“I’m Dr. Evans,” he informed them. “Ms. Smith has a concussion, as well as a couple of bruised ribs. I’m sorry for the wait. What took so long was we had some x-rays done to check for potential skull fractures and the stability of her spine. Those came back negative. We are going to admit her into the hospital because we need to run a few more tests before we feel comfortable releasing her. She’s awake and alert, so I will allow you to visit. but no long stays. You can return tomorrow, during visiting hours.”
The doctor then escorted Ty and his parents to her room. I decided to wait for them to come out before I went in. Prayer worked. I had prayed during my entire ride for her to be okay. I was kind of nervous about seeing her, being that I hadn’t been there when she needed me most. I stood when I saw her parents approaching. Her mother looked as if she was crying, making me think the worst.
“I’m going to get my parents home, but we will be back up here tomorrow. I’ll holla at you then,” Ty told me before leaving with his parents.
I took a deep breath, and then I and the guy who was with me headed to Jakiyah’s room and stood outside her open door. Her head turned toward the open door, and upon seeing me, she rolled her eyes and turned her head toward the wall. I stepped inside the room and walked over to the bed, but she refused to give me eye contact.
“Jakiyah, how are you feeling?” I asked her, hoping she would look at me, but she didn’t.
I walked over to the other side of the bed so that she wouldn’t have any choice but to look at me.
“Qua, I just want you to leave,” she said, just above a whisper.
“Jakiyah, let me explain. I—”
“I don’t want you to explain what I saw with my own eyes,” she said as tears left her eyes.
I knew that she wasn’t going to let me explain, and I didn’t know how much longer I had before they told me that I needed to go. So I went to the door and signaled to the person I had waiting to enter the room. Jakiyah’s eyes bucked wildly as she looked from me to him with questioning eyes.
“Jakiyah, when you came to my mother’s house, this is who you saw with his girlfriend. It wasn’t me,” I told her.
“B-but how could that be?” she asked, stuttering, her voice still just above a whisper.
“Jakiyah, this is my twin brother, Quinton, who I didn’t know existed until a few days ago. I wasn’t staying at the house, nor was I speaking to my mother. I wasn’t responding to any of your messages, because of what I had going on, and for that, I’m sorry. I really can’t explain what I don’t know, so we will have to have that conversation another day,” I said, being honest, because I didn’t know the details.
“I’m sorry we had to meet under these circumstances, but I’m glad that you’re okay. I would have tried to stop you at the house, but I had no idea who you were. Savannah saw you from the window when you first pulled up and was coming to say hello, but you had already left,” Quinton said to her, but she didn’t respond.
“Jakiyah, I have to go. They said we couldn’t stay long, but I will be back tomorrow, during visiting hours,” I told her, then kissed her on her lips. As Quinton and I were leaving, a nurse walked in the door.
I knew Jakiyah was trying to digest it all, as she still looked confused as I was walking out, my identical twin following me.
Quinton and I left the hospital together.
“I’m going to get a room and drive back in a few hours,” he said, as we walked to his car.
“You don’t have to do that. You can follow me to my crib. I have a guest room,” I offered, since he had agreed to come to the hospital.
I didn’t know what Jakiyah’s condition was before I got here, but I knew I was going to need him, because had I told her it wasn’t me that she’d seen, without offering any proof, she wouldn’t have believed me. Honestly, I wouldn’t have believed me, either, if I hadn’t seen Quinton, whose face was exactly like mine.
“Okay. I’ll take you up on your offer,” Quinton said.
Once we got to my place, I showed him the room he would be staying in. Then I went into the kitchen to get a Corona from the fridge. I really needed it. Corona in hand, I stepped into the living room and sat on the couch. Quinton came to join me in the living room, and I offered him a Corona, but he declined.
“Can I ask you a question?” he asked me.
“What’s up?”
“I’m just curious about why you’re so upset with your mother, when you didn’t even give her a chance to explain.”
“What’s there to explain? She lied to me all these years, so of course I’m going to feel some kind of way, regardless of her reason,” I told him.
“True, she lied to you all these years about you having a brother, but I was the one given up at birth. If that wasn’t a hard enough pill to swallow, imagine how I felt when I found out that not only was I given up, but I was a twin, but not the twin that was chosen to have a mother and father.”
After pausing for a moment, he continued. “The first time the agency reached out to her, I was seventeen years old, and when the agency told me that she told them she wanted to remain anonymous, I was crushed. She reached out to the agency a few years later to set up a meeting, and I told the agency that I no longer wanted to know, because I was still hurt. The agency talked me into going to the initial meeting. They knew how badly I wanted this, so I agreed. She told me that she didn’t have a choice, because at the time, she wasn’t able to care for us both. Was her excuse bullshit to me? Yes, it was, because you don’t just give up a kid that you carried inside of you for nine months.
“Was I angry? Again, yes, I was, but I forgave her. It’s been five years, and I love her as if I’ve known her all my life. She had her reason as to why she didn’t want to share with you that I was in her life, and I respected her decision. She said she wasn’t ready to tell you. I’m going to tell you the same thing I told your girl. I’m sorry we had to meet this way, but I’m glad we finally got to meet,” he said, all in one breath, giving me something to think about.
“It really feels crazy to be sitting across from you. I feel like I’m looking in the mirror right now. I’m just so tight that they would keep something like this from me, and I swear, I wouldn’t have been upset had they just told me,” I admitted.
“Well, according to our mom, I’m the oldest by three minutes, so as your older brother, I think you should at least hear her out,” he said.
He was better than I was, because I didn’t think I would have been able to forgive my mom if she had let me go. And he was the firstborn, so how did she choose?
“How was your life growing up, man?” I asked, ignoring the fact that he had told me that I should talk to my mother.
“I had a pretty decent life, but I was never adopted. But I was placed with a nice family. Sharon and Mike, an older couple who had no children of their own, cared for me up until the age of five. They both got sick and were no longer able to care for me, so I was back and forth between foster parents until the age of fifteen. My last foster parents had two other foster children, an eight-year-old boy and a fifteen-year-old girl. They treated us like shit, and that was when I first started thinking about my birth parents, making a promise to myself that I was going to find them. I swear, if it weren’t for their foster daughter, Tamia, I would have killed myself. We developed a bond that turned into a relationship, until our foster parents got wind of it and sent her away.”
I sat there for a minute, shaking my head, because it was a small fucking world. There was no doubt in my mind that he was talking about the same Tamia that I had encountered. So, that was what she’d meant when she said I used to love her crazy ass. He was looking at me like I was crazy. He must have thought that I was shaking my head and laughing at his situation, but I wasn’t. The shit just had me bugging for a minute. I decided to share with him what had me looking crazy right now, before he got up to punch me or some shit.
“Are you serious?” he asked me, with a shocked look on his
face, after I told him about Tamia.
“Very serious. I swear, I wouldn’t even play about nothing like that,” I said seriously.
“Damn, I really dodged a bullet, because I was really feeling shorty at the time,” he said and smiled.
We talked until, like, three in the morning, and I had to admit he was a cool dude, and we had a lot in common. He’d played high school and college basketball. He hadn’t got drafted, but he had finished college, and he was now a coach at the same college he’d attended. He lived in Virginia, but he promised that he would keep in touch with me, if that was okay with me, which it was. He made me agree to speak with my mother, who had probably already called my father, because he had been calling me, and I had been sending his ass to voice mail. They were my parents, so eventually, I was going to have to forgive them, but I wanted them to know that what they had done was wrong. Once I was of age, they should have told me.
I also found out that Quinton’s girlfriend back at the house wasn’t his girlfriend but his wife. He had been married for a year now. My parents had attended the wedding. That news pissed me off all over again. I took my ass upstairs to take a shower and call it a night. I had digested a lot, and I now had a damn headache.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Jakiyah
I swear, you couldn’t tell me that I didn’t have more than a concussion when Qua’s twin brother walked into my hospital room. I had really felt like I was losing my mind. I couldn’t imagine his parents keeping something like this from him. I didn’t know the backstory, but no matter what that backstory was, they should have told him. I was happy that he wasn’t cheating on me, but he might as well have, because his ass had shut me out when I needed him most, so I still felt some kind of way about it. I was also upset with myself. There was no way I should have driven all the way to Vermont and then tried to make it back home on no sleep. That was a suicide mission, and I was thankful to be alive. I promised myself not to let anything cloud my judgment and cause me to be stupid again.
My head was killing me, so I hit the call button for the nurse so that she could give me something for the pain. It felt like my head was about to explode. I wanted to sleep, but I was waiting on the doctor to make his rounds to let me know if I would be released or not. Visiting hours were about to start, and I didn’t want my parents visiting if my doctor were going to let me go home. Thirty minutes after I took the medication, I dozed off. When I heard the door to my room open again, I stirred. I looked up and did a double take, the same as when Qua’s twin had walked up in my room last night. Keem had just walked into my room. He seemed hesitant, and he had every right to be, because I really didn’t want to see his ass.
“I know I shouldn’t be here, but I heard that you were involved in a car accident, and I wanted to make sure that you were okay, because Yessenia was stressing from not knowing. I tried to reach Qua, but he hasn’t been answering my calls,” he said.
The mention of Yessenia’s name made me angry, and I was minutes from telling him that Yessenia could kiss my natural-born ass. But I thought twice about it, because I needed some answers from him. I tried to refrain from taking a deep breath like I wanted to, as it would only add to the pain I was already feeling from my ribs. The ice packs that had been given to me last night, along with the pain medication, had really helped. The doctor had told me not to avoid taking deep breaths, but I wasn’t going to lie. I was trying my hardest not to. He had warned me that if I avoided taking deep breaths and coughing, it could put me at risk for a chest infection. The nurse had added that I should take ten slow breaths every hour and let my lungs inflate fully each time to help keep my lungs clear, but I hadn’t been doing that, either.
“Keem, I’m fine, but I have to be honest with you when I say that you shouldn’t have come. Your being here confirms that you don’t understand how I feel right now. Yessenia was like a sister to me, and I would have laid down my life for her. She took someone who I also loved dearly over something that could have been replaced. No disrespect, but I need to keep it real with you. If she needed to take someone’s life, it should have been yours, because my sister didn’t owe her shit,” I said, getting emotional.
“Jakiyah, no, I don’t understand how you feel, but I know how I feel, because your sister’s blood is on my hands. If it weren’t for me, she would still be here. I thought by breaking off the relationship and admitting it to Yessenia, I was doing the right thing. I never knew that Cydney was trying to contact me. When I broke it off, she said that she understood and was going to focus on her marriage. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. And I mean that shit with all sincerity,” he said, pounding his right hand on his chest.
I knew if I started crying, my ribs were going to be inflamed by the time I stopped. I bit down on my bottom lip, trying to hold my tears in, but it was hard, and a few escaped. I studied his face, trying to read his eyes, and the sincerity in them matched the sincerity in his voice.
“It hurts so bad, and I just feel like if she just snapped the way she said she did, no matter how painful the truth would have been to hear, she should have been honest with me. Instead, she chose to be a coward and hide behind the lies and deceit, and she still remained in my presence, knowing what she did,” I cried out, no longer able to hold back my tears. They streamed down my face.
“Jakiyah, are you okay?” he asked, concern written on his face.
“Keem, I’m not okay, and the fucked-up part of this whole situation is that I was betrayed, not by an enemy, but by a friend who I considered my sister. I doubt if I can ever forgive her or feel bad about her possibly spending the rest of her life in prison,” I told him, being honest.
“I miss her,” he whispered as tears fell from his eyes.
I wasn’t expecting that at all. Even though I knew he was talking about Cydney, I wanted to hear him say exactly who he missed. After all, he could have been speaking about Yessenia. Even though she wasn’t dead, she was gone.
“Keem, you miss who?” I asked, wiping at my tears.
“I miss Cydney, and I know it was wrong of me to get involved with her, but I loved her, and she loved me too. We both belonged to someone else. That was the only reason we weren’t together, and if her daughter is mine, I need to know. If she’s a part of me, I want to be in her life,” he declared.
“That’s a conversation you have to have with my parents,” I told him.
“No doubt. I’m glad you’re okay, sis, and I’m going to go and get up out of here,” he said before leaving.
I wanted to be mad at him, but it was hard. I cared for him too, and I considered him family as well. I had been away for years, and when I came back, it was like I had never left, as we all picked up where we had left off. I had kind of always known that Cydney had a crush on Keem, but I had never known that he would take it there with her. He and Yessenia had been together forever, and he had always acted like he didn’t even like Cydney. I guessed they had both been fronting, and that was probably the reason why Cydney had never cared for Yessenia. I started to wonder if Qua knew about the relationship that Keem had had with my sister, being that they were best friends, but I decided to just leave well enough alone.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Qua
Jakiyah had been home for a few days now, and she had been staying at her mother’s house, because she needed to be cared for. I did as much as I could until it was time for the warden to put me out every night. My brother had left the morning after our talk, but he was heading back to my mom’s place, where I told him I would be in a few days.
That day had come. I was heading back today to have a sit-down with both of my parents and Quinton. I was ready to get it over with. Jakiyah didn’t get upset this time; she knew this was something that I needed to do. She didn’t want me to stay mad at my mother any longer than I had to. I got up at five that morning to make the drive. I didn’t plan on staying overnight and was hoping to make it back sometime tonight.
When I got to
my mother’s house, my brother, his wife, and my father were sitting in the living room, watching television.
“Hey, son,” my father greeted me.
“Hey,” I responded dryly.
“Boy, get your ass over here and give your pops some love,” he said in a tone that let me know he wasn’t really asking.
I went over to him and gave him a man hug, which was how I always greeted him when visiting him, but I wasn’t feeling the love this time, because I was still tight. It wasn’t going to be easy to express how I felt with him being here. I was certain that all he was going to do was explain the situation, and I would have no choice but to accept it.
“I’m going to let your mother speak, but what’s not going to happen is you being disrespectful to her. You may not like what she has to say, but you will respect it,” he said, causing my jaw to tighten, but I knew not to try him.
Quinton just sat quietly and watched the interaction. He didn’t say anything, but he did offer me a smirk when my dad gave me that look that said he was going to knock me on my ass if I got out of line. My mother must have told him how I slammed the door after telling her I didn’t want to hear shit she had to say. I was wrong for doing that, and I had intended to apologize after I calmed down, but I had never got the chance to, because of what happened with Jakiyah.
All of us except my brother’s wife headed upstairs to my mother’s bedroom to have the meeting. I watched as my mom tried to get comfortable on her bed, looking like she still wasn’t ready to have this conversation. I could have made it easier on her—Quinton had already told me what she had told him, so she didn’t have to repeat it for my sake—but I still wanted to hear it from her.
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