“There’s been a change of plans,” I told him.
“What you talkin’ ’bout?”
“I can’t explain it all right now, but, Buck, what’s going down here is better than the little bit of cash we could get from them. I’m tellin’ you, trust me. This is life-changing.”
“Life-changing?” He paused as if he had to think about my words. Then, “All right. I’m willing to listen. When can you talk?”
“Maybe tonight or tomorrow, but I promise you, you’ll be happy.”
“Okay, I trust you, boo. I’ll be waiting; hit me up.”
And then, I told him what he’d always told me. “I got you.”
He laughed. “That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout. That’s my boo.”
When we hung up, I was feeling pretty good. I did want to have Buck’s back ’cause even though he worked every nerve in my body sometimes, he had always taken good care of me.
The thought of all that Buck had done took my smile away. He’d done a lot, but what was most important was that he’d saved me from Mr. Stanley.
Wow. I hadn’t thought about Mr. Stanley since I’d gotten off the plane on Saturday. It was like all the miles between White Haven and Los Angeles had erased all the memories. So I didn’t know why I was remembering him now. Maybe it was because today was a full-circle moment that started with Mr. Stanley and ended with this paper in my hand. Yes, Mr. Stanley had started it when he promised me the name of my father and he’d come through, even though I’d learned later that he hadn’t done all the research he’d said. All he’d done was go down to the County Clerk’s office. But whatever, he’d still given me the name of my father on that Monday after Thanksgiving. A Monday that had changed my life in so many ways.
I leaned back fully on the column, and though I faced the street and was bombarded by the sights and sounds of the morning, the city around me became silent as my mind took me back, year after year after year, until I was once again in 2009:
I glanced at the clock on the gym wall. The last bell of the day rang more than fifteen minutes ago, and that meant I was ten minutes late for Mr. Stanley. I had always been so anxious to see him. Every day. But not after what he’d done to me in that hotel room on Friday.
Over the weekend, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’d been surprised; I’d been confused. Then I closed my eyes, really remembered, and now I was ashamed. Because even though I’d been afraid and didn’t understand why Mr. Stanley had done that to me—there was a part of it . . . that felt kinda good. So if it felt good, did it have to be bad?
Grabbing my backpack from the bleachers, I climbed down, then made my way into the hallway. It was pretty empty; kids shot out of school as soon as the bell rang.
My heart was beating fast as I made my way to the library. Inside, I took the same steps I’d been taking for the last two months; I walked around the information counter and right into Mr. Stanley’s office.
He looked up and smiled, the way he always did. Then, without saying anything, he got up when I sat down, and walked out into the library. As he got rid of the kids, I hugged my backpack as if it would keep me safe and stared at the plaques on Mr. Stanley’s walls. As the minutes ticked by, I wondered, did I really want to stay? Should I just leave and never come back? What was finding my father going to do anyway?
I stood up at the exact moment that Mr. Stanley came back.
“Where are you going, Keisha?”
I shook my head. “I was . . . just . . . to . . . the bathroom.” I sat down. “But I don’t have to go anymore.”
He squinted as if he knew I was lying but couldn’t figure out why. After a couple of seconds, he took his seat behind his desk and smiled.
Every other day when he’d done that, when he looked at me that way, it would make me feel kinda tingly. ’Cause he was helping me get to the one thing I wanted so bad. But today I felt the opposite of tingly . . . I felt . . . dirty.
He said, “Well.” Then he paused as if that would increase the drama, but all it did was make my heart hammer harder. “I promised you this information.”
When he said that, my heart calmed down a bit and I moved to the edge of the chair.
He opened a folder, lifted what looked like some kind of document, and then slid it across his desk.
I looked down but kept my hands away from the paper. I just read the bold letters at the top: Certificate of Live Birth.
The first line—the child’s name—there was my name: Keisha LaVonne . . . only, there was a mistake—it said Keisha LaVonne Wilson.
Wilson?
Now my eyes scanned the different lines faster: my date of birth, the time I was born, my sex, and my address. I got down to the line that had my mother’s maiden name: Daisy Jones.
And then there it was on the bottom under father’s name: Elijah Abraham Wilson. With his date of birth, though the line for his birthplace was blank.
“Elijah Abraham Wilson,” I whispered. That was the name that Mr. Stanley had given me last week—without the Abraham. I raised my eyes. “That’s my father’s name?”
He nodded. “That’s the official document,” he told me. Then he shook his head. “Whew! It took a lot to get this. I did everything because I was doing it for you.”
“I’m so . . .” I wasn’t sure what to say. Was I happy? Was I grateful? Was I a little scared?
I was all of that, so all I said to Mr. Stanley was, “Thank you.”
He nodded, but he wasn’t smiling. He stood, came around and took my backpack from my lap, then set it on his desk. By the time he reached for my hand, I was shaking and my heart was stomping through my chest.
When he pulled me up, he said, “I’m happy I was able to do this for you, Keisha. I know how much you wanted to find your father.”
“Yeah.”
“And I was the one who found him for you.”
“Yeah.”
“So now that I’ve done this for you, are you willing to do some things for me?”
I BLINKED, AND my senses came back to life. Cars whizzed past, and the rumbling of the tires where the rubber met the road filled my ears. It took me a second or two to realize that this was today and not eight years ago. I needed to forget Mr. Stanley, but it was hard. Because from that day, that man shaped my life.
After he found my father, he didn’t want me coming to his office anymore. Now he took me to his home every Wednesday after school.
He didn’t live in White Haven like he had told me, but I was sure he didn’t remember that lie, or maybe he just didn’t care. He lived right outside of Little Rock, about thirty minutes away from White Haven. But I never said anything about that. I never said anything about anything. I just did what he told me when I got to his house. All the kinds of things that I was sure my mama did with her johns.
“Keisha?”
I looked up, blinked, and tried to focus through the sun that blinded me. But then she came into view, and I groaned.
“What’s wrong?” Regan asked in a tone that sounded like she was more nosy than caring.
“Nothing.”
“Well, why are you standing out here crying?”
It might sound crazy, but I hadn’t even known that I was. I swiped the tears from my cheek and then looked down at the paper that I still held. “I’m just . . . happy, I guess.”
She gave me that look again, the one where she told me without saying a word that I was a liar. But I didn’t care; there was nothing Regan could do to me now.
And I told her that—not in words. I told her that when I pushed myself off the column, turned my back, and stomped away from her like she was just some stranger on the street.
I hadn’t called Elijah, but I’d do that later. Right now, all I wanted to do was get away from Regan and the memories of Mr. Stanley.
23
Keisha
Rolling over, I grabbed my cell and hit the button to turn off the alarm. Only it didn’t stop chirping.
“Ugh!” I pushed mys
elf up and studied the face of my new phone. Finally finding the side button, I silenced my cell, then bounced back onto the bed.
A new cell phone . . . just one of the things that Gabrielle bought for me last night when we did our celebration shopping. I chuckled a little (though it wasn’t funny) at the thought of calling it a celebration. Yeah, we’d done some shopping, but it turned out not to be any kind of party for me.
It had started out like a celebration because once I’d come back upstairs from talking to Buck it had been festive for the rest of the day. I’d ended up calling Elijah from Gabrielle’s office, using the excuse that I didn’t have his office number. He’d been thrilled about the test results and Gabrielle told him we would all celebrate together this weekend because last night was reserved for the sisters.
Then she’d taken me and Pamela to lunch and when we returned, Pamela and I’d spent the entire afternoon planning for Justus and his entourage and the meeting this morning. I didn’t even realize it when the clock had struck five, but Gabrielle had closed up her office and was standing over Pamela’s desk.
“You ready to rock and roll out of here to do some serious retail therapy?”
I nodded, I shrugged, I grinned, and told her, “Yeah.”
She laughed, and we almost skipped out of the office. When we got in the car, I was glad Gabrielle had to take a business call, because that gave me time and space to just think. I wanted to imagine where Gabrielle was taking me.
I almost didn’t need a car—I could have floated straight to Rodeo Drive. I only knew about that street because Gabrielle had posted a couple of pictures of her and Regan one day traipsing in and out of Burberry and Christian Dior and Jimmy Choo. That day, Gabrielle and her best witch looked like they had their own reality show; they had looked better than the Kardashians.
Or maybe Rodeo Drive was too far away and Gabrielle was taking me to the Beverly Center—another mall I only knew through Instagram. It wasn’t as upscale as Rodeo Drive, but it still had stores like Louis Vuitton and Gucci.
But just as Gabrielle ended her call, she angled her SUV into the parking lot of a place that I hadn’t seen on social media. “This is the Westfield mall,” Gabrielle said before I even asked. “Back in the day when I was a teenager, it was called Fox Hills.”
She sounded excited, but I wasn’t. I didn’t see the names of any designer stores on the outside. But there had to be some; Gabrielle only shopped in the best places.
But then . . . we entered the mall. And then . . . Gabrielle said, “It’s been a while since I’ve been here, but I think Old Navy is down this way.”
Even now, as I remembered those words, I sighed. It was just as unbelievable now as it was last night. Still, I’d followed Gabrielle only because I was in such shock and didn’t know what to say. She was taking me to Old Navy? She might as well have been taking me to where I used to buy all my clothes—Walmart.
But when we got into the store, Gabrielle changed her mind. “This is too casual,” she said. “Let’s head down to Macy’s.”
We bounced out of there; I was still in my shock state, but at least Macy’s was a little better.
When we walked inside that store, Gabrielle had asked me, “What kind of clothes do you like?”
I’d wanted to tell her that I liked everything in her closet, all the clothes she wore in her pictures. But I just shrugged, and I guessed that gave her permission to take over.
We’d come home with bags and bags and bags of pants and tops, suits and dresses. Gabrielle had bought me three pairs of shoes and two pairs of boots. She’d actually spent more than a couple of thousand dollars, which would have sent me to the moon—a week ago. But that was before I’d come to Los Angeles. Before I saw how Gabrielle was really living.
Rolling onto my back, I stared up at the canopy. Why had Gabrielle decided that Old Navy was good enough for me when she wore Vera Wang gowns? Why had she settled for Macy’s when she carried a Gucci purse?
At least, she had bought me a red Coach bag and a pair of Privé Revaux sunglasses, which I loved. But still, I had only one pair of the designer glasses—Gabrielle had a dozen.
Maybe Gabrielle didn’t think of me as her real sister. Maybe there was something else that had to happen before she thought I was designer-worthy.
Glancing at my new cell phone, I checked out the time. Gabrielle had bought me the top-of-the-line iPhone and the iPad to go with it, though that was all work. But at least that was something.
Finally rolling from the bed, I stepped into the closet and stared at the space. This closet was halfway full now, and for that alone, I should have been glad. And I would have been if . . .
I sifted through the pants and tops and I chose the mustard velvet jeans and the black blouse with the huge bow. With the black boots that were a great knockoff of the Louboutins that Gabrielle had, I figured this outfit was enough to get Justus’s attention.
I hopped into the shower, hoping that the gentle water would help me get my mind right. No matter what, whatever I wore today I would look better than yesterday. Really, today, I would look better than any day in my whole life. So I should be satisfied with that, I guessed. It was just that I didn’t understand why I couldn’t have what Gabrielle had.
By the time I stepped back into the bedroom and glanced once again at the outfit that I’d laid out on the bed, I felt better. The things that were most important were that I was in Los Angeles, I was working with Gabrielle, and today, I was meeting Justus. And, I was sure the next shopping spree would be much better than last night.
So I had a lot to be grateful for and that was where I was going to keep my focus.
“WELL, LOOK AT you,” Pamela said when Gabrielle and I walked through the door. “You look fabulous.”
I gave her half a smile, though I wasn’t sure if Pamela meant what she said or she was just trying to be nice. I did have to admit that although I wasn’t wearing anything like the designer navy polka-dot shirred-waist dress that Gabrielle had on, I did feel good.
Gabrielle grinned. “She looks great, doesn’t she?”
I smiled back and hoped that my smile wasn’t too fake.
As Gabrielle went into her office, Pamela said, “Well, let’s get to work. We don’t have much time.”
Rushing into the conference room, I set up the agenda booklets in front of each chair. While I did that, Pamela led the caterers inside and set up the breakfast spread along with the coffee and tea dispensers. Within an hour, we were ready, and within seconds of us telling Gabrielle and Regan that everything was good, this burly dude (who wasn’t that much taller than me) busted through the door.
“Hey, Smokey,” Pamela said.
And then right after him . . . came Justus.
Oh my God. The photos I’d seen of this man didn’t do anything for him. He was finer in real life, though I wasn’t sure what I liked best about him. Was it that he was so tall—at least six three or maybe more? Or was it his chestnut-colored complexion, which was covered by a closely cropped beard? Yeah, that beard was sexy, but couldn’t compete with those lips. Since I’d come to California, I’d been doing a lot of imagining. And right now, all I could imagine were what those lips could do to me. Until his light brown eyes looked straight at me.
I rushed over to him. “Oh my God, Justus, it is so nice to meet you. Can I take a selfie?”
Before he said a word, I grabbed my phone from the top of Pamela’s desk and held it above my head, but then he backed up and away from me.
“Yo, Gabby, babe, what’s up?” Justus held up his hands like he was surrendering to the police. “You know I don’t do this when I come in here.” His voice was gravelly, like he was sleepy and cranky. “This is supposed to be a fan-free zone.”
Gabby rushed over and hugged Justus, and I frowned a bit at the way he held her. With his eyes closed and everything. It didn’t look like any kind of business hug to me.
After a long moment, Gabby stepped back. “I’m sorry,” she
said. She turned to me. “Keisha is . . . new.”
I raised my eyebrows. She wasn’t going to introduce me? As her sister? As the new person working with her side by side?
She said, “Come on in. We’re ready to begin.” She nodded to Pamela to lead them into the conference room.
Pamela grabbed her tablet, then stepped in front of Smokey. He followed, then Justus and the two other dudes who were behind Justus did the same.
I took a deep breath. That was certainly a diss, but maybe Gabrielle was going to make the introduction and announcement inside the meeting. I guessed that was the most appropriate place. When they were all inside, I grabbed my tablet, then walked toward the conference room. But as I was stepping in, Gabrielle was stepping out, and she stopped me.
“Uh, Keisha, you’re going to be out here”—she pointed to the front of the office—“while we’re meeting.”
“What?”
Her frown matched mine. As if she didn’t understand my misunderstanding. She said, “We don’t need the assistants in the meeting, just the associates.”
Before I could ask her what that had to do with me, Justus called out, “Gabby, babe, you know I don’t drink this bootleg coffee. Can you get your girl to make a Starbucks run? You know what I like.” He grinned.
She nodded, then turned back to me. “Okay, you’re going to cover the phones, but Mattie can cover you while you get coffee for Justus. Get him a venti caffè latte with two shots, protein powder, and mocha drizzle.” Then she said, “Oh, wait. Money.”
She rushed out of the conference room, down the hall to her office. And just like last night, I followed her because she had sent me once again into that shock state.
Grabbing her purse, she pulled out her wallet and then her credit card. “Here, use this.” Then, she rushed away from me, but after a couple of steps, turned back around. “Oh, and tell them to make Justus’s drink extra hot so that it will still be hot when you get back. And get something for yourself, if you want.”
She grinned, but even after she dashed away from me, I stood there with my mouth open. It wasn’t until I heard the conference door close that I moved with slow steps to the outer office, past Mattie, then through the doors to the elevators.
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