the simplest explanation. And he was from here, so there could be a connection.
Surfing through some of the college articles, I found more references to his family and his time in Dallas. He went to one of those prep schools where they recruit athletic talent to win high school championships.
Laramie Academy.
My best friend, Victoria, just married a guy who had gone to Laramie Academy. I jumped over to social media.
I hadn’t considered that we’d have a connection, but we did. Several. James, Victoria’s husband, and a couple of guys from college who also grew up in South Dallas.
Carter Cross barely posted on social media. The last post was a Christmas party where he was tagged by Jasmine Cross.
A tingle of disappointment flickered through me. Staring at the handsome photos and diving into story after story about how much he loved his family were getting to me.
I tapped back to a tab with one of the lengthier profiles done in a national sports magazine during March Madness his freshman year. It had a family photo with the caption listing grandmother Etta, mother Angela, sister Jasmine, and brother Nathan.
So Jasmine wasn’t a wife.
Of course, he wasn’t married. The North Carolina society articles would have mentioned a wife. All they talked about was his close mentorship with Gregory Kelso, the billionaire CEO and owner of the company where he was an executive.
Going through social media again, I saw Carter had congratulated James and Victoria on the wedding in a post from their honeymoon. James replied he was sorry Carter didn’t get a chance to be best man.
So they were close.
I fell back against my pillows and swirled a finger over the computer trackpad.
I didn’t know James that well. Victoria met him, fell totally in love, and within a few months, they were engaged. Her family and friends figured we’d have time to get to know him while they planned their wedding, but they up and eloped. I thought Vic’s mom would have a stroke.
“Everyone’s going to think you’re pregnant!” Mrs. Dixon exclaimed on repeat. But no, they were just head over heels in love.
Now I regretted the missed wedding more than ever. I was in line to be Victoria’s maid of honor. Carter would have been the best man, and the sexy basketball god and I could have rubbed shoulders, elbows, etc. etc. already. My pulse picked up. Maybe Maya was right. I needed a boyfriend.
Could I ask James about him? No, that would be weird. And wrong.
Victoria and everyone else I knew thought I was a freelance writer, and I couldn’t pump them for dirt on a man who, by all accounts, was a good guy. Heroic even. Charity work. Building homes for underprivileged families. Volunteering as a Big Brother.
I returned to a college photo of Carter grinning and holding up a trophy next to a highlighted quotation of his in the article.
“Every time I play, I think about making my dad proud.”
Carter Cross Sr. died when his namesake was little, leaving two kids and a pregnant wife. His mother, Etta, moved in with her daughter-in-law to help, and Carter Jr. and his siblings were raised by both women.
“Losing a son was hard on Grandma Etta. She talked about him all the time and said she never wanted me to forget the people who mattered in bringing me into this world,” the article quoted.
Further down the page, a smartly dressed, woolen-haired woman stood in front of Carter in a photo, straightening a bright, embellished pocket square sticking out of his suit jacket. The caption read, “Etta Cross prepares grandson, Carter, for his high school graduation.”
The sweetness of the image squeezed my chest, and I tamped down emotion. I knew from reading another article that his grandmother died before his junior year at Duke. Flipping back to read more, one line grabbed me.
“Moving up from working as a domestic in the oil fields of West Texas to owning her own home goods and design business in Dallas, Etta Cross embodied the perseverance and determination you see in Carter’s game.”
She used to live in oil country? Could it have been in the same dusty towns where J.P. Star got his start?
It could be a coincidence. There was no reason to assume they knew each other—except that Carter was at the office to meet with the estate lawyers and the rest of the Star family. Etta and J.P. could be the connection.
I spent an hour digging to find more information on Carter Cross Sr. and turned up little else. Carter talked about missing his father and how he taught him to be strong and to mind his mother. That’s it.
Carter Sr. had graduated from Texas Southern University and met his wife, Angela, there. They moved back to Dallas for his run-of-the-mill office job. Everything of note related to Carter Jr. and his basketball career—even the more recent articles about the younger man’s business life.
And as much as the college articles loved talking about Etta Cross, she refused to be interviewed and was only quoted once. “I don’t know why you’d want to talk to me. Unless needlepoint is a sport, he’s the star,” she told the reporter.
Proud,
smart, and humble with a dry sense of humor. I double-clicked the high school graduation photo to get a better look at Carter’s grandmother.
Even though the image was in profile, I could see the pride etched into the arch of her smile as she made sure he looked his best. A few other pictures also showed the sparkle in her ginger brown eyes. In her older age, she was still an eye-catching beauty. In her youth, she would have been a stunner.
Maybe she caught a young and fiery oil wildcatter’s eye? It would have been an unlikely pairing, fraught with problematic dynamics. Him, a brash, white upstart known for taking risks and getting into scraps. Her, a young, black domestic worker trying to elevate her life in segregated Texas.
A sick feeling settled over me looking at the photo. This woman’s life—and Carter’s—being gossip didn’t have the same sense of fun as digging up dirt on J.P., but I couldn’t afford to think that way.
The truth was the truth. I didn’t create the stories. I just told them.
Etta didn’t have to be the star of the tale, but she could be the key.
6
Carter
“I have a dilemma.”
I swept a hand across the stubble peppering my chin. I needed a shave. And a bourbon. I glanced from the desk in front of me to the tray of liquor my mother kept on the office credenza in her Kessler Park home. I decided to stay for a week and work remotely while I sorted out the newly discovered family drama.
Mom was traveling with her church group and wouldn’t be back for a few more days. I hadn’t said anything to her over the phone, and I also hadn’t said anything to Jazz or Nate yet.
My sister would probably put a hex on me the minute she found out I didn’t tell her right away. I might have called her, but every time the thought surfaced, I stopped. I needed more time to process before letting her or Nate enter the fray.
Before I told them about our not-so-dearly departed new grandpa, I wanted to know what Mom knew. And I needed to figure out what I was going to do about my job and my life—neither of which were here in Dallas with a pack of angry aunts and cousins. After all, if I didn’t want to uproot everything I’d worked for, there was no inheritance to discuss.