When they made it back to the living room, they settled on her couch. Mya observed Malik while he poured the wine, taking note that something seemed to be slightly different with him than moments earlier.
“Is everything okay?” she asked when he passed her a wineglass. He gave her a guarded look.
“Everything is fine,” he said taking a sip.
“I call BS,” she said taking a sip of the wine as well. “What is it?”
He studied her eyes. “I was really debating on whether or not I wanted to bring this up to you tonight. But considering you told me to notify you the minute I found out anything solid about your case, I owe it to you to tell you what I know.”
Mya’s heart began beating a mile a minute as she let his words sink in. He has answers about my past. Granted, this wasn’t exactly the most ideal timing, but he was right, she wanted to know.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I found out where the call you received came from,” he said as he placed his wineglass on the table. “It came from the Senior Suites of Central Station about a mile away from me.”
Mya gasped as her hand flew to her mouth. “The call came from Senior Suites? Ms. Bee lives there. After I ran away from that terrible foster home, I ended up in a women and child shelter in the city. Ms. Bee volunteered there at the time and we connected in a way I hadn’t with any other adult. She took me in until I graduated from high school.”
“That would explain why I found your name on a few of her senior living documents.”
“Yes, she loves it there. Since she never had any children of her own, I became her family. I set up her living quarters and I’m also her point of contact for emergencies or any decisions that need additional input. The folks that reside there have become really close friends to her.” She took a sip of her wine. “Are you sure the call came from there? It didn’t sound like Ms. Bee’s voice.”
“I’m positive,” Malik stated. “But that doesn’t mean it was Ms. Bee who called.”
“That’s true. I’d planned on stopping by to see her tomorrow. I go by there the same time every other week or so.”
Malik gently touched her hand. “Would you like me to go with you?” he asked. Mya really didn’t have to think hard about her answer.
“I’d really appreciate it if you did,” she replied.
“Then I will,” Malik said. “Being there will also help me get further along the investigation and you’ll be one step closer to finding out if you have a sibling.”
Even though the fact that the call had come from Ms. Bee’s senior living home had caught Mya off guard, she smiled at being one step closer to finding out her past.
“Thanks for not keeping this information to yourself and waiting for us to have...” Her voice trailed off as she tried to get her words in order.
“You’re welcome,” he said as he gently touched her chin with his thumb. “I hope I didn’t mess up your night.” His eyes were filled with concern.
“Just the opposite,” she said as she placed her wineglass on the table and leaned in closer to him. The moment their lips touched, she knew this was what she needed. There were plenty of unanswered questions still swarming around in her mind, but being with Malik, wrapped in his arms and kissing him slowly, just felt right.
Chapter 12
“You can do this,” Mya said to herself as she walked into the senior living home with Malik right by her side. She shook out her hands as they made their way to the elevators. When they arrived at Ms. Bee’s floor, Malik gently squeezed her shoulders.
“Are you okay?” he asked as they neared the room.
“I will be,” she said giving him a slight smile. “I just hope I get some answers.”
“You will,” Malik replied. They knocked on the door.
“Mya, sweetie,” Ms. Bee said as she opened the door, immediately pulling Mya in for a tight hug. She then glanced over at Malik.
“Who’s this handsome fellow?” Ms. Bee asked as she winked at Mya.
“This is my friend Malik,” she said as they walked into Ms. Bee’s apartment. “He’s working with me on the charity date auction.”
“Ahhh,” Ms. Bee said winging her finger in the air. “So you’re the sexy cohost.”
“Oh, really,” Malik said, giving Mya a sly smile. “How sexy did she say I was?”
“Ms. Bee,” Mya exclaimed as she took a seat on the sofa. “I never told you he was sexy.”
“Oh yes, you did,” Ms. Bee said taking a seat next to Mya on the couch. “After all these years I’ve learned to read between the lines with you. When you came in here wailing about how mad you were that you had to work with him, I could tell by your body language that you were attracted to him.”
“And on that note,” Mya said as she nodded for Malik to take a seat on the chair across from her and Ms. Bee. “I think I’ll just get right down to business.”
Ms. Bee jumped excitedly in her seat. “Oh my goodness,” she said as her hands flew to her heart. “Are you two getting married? Will I finally get grandbabies? I’m getting too old and I want to play with my grandkids before I start losing my memory. And you aren’t getting any younger,” she said to Mya.
“Wait. What? Ms. Bee, that’s not what I wanted to talk about,” Mya said as her eyes grew big.
Ms. Bee looked from Malik to Mya. “So you aren’t engaged?”
“No, not yet.” She felt her entire face warm and could only hope that she wasn’t blushing from embarrassment. “We’re just friends, there are no plans to get engaged.”
“Well which is it?” Ms. Bee asked in playful tone. “Either you plan on marrying the man or not.”
Mya briefly wiped her hand over her forehead. She didn’t even have to look at Malik to know he was enjoying her discomfort. His laugh told her as much. “Ms. Bee, this visit isn’t about Malik and I.”
“Then what did you want to talk about?”
Mya glanced over at Malik before she leaned closer to Ms. Bee and grabbed both her hands. “I have to ask you an important question.”
“What is it?” Ms. Bee asked studying her face.
“Did you call—” she stumbled over her words and cleared her throat. She and Ms. Bee were extremely close and Mya knew that she would be able to take one look in the woman’s eyes and know if she was telling her the truth or not. “Did you call me a few months ago to give me news about the possibility that I have a sibling?”
Ms. Bee didn’t answer right away, but she didn’t have to. Mya could read the truth in her eyes.
“Oh, Ms. Bee,” Mya said as she let go of the woman’s hands and ran her fingers down her face. “Why did you call me from a private number?”
Ms. Bee dropped her head and clutched her heart. “I didn’t know how to tell you,” she said as she lifted her head. “My friend’s grandson knows how to do all that new-age technology stuff and he somehow blocked the call so that it couldn’t be traced and had my friend call you and read from a script I wrote. I guess that didn’t work.”
“But why would you block the call?” Mya said, her voice rising slightly. “You could have just called me. How can you be so sure that I even have a sibling?”
Ms. Bee stood up and walked to her window, leaving Mya alone on the couch. When Ms. Bee’s shoulders began moving up and down, she knew the older woman was crying. Mya shot Malik a concerned look before she walked over to Ms. Bee.
“Ms. Bee, what is it? What do you know about my past?”
Ms. Bee turned around and met Mya’s curious stare. “Oh, sweetie,” Ms. Bee said as she briefly touched Mya’s cheek with the palm of her hand. “I would have called you myself, but I was too afraid to explain it to you after all these years, but I knew you needed to know. Meeting you at the women and children’s shelter all those years ago wasn�
�t an accident.”
“What do you mean it wasn’t an accident? We’d never met before that day.”
“True, but I’d been sent to the shelter to find you,” Ms. Bee said. “Although we’d never met, I knew your mother.” Mya’s eyes widened and her hands turned ice-cold.
“She was just a teenager when I met her and just like you, she grew up in the system. I’d met your mother at that same shelter more than twenty years before I found you there.”
Mya opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out. Ms. Bee knew my mother? “How is it that you never told me this in all the years you’ve known me?” she asked finally finding her voice.
“Mya, I didn’t tell you because I made your mom a promise that you would never find out about her.”
“Is she still alive?” she asked, needing to know if her assumption was true.
“No, she isn’t,” Ms. Bee said as her eyes began filling with tears. “I received a call at the beginning of the year right before she passed. She knew her time was coming.”
Mya closed her eyes tightly, refusing to cry over a woman she barely even knew. “She just passed away this year and you kept her secret all those years ago.”
“I did, sweetie, but like I said, it was for your own good.” Ms. Bee’s voice cracked. “Your mother was one of the smartest people I knew so I wasn’t surprised when she told me she’d landed her dream job and wouldn’t be coming back to Chicago. She was always so focused on school that I barely saw her anyway. On one rainy day thirty years ago, I was headed for bed and got a knock on my door. I had just moved to a new neighborhood and didn’t really know anyone. It was your mom and she was drenched, so of course I let her in. When I dried her off, she couldn’t stop crying in my arms and I was so surprised because in all the years I’d known your mother, she never cried. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me that she couldn’t talk about it, but that her career had forced her to give away her children.”
“Are you sure she said children and not child?” Mya asked, the lids of her eyes filling with tears.
“Yes, dear, I’m positive. I hadn’t seen your mother in years, so I hadn’t even known she had kids. When I asked her what type of job would make a woman give up her children, she said that she couldn’t tell me because it would put me in danger.”
Ms. Bee scrunched her forehead. “That didn’t sit well with me and before I convinced her to go to sleep, she finally told me that she worked for the government and in her line of work, people close to her would be in danger if she told them certain things. I didn’t push any more that night and when I woke up in the morning, she was gone. Your mother always seemed so mysterious and although it hurt to only see her whenever she blew through the city, I had to accept it.”
Mya began pacing back and forth, refusing to let the tears she was holding in slide down her face. “How did you find me?”
“Your mother actually found you,” Ms. Bee said as she walked over to Mya. “Another time there was a knock on my door and it was your mother again. She gave me a quick hug, told me that she couldn’t stay, but said that she had found her daughter and then she slipped a piece of paper in my pocket with the address to where I could find you. I immediately recognized the address as the same place I’d first found your mother when she was just a teenager. The odds that, years later, her daughter would end up in the same shelter, are uncanny. But I knew I had to follow your mother’s wishes and see for myself if you were there.”
Mya stopped pacing and stared at Ms. Bee. “She got a chance to see me?” Mya asked, her voice choking with emotion.
“She did, sweetie,” Ms. Bee said as she wiped a few fallen tears. “She’d spent years trying to find you and when she did, she immediately came to me because she knew I would take care of you.”
Ms. Bee placed her hand over Mya’s and the warmth of her touch began immediately calming Mya’s nerves. “When I met you at the shelter, I’d had a flashback of when I’d first met your mother. I could tell you’d had a hard life and it broke my heart to see the pain in your eyes.”
“Meeting you was like a dream come true,” Mya said as she thought about the day she met Ms. Bee. “And now I know it wasn’t an accident.”
“It wasn’t,” Ms. Bee replied. “Your mother loved you very much. Although I would have loved you like my own grandchild despite who your mother was, there were a lot of gifts and other things that came from her that I had to pretend were from me. I also think it’s important that you know that the anonymous scholarship that you received while you were in college was also from her.”
Mya quickly swiped a tear as she thought about the scholarship she’d been informed that she received when she hadn’t remembered applying for it.
“Mya,” Ms. Bee continued. “I know you went through so much hurt growing up and trust me when I say that all I wanted to do for years was take that hurt away. But what you went through played a large part in molding the remarkable woman you are today. Although your mother couldn’t raise you like she would have wanted to, when she found you, she did everything she could to make sure you felt loved the only way she knew how.”
Mya glanced at Malik for the first time since Ms. Bee had began revealing the news. He gave her a supportive smile, his eyes promised not to leave her side unless she said so. “Thanks for telling me the story,” Mya said to Ms. Bee. “Do you have a picture of her?”
Ms. Bee smiled and nodded her head. “Only one when she was about seventeen. I kept it hidden all these years, but now, I think it’s time that I pass it on to you.”
When Ms. Bee went in her bedroom to get the picture, Mya walked over to Malik, needing to feel his arms around her.
“I’ve never been the type of person that needed hugs,” Mya said into Malik’s chest as he stood and she soaked in his comforting warmth.
“Everyone needs a hug at some point,” Malik said as he pulled her even closer. “Even a badass like yourself.”
Mya gazed up at his face. “I’m pretty sure Princeton grads don’t use naughty language like that.”
Malik bent down to her ear. “If you thought that was naughty, you should hear how I chant the periodical table in the shower,” he said with a grin.
Mya laughed aloud at his statement. “That was so lame.”
“That may be, but it got you to smile.”
“It did,” she said as she continued to smile at him. “Thank you.”
He placed a kiss on her forehead. “I’m proud of you.” Mya sighed as she leaned back against his chest. She was sure they looked like a couple and she really didn’t need to give Ms. Bee any ideas, but she couldn’t help it. She was really beginning to rely on Malik in ways she’d never thought she would.
“Here is it,” Ms. Bee said as she approached them. “It’s a little old, but that was your mom.”
Mya held the picture in her hand a little taken aback at the woman starring back at her. “We look so much alike,” Mya said as her hands grazed over the picture. “I have her eyes.”
“You sure do,” Ms. Bee said with a smile. “You’re the spitting image of her. A lot of the same personality traits too. Your mom was feisty and so sarcastic. People often tried to outwit her but failed every time.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” Malik chimed in.
Mya looked at the back of the picture. Kayla Anderson. “Was that her name?” Mya asked as she pointed to the name scribbled on the back.
“Yes, it was,” Ms. Bee said.
“Did she ever mention my father?”
“Not really,” Ms. Bee replied. “On that same night she came to my house crying, I’d asked her if she was married or dating anyone. She’d told me that the father hadn’t been in the picture and that it had been better for her children that way.”
“What made you finally decide to call me that day?”
Malik handed Ms. Bee a tissue and she dabbed both eyes. “I hadn’t even known she’d had breast cancer. But instead of sounding upset or defeated, she sounded liberated. Like she was glad she didn’t have to live the life she had been living anymore. I could hear a nurse or doctor in the background saying that she had to hang up the phone, but she kept talking to me. She told me thanks for always being there for her and for taking care of you.”
Mya swallowed hard when Ms. Bee didn’t continue. “Is that all she said?” Mya asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“No, that wasn’t all.” Ms. Bee took a deep breath. “The last thing she said before the line went dead was a little fuzzy because her voice was starting to slur, but from what I could make out, she said that her greatest achievement in life was getting a chance to see you grow into an adult and that she hoped one day you would be able to find your sister, Raina.”
Sister... Mya looked from Ms. Bee to Malik. “So my mom had another daughter,” she said more to herself than Malik. “After all these years, I have a sister.”
Chapter 13
“Are you sure you need to get all this done tonight?” Malik asked Mya as they made their way to the largest conference room in the Ravinia Ranch Resort and Conference Center. The date auction was tomorrow and Malik and Mya had arrived early to make sure everything was in place.
Since they’d arrived, Mya had been working around the clock and Malik was worried that she was trying to keep busy as a distraction from what she’d found out two days prior.
“Stop worrying about me, Malik,” Mya said as she continued to walk to the conference room. “I appreciate your concern, but it’s not needed right now.”
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