Ghost Writer (Raven Maxim Book 1)

by Tiana Laveen

  And now, she looked at this woman who was aging gracefully, actually becoming more beautiful with time. She’d felt the truth in her warm welcome, giving her a kiss on her cheek that had made her tremble. She’d missed the woman so much. Mom smelled good; she always did, but the way her perfume mixed with the delicious scent of the homemade food and candles gave her a big dose of nostalgia. To top it all, Mom’s smile was prettier, her mood lighter, her energy contagious…

  Where had this woman been when she’d felt terrified about telling her she liked girls? Where had this cheerful, chatty woman been when she needed a support system in a time of need? Where had she been when she needed her to answer the question of why being black and gay and a woman represented a triple threat to lifelong happiness and a surefire way to misery in today’s society?

  She’d needed that kind of mother to make it all better, but instead, all she got were tears, stonewalling and silence. Mom had never talked down to her about it, never said she’d pray for her, get her into counseling, or that she was going to hell. For that, she was grateful… but those tears killed her. Mom didn’t cry a whole lot, so when she did, it was a big damn deal. The woman had spent that entire weekend crying, after she’d confessed her deepest secret, admitted who she truly was. Since then, their relationship had never been quite the same. It wasn’t what Mom had said that made Nikki hate her then, but what she hadn’t said at all…

  Mya is a sweetheart…

  Emerald sized up her daughter’s love like any mother would, with a keen eye. The beautiful young lady was college educated and gorgeous, but she had to pass the ‘mama test’, as her friend at work called it. After all, Nikki was her only child, and she wanted to make certain the woman who’d stolen her daughter’s heart was indeed worthy. She could see by the way they looked at one another that they were madly in love.

  She’d never felt that way about anyone, until now…

  Sloan made her swoon with just the thought of him, and Mya looked damn near lovesick. She definitely empathized.

  “So, how long have you been out, Mya?” Emerald asked, cutting another piece of buttery cornbread and sliding it from the pan onto the woman’s plate.

  “Oh, well, I told my father I was gay when I was—”

  “No, no baby.” Emerald grinned. “Out of the army.”

  “Oh!” Mya laughed. “I left after my last active service, which was back in April. So, about ten months ago.”

  Emerald nodded in understanding, pleased that the woman had a similar background as Nikki, and that only aided in her being a great support system for her daughter.

  “Mom, Mya and I met during her last three months, actually. I’d never seen her before that. We didn’t start up a relationship until after she left.”

  “Yeah, after my official departure, but we knew we liked each other right away.” Mya winked across the table at Nikki, looking giddy and silly in love.

  Nikki had brought up Mya’s name quite a few times over the past year, but when she’d pressed for details, her daughter would be stingy with providing information, or simply change the topic. She found this unnerving, as if she were being punished for the past, when she wasn’t the only one to blame. Things had happened, stopping a lot of words that should have been said, ending the frequent displays of love. But she’d been going through her own struggles within her failing marriage, dealing with the relentless burdens of a mother who had abandoned her, then showed up again right before her death. Last but not least, she’d been facing the fact that, in some ways, she felt like an orphan, and that feeling lingered, even when her father did his damndest to make her feel safe and secure.

  It was hard to describe or explain, but she’d drifted along for the longest, as though lost at sea with no clear direction. She had friends, acquaintances, and the occasional trip to church afforded her the opportunity to open up in some way to a kindly Christian woman or two… but nothing could fill the void. Sometimes, she wasn’t even certain of who she was and where the hole within her rested in the first place. She might have been someone else, drifting above her shell of a being, disconnected from her and drifting like some glum, disoriented ghost.

  She was writing her own story, which contained so many unexpected twists and turns, she wasn’t convinced it was her tale to tell at all. Yet, for certain, she was a survivor, and as she felt her way along in the dark, she could sense what she needed to do, the steps she needed to take. As in all things in her life, no matter how big or small, she kept trudging along, making the warped straight, the twisted lies turn to hard-angled truths, and the gunky remains of the past fade away into nothingness. But there was no way to ascribe such solutions to another human being, one that came from her body but grew up to be her own person, separate from her own expectations and desires.

  Nikki would not confide anything about her personal life, about love, attraction, and commitment. Maybe her daughter was upset not only with her, but with herself, too; hating what she was, angry that it couldn’t be changed. Nikki rarely shared her secrets, but one time, she did. She’d sat on the edge of her bed and said, “Mom, I got something to tell you…”

  Emerald shook herself out of her memories and leapt to her feet, wearing a smile as carefully drawn as her lipstick. Removing a freshly baked apple cobbler from the refrigerator, she placed it in the center of the table and took her seat once again.

  “No way! You made apple cobbler? Oh my God, baby, you are in for a treat. This recipe right here is from my Aunt Sugar. You have any ice-cream to go with it, Mom?”

  “Does a bee have honey? You know I do.”

  Mya giggled as she sized up the dessert. “This looks so good, Ms. St. Clair!”

  “Thank you, Mya. Let me get the ice-cream that I almost forgot, too. Leave it to Nikki to remind me.” Chuckling, she made her way to the freezer to retrieve the pint of golden vanilla.

  “I know I shouldn’t do this.” Her daughter patted her belly as if it were rounded and sticking out a mile wide. “But I can make it up at the gym later. Let the games begin.” Nikki laughed as she stood from her chair. “I have to go to the bathroom first, though. I’ll be right back.”

  “All right.” Emerald cut into the pie and placed thick, gooey slices of it onto clear dessert plates, then topped them with a scoop of the ice-cream.

  “I would’ve been big as a house growing up under your roof, Ms. St. Clair. You cook too good!” Mya slid her fork into the thick, layered cobbler, then unceremoniously shoved it into her mouth. “Ohhhh! This isn’t right!” She screamed with her mouth wide open.

  “What’s wrong? Is it too hot? It should’ve been cooled down by now.” She rose from her chair as fast as she could to fill up the girl’s water glass again.

  “No!” Mya waved her hand about, shaking her head vigorously. “I meant it like a figure of speech. This is heavenly! It’s perfect.”

  “Oh, you had me worried for a minute there, thinking I’d given you second degree burns on your tongue or something!” She plopped back down in her seat, laughing.

  “Tell Nikki I found a brand new love. Me and this pie are about to run away together,” Mya joked, and they burst into fits of mirth.

  Mya finished her dessert, a comfortable silence stretching between them. After polishing the last few crumbs, she yawned once, then again. Emerald could hear Nikki talking faintly in the background; it seemed she was on the phone with someone.

  “I’m so sorry.” Mya yawned once more. “It’s just that I’ve been up since three this morning preparing to see Nikki, then picked ’er up from the airport and after that, I packed up for my stay in California with her until she takes off again … I’m just exhausted.” She rolled her eyes and sighed.

  “You’ve been busy. I’m sure you are.” She patted Mya’s hand. “Let me show you the guest room so you can get some shut eye, all right?”

  “Are you sure you don’t mind? I honestly wish I could stay up and talk to you all night. You’re so funny, Ms. St. Clair.” />
  “Mya, call me Mom. You and my daughter are getting married. You’ve got the ring and the date, so let’s make this official.”

  Mya’s eyes grew like saucers and her mouth dropped open as if she were truly shocked out of her mind.

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing… thank you.”

  “You don’t have to say it.” Emerald got to her feet and made her way towards the sink, taking Mya’s empty dessert plate along with her. She shot a glance at Nikki’s plate; the ice-cream had melted, leaving a white creamy peninsula around a triangular slice of cobbler. “I know what’s going on, Mya. I’m certain Nikki, since she loves you the way she says she does, told you things about me—like that I didn’t approve of her lifestyle, or something to that affect.”

  There was a brief moment of silence. Thick bricks of tension built up fast around them, all the way to the ceiling. Emerald turned to face her future daughter-in-law.

  “Yeah… there was a little something like that,” she mumbled, her eyes staring down onto the napkin on her lap.

  “Well, Mya, that’s not exactly true.” She turned away and tended to the dishes. “But I can understand why she’d think that. Anyway…” With a sigh, she poured a bit of Dawn dish detergent onto the white sponge, then started washing the dinner plates. “Honey, go on and go to bed, all right? The guest room is right down the hall here. It’s the first door on your left. You and Nikki have fresh towels and washcloths in the hall closet right by the bathroom. I put my mini-fridge in your room. It’s got water, yogurt, and a couple of sodas. Oh, the television in there has to sometimes warm up for a second so if you see it come on but the screen is blank for too long, hold out; it’s just breathing.”

  “You’ve been so nice to us… thank you.”

  Emerald smiled over her shoulder at the sleepy-eyed woman. “Why wouldn’t I be? You’re my daughter’s fiancée and I love her; therefore, anyone she loves, I’d grow to love, too.”

  Mya slowly rose from her chair to take the short journey.

  “Uh, where do you think you’re going?”

  Sporting a perplexed look, Mya pointed down the hall and said in a soft-spoken voice, “Well, I was going down the hall to the room, just like you said.”

  “Like hell you are. Come over here and give me a hug goodnight first. That’s not how we do things around here.”

  Smiling from ear to ear, Mya hastened to her and embraced her. She loved that gesture of affection, though hated that she couldn’t hug her back; her hands were dripping in suds. She imagined Nikki might have felt that way from to time to time; as if she were getting embraces year after year, but not really being touched by her love at all…

  “Good night, Ms. St. Clair. I mean, Mom.”

  “Good night, Mya. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  The woman smiled shyly before disappearing down the hall, her footsteps soft, barely audible along the carpet and rugs. A few brief moments passed before Emerald heard the guest bedroom door closing softly. After she enjoyed a half glass of wine and lazily gazed out the window, Nikki interrupted her thoughts when she abruptly returned, pulling her chair roughly back as if it were a yo-yo and plopping down into the chair. Picking up her spoon, she delicately stirred the vanilla sludge and took a bite of the now soupy cobbler.

  “Sorry, Ma,” she said around a mouthful of melted dessert. “I had a call from somebody, and it was kinda important. People call at the most inconvenient times askin’ me questions. This time, when I was on the shitter of all places.” She laughed before placing another spoonful of the sweet treat into her mouth.

  “That’s all right. Duty still calls. Did you see Mya? She went on to bed.”

  “Yeah, she came in while I was in there talkin’. I had relocated from the silver throne into the bedroom. I know she’s beat. She’ll probably be asleep in less than five minutes.”

  “I like her, Nikki. She’s nice…seems to care about you a great deal and that’s what’s most important.”

  “She does. She means the world to me. This is the best relationship I’ve ever had, hands down.” She put one hand up as if she were being sworn in.

  “I’m really happy for you two.” Emerald dried her hands and sat down across from her daughter at the kitchen table. She ignored the slight ache in her left hip, and the way the bottoms of her feet throbbed. She hadn’t realized she’d been on them so much until then. She’d slaved preparing for her daughter’s arrival, wanting to make it picture perfect, but there was no such thing. All she could do was try to skirt up as close to it as she could, and she just hoped this would do. As if reading her thoughts, Nikki shoved her empty dish aside and leaned forward, a glint of fun in her eyes.

  “Mama, you went all out of your way. That room is so nice… looks like something from one of those home tours.”

  Emerald leaned back in her seat and briefly closed her eyes, feeling satisfied. “I’m glad you like it. I wanted you to have somewhere nice to rest your head, even if it’s only for two nights.”

  Nikki nodded and let her smile slowly fade. Her brows bunched and her lips tensed tight, as if she were suddenly aware of something awful. “Mama, I uh..” She ran her finger nervously over her upper lip, just as she used to do when she’d study for her school exams. “I want to tell you that I’m not happy about the tension we’ve had between us, on and off, over the years. I can’t make any sense of it half the time. Sometimes I understand it; and other times, I… I wish you were close by so I could hug you…’cause I miss you, Mom.” She hung her head. “I appreciate you more now that I’m gone.”

  She exhaled deeply and looked into her mother’s eyes. “The mother of a good friend of mine died a couple of weeks ago. He was devastated. He didn’t know about it until it was too late. I keep hearing about stuff like that, and all I can do is sit and think. When it’s quiet, so quiet I can hear my own self breathing, Mom… in a foreign place, walking on foreign land, hearing a foreign language, and risking my life for people I don’t know, I feel this more… I realize I’ve disrespected the one person that’s had my back. The one person I do know, and that’s you.”

  Emerald stared at her across the table. She kept folding a napkin in various shapes, bunching it up tight, then loosening her hold. The thoughts in her head underwent pretty much the same treatment.

  “Neither of us is completely guilty. Neither of us is completely innocent, either. Nikki,” she said, stretching her legs out and crossing her ankles, “when you were a little girl, I believed in letting you have your childhood. I didn’t want it robbed, corrupted with whatever I or your father had goin’ on. I felt like my upbringing was a bit unorthodox, and I wanted you to have all my love, even when I was hurting and didn’t have much to give. I kept a lot of things from you, a lot of secrets. Not because I enjoy lying, but to spare you the truth so you could live in peace!”

  Her eyes glossed with tears that she quickly blinked away. “My secrets have caused you pain though…and I’m sorry about that. But I thought I was doing the best thing by my child. In some ways, I still feel it was right to keep you away from the ugliness of the world; in other ways, it wasn’t… because you never really saw me as real, as truly in love with you… but I was. And I am.”

  “Damn.” Nikki shook her head and chuckled sadly. “How’d you know all of that was in my mind?”

  Emerald smirked and shrugged. “Sugar says we’re too much alike.”

  Nikki nodded. “Each day I get a bit older, I’m realizing that, you know? I used to think we were so different, but that’s not really true. Not true at all… Ma, can I ask you a favor?”

  “What is it?”

  “Are you willing to tell me your secrets? Now that I’m grown and can handle it?”

  Smiling, Emerald slowly got to her feet and made her way towards the bottle of wine on the counter. Grabbing two clean glasses from the cabinet above, she brought everything to the table, sat back down, and poured herself and her daughter a glass of red liquid silk. She pa
ssed her the drink, then she took a sip from her own. Emerald looked down into the glass she’d now placed back on the table, noting her reflection…

  Her eyes looked larger than usual, warped by the mildly sloshing cabernet as she handled the glass. Then, the image settled. The liquid no longer moved, no longer made magic or tricks out of reality. Her real self looked back at her, at last. Searching for her daughter’s gaze, drowning in her eyes, she let all her love pour through and did not try to hide the tears strolling down her cheeks.

  “Yeah, I’ve got a secret to confess, baby. I may need the rest of this wine to get it out, but through slurred words, I will confess it to you. And all I ask is that you keep an open mind, and an open heart…”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Through the Eyes of a Child

  There was a five-year-old boy who’d shot his father dead, right between the eyes.

  Sloan recalled reading the bizarre tale when he’d been a mere thirteen or so, and worst of all, he remembered how he’d admired that toddler, for he’d certainly had more courage than him. Sloan dove into crashing waves of choppy thoughts from his childhood. Broken fragments in time with periods of light and lucidity, but more times than not, hidden in dark corners of his psyche. He sat on the edge of his bed, his blue and gray striped pajama pants touching the sensitive skin at his ankles, which stung from his compulsive scratching. The itch had plagued him the last few nights.