by Grayson Cole
“But he—”
“Is a man.”
Tracey was crushed.
“I’m not saying he wasn’t or isn’t in love with you. All I’m saying is that sometimes you are insensitive and unrealistic. You don’t see outside yourself. No, my brother hasn’t changed. He’s done his level best to adjust, to stay who he is, but everyone has their breaking point. He can’t just stay happy go lucky and call it all water under the bridge if it affects him every day.” Angie swallowed and her eyes went glassy. “Everyone has a breaking point. Everyone.”
“Is this about Rett?”
“You don’t know anything,” she lashed out, as if she hadn’t heard the question. “You haven’t had to lift a finger. You haven’t had to face a soul you didn’t want to face. No one’s said so much as an unkind word to you. You’re spoiled. You’re just spoiled, and because my brother doesn’t dance to your tune like everybody else, you want to sit here and whine to me about it.”
“Angie! That’s uncalled for.”
“Some of us have real problems, Tracey! Some of us don’t live in a multi-million-dollar house with parents that can get us jobs and give us a house to stay in. I can’t believe you were so scared to let anybody see you and my brother together. In the end you haven’t suffered one single, solitary second for it! Who cares if somebody stares at you at the grocery store? Who cares about that? That’s nothing, Tracey. Nothing.”
Wow.
The dryer dinged to indicate it was finished. Angie stormed into the laundry closet to check it. Tracey didn’t know what made her follow, but she did. Black mascara tracked down Angie’s pretty face before she wiped it away.
“What is this about?”
“Nothin’ for you to worry about. You don’t have to worry about anything!”
Tracey shut the dryer before she could take anything else out and stood in front of it, forcing Angie to face her.
Tracey knew Angie lashed out when she was emotional, but this was hitting below the belt and Tracey was losing patience. “Angie, don’t tell me what problems I don’t have. Tell me what’s wrong with you.”
“I can’t stay there anymore,” she finally bit out.
“At your parents’?”
Angie nodded. “Daddy’s fine and he’ll take up for me, but it’s hell there now. I never f-fit in in the first place, but now… She’s so angry all the time, Tracey. And she still tries to be civil to Rett, but she hates me. She hates me, like I’m to blame for everything. All I wanted to do was to get her to see reason b-but…oh, God!”
Tracey grabbed her and held her. Tracey loved her like the sister she’d never had, and she couldn’t stand to see her like that.
“I’m so sorry.” Tracey held her until her cell phone rang.
Angie looked at the screen, then answered it. “Yeah?… I know. I know. But she can’t talk to me like that. She shouldn’t talk to Dad like that. And she shouldn’t talk to you like that.”
Garrett.
“I can’t stay there. I just can’t… Maybe it will pass, maybe it won’t. I’m not going to be disrespectful to her, but I’m not going to listen to her poison, either. I had to leave… I don’t know. I don’t know, Rett! I don’t care if you don’t approve of my friends but—”
“You can stay here,” Tracey mouthed to her.
She looked up and squinted incredulously.
“You can stay here,” Tracey repeated.
“Are you sure?” she whispered back. “Your parents won’t care?”
“My parents like you better than me,” Tracey insisted, only half kidding. “There’s an empty bedroom in this house and three empty ones in the big house if you include mine. We’ve got plenty of room. You can stay here until the fall semester starts.”
“Hold on, Rett,” Angie said into the phone. “I’ll pay rent.”
“We don’t need your rent, Ang. Just stay here. I don’t want to see you cry again.”
“Are you just saying this because I was a bitch to you?”
“Mainly.” Tracey tried to make her smile with her answer and was pleased when she did.
“You have to make sure it’s okay with your parents,” Angie insisted. Tracey nodded, knowing full well that it would be. Really, they loved her, and Angie seemed to like being on her best behavior around them.
“You would have to get your own place first, wouldn’t you?” she spoke into the phone again. “Rett… I told you, I can’t stay there anymore. I can’t do it. If Tracey’s parents don’t mind, then what’s the problem?”
Tracey didn’t hear his answer, but Angie got off the phone shortly after.
“He wants me to stay with him.”
“He’s on a three-month sublease.”
“He thinks I need to be with family.”
Angie felt like family. “What do you want?”
“I could live with Rett.”
“But you don’t want to.”
She shook her head. “I’m comfortable here.”
“What does your dad say?”
“He’s not saying much of anything, but I know it’s putting a strain on him. He loves little Nathalie and sees her at Rett’s when he can. He loves me and Rett, too. He loves our mother, but she won’t change. It’s lose-lose no matter what for him.”
They went to talk to Tracey’s parents, who had grown accustomed to Angie, who seemed to always be on her best behavior around them, potentially due to how much esteem she held for Carolyn. Tracey could tell Angie felt awkward talking to them about her parents, but she wanted them to have the whole story. She wanted to reassure them that she wasn’t trying to take advantage. She didn’t have to say much before her parents agreed to the temporary arrangement.
That evening, Angie, Mama, and Tracey discussed Tracey’s plans to get her grandmother’s house ready to sell. Afterward, Garrett went with Angie to get her things.
* * *
While they were gone, Tracey took inventory. She wrote a handwritten list.
My parents accept that I had a child out of wedlock. They don’t like it, but they accept it. Their friends might have something to say about it, but so far not to either Mama or Daddy’s face, and they continue to be pleasant to me.
Only a few members of my extended family look at me sideways, though that look speaks volumes: “I always knew she was going to end up with a white boy.”
My closest friends, new and old, don’t care one way or another.
I have a beautiful daughter that I love more than anything.
Nathalie’s father not only contributes financially but participates in her care and rearing.
I have a roof over my head.
I have food in my belly. My baby has food in her belly.
I am getting ready to start a great new job.
I want for little.
My daughter wants for nothing.
Even the strained circumstances surrounding Tracey’s pregnancy were nothing in comparison to what some of the girls she used to work with at the center went through. In short, Angie was right.
Maybe it was time Tracey changed her attitude.
Chapter 30
“You’re on my bad list, Rett,” Clay told him. “You just up and disappeared for a couple of months.”
“I tell you what: if you come do this with me, I’ll explain everything and won’t kill you for messing around with my sister.”
Clay really looked like he was going to fade away. He got pale even under his perpetual tan. “I haven’t done anything with Angie. Honest, Rett, nothing.”
“God, Clay,” Rett answered, immediately taking back what he’d said. “I know that. I was just making a joke. It took me a little while to notice, but I can tell you like her.”
“Just so you know, I would never try anything with your sister.”
“Angie can take care of herself. Besides, I can’t think of anybody better for her.”
“You mean that?”
“Yeah, man.”
“And you’re not ju
st saying that ’cause you want me to go and vandalize somebody’s front yard.”
“This is not an act of vandalism. This is a catharsis.”
“A what?”
“I’m just letting off some steam.”
“You don’t let off steam by messing up somebody’s front yard,” Clay remarked. Rett raised his eyebrow at his friend. Then he shook his head. “Unless they’re my friend Rett, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Rett answered, throwing a second chainsaw into the back of his SUV.
“You going to tell me why?”
“Because it’s not safe to have all those trees in the front yard blocking the view from the road. Anything could happen just on the front porch and no one would be the wiser until it was too late.” Rett did not add that this was the house that had made him succumb to stupid Tracey. It was the place that promised something they could never really have, a secret world untouched by anything beyond it.
“When are you going to tell me the whole thing?”
“The whole thing about what?”
“Well, Rett, I’m not stupid. I know somethin’ big is going on with you. If my ears were serving me right this morning, there’s something about a baby. And I know for damn sure that Kim isn’t pregnant. In fact, Charles says she can’t get pregnant.” The irony of that was not lost on Garrett. Kim was going to hate him more than she already did when she found out he was getting the child she had been trying to “give” him for more than a year. Yeah, she was going to be out for blood.
They pulled up in front of Tracey’s grandmother’s house forty-five minutes later.
“This neighborhood’s really…really…”
“Really what?” Rett tensed up.
“Why are we doing this?”
“I told you.”
“Well, you haven’t told me who lives here.”
“The mother of my child used to live here. This is still her house.”
“Here?”
“Yeah.”
“Tracey McAlpine lived here?”
Rett didn’t look at his friend, proud he hadn’t even flinched. He was surprised that Clay knew. In the end he should have been relieved; he no longer had to figure out how to break the news. “Yep. You should see the inside of the house. It’s gorgeous. Anyway, let’s get to it.”
“So you have a baby?” Awe peppered Clay’s voice.
Rett couldn’t help the grin. He had a bee-you-tiful baby. He reached into his wallet and pulled out three pictures. He paged through more on his cell.
“Would you look at that?” Clay breathed.
“Yeah.” Rett’s chest puffed out proudly.
“Isn’t she just a precious little thing?”
Rett beamed nodding. “Her name’s Nathalie.”
Clay handed the pictures back and clasped Rett on the shoulder in affection.
“When it happens to you, man…” Rett mused. “I mean, I can’t describe the way I feel when I look at her and hold her. I keep wanting to cry like a little bitch.”
Clay laughed. “Rett, you still haven’t answered my question. Why are we doing this?”
“Because I’ve always hated these trees.”
“Yeah, but do you have permission to do this?”
“Look, are you goin’ to help me or not?”
Clay shook his head. He then started to unload the truck.
Rett climbed the first tree to start trimming branches. Clay made his way up with him.
“How did you know?” Rett asked. “Did Angie tell you?”
“Naw, man.” Clay shook his head. “After that night at the apartment, I knew something was up. You made sure of that. Then, I don’t know why, it never came up again, but you stopped seeing Kim and I just knew.”
Rett didn’t say anything. He just nodded.
“Rett,” Clay continued.
“Yeah.”
“I think she was good for you.”
“What makes you say that?” Rett’s chest got tight all of a sudden.
“Because I know you, man. You were happy. You were half the jackass you normally are. It was easy to see. And when y’all broke it off, it was clear as day what had happened. You had that ‘screw everybody’ attitude you get when things don’t go your way.”
“Really?”
“Hell yeah.”
Rett digested this for a moment, then questioned, “What’s my attitude saying to you now?”
He asked this question because he really wanted to know. His brain and heart had been at war since that day in the mall. He’d thought that with the birth of his daughter, he’d be able to forget Tracey and focus on this new and important part of his life. He’d thought that with his new job and being a daddy, he wouldn’t have time to stew over the mess that was his relationship with Nathalie’s mother. He’d been wrong. His feelings for Tracey continued to be a puzzle for him.
“Why are you cutting down her trees?”
“Because she’s planning on selling this place and I’m doing my part to help.”
“Without her knowing anything about it?”
“I’ve told her twelve times that it needed to be done.”
“So you’re helpin’ her, whether she likes it or not. And you’re cutting down trees that you felt hid the house from the road.”
“Shut up and help me take this branch down.”
Hours later, they sat on the ground, dripping with sweat, wondering at the general mess they’d made of the yard and drinking beer.
“Maybe this was a two-day project,” Rett offered.
Clay laughed so hard he kicked at the trunk of the nearest tree. Then his eyes went wide and he scrambled to his feet.
“What are you doing?” Rett asked, too sore, hot, and fuzzy to follow… until he witnessed Clay snap a picture of the yard with his camera phone and start to type on the keypad.
“You jackass!” he yelled. He caught up with his friend just after he hit the send button. The message was sent directly to Angie.
Well, that was a way to get Tracey to call him.
Sure as he breathed, “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” sounded on his cell.
“Yeah?” he answered.
“What the hell are you doing at my grandmother’s house?”
“Helping you sell it,” he answered, knowing full well it would piss her off.
“You have no right, Garrett. No right.”
“So?”
He held the phone away from his ears to protect his eardrums from loud and intense yelling on the other end.
Garrett and Clay finished clearing the yard on Sunday.
The house was sold in a week.
Tracey didn’t expect the house to sell so fast. She figured she’d have at least three months, especially with the exorbitant price she put on it. But it was obvious it wasn’t going to happen that way now. She’d gotten an offer, not from a nice family but from a convenience store chain. Rett got perverse pleasure out of the fact that the place where it had all begun was going to be torn down to make way for something new.
Chapter 31
A few months after the house sold, Nathalie was finally sleeping through the night for the most part and though Tracey loved being a mother, she felt a constant pressure and strain. The girls had noticed and had orchestrated a girls’ night out. Garrett was going to take Nathalie for the night.
She glanced at her reflection again. She wore a casual white button-down over a safari-style skirt that fell just above mid-thigh, showing lots of leg. Probably too much leg for a woman who was still five pounds away from pre-pregnancy weight. Probably too much leg for a mommy, period. But Nathalie’s daddy did love her legs. And Tracey wanted to unnerve him. She really did. All this cold distance between them was also a drain on her. She thought that maybe a good fight would help her get the tension out of her system. No matter what had happened between them in the past, flashing that much leg was bound to get something started.
“Do you think Daddy will like this, Nathalie?” she asked
when she realized the baby was awake and trying to roll herself over on the bed. Tracey scooped her up before she could and put her in the pack and play with her teething ring.
Tracey expected Garrett any minute to pick her up for the weekend. Though he saw her nearly every day, Garrett attempted to take Nathalie every weekend. Attempted because sometimes Tracey just didn’t feel she could let her go. Sometimes the baby was colicky or running a fever or just cranky, and she didn’t want to let her out of her sight.
Garrett fought Tracey every time. It amazed Tracey that two people with law backgrounds never once thought to go to court over the baby. Tracey’s parents tried to force her daily. They just fought. Usually he gave in after twelve rounds, but about two months before, he’d just threatened to stay over for the weekend if she wouldn’t let him have the baby. And he’d done so. He’d done it a couple of weekends in a row, and even though the tension was still there between them, Tracey started to believe that there was more. God help her, she started to want more. But then, for the last couple of weeks, he hadn’t tried to stay. He’d even relented when she told him that Nathalie had a bit of a temperature and she didn’t want her out in the air. He’d held her, kissed her, played with her, then gone.
Tracey didn’t know what to expect this evening, but Nathalie was up and playful, and Tracey was prepared to let her go when Garrett asked, especially since the girls were coming over.
The doorbell rang. She grinned at the baby and opened the door. In walked both Monica and Angie. Angie was twitching, and Moni looked as if her patience had run completely out.
“Oh, God, what is it?”
“Is your computer booted up? Oh, my God, is it booted up?” Angie asked.
“Yeah.” Tracey questioned Moni with a glance. She shrugged.
“Look at it. He just put these pics up on his profile.” Angie pointed to the screen.
Tracey leaned down to see. Breathing just stopped happening. Garrett Nathaniel Hinson Atkins was laughing with his arm around someone. Then he was holding someone’s hand. Tracey gaped at them. Her bottom lip started to quiver and she clamped down on it with her teeth.
“According to her profile, she’s a divorce attorney,” Angie announced.