by Tiana Laveen
“Ace! Stoooooop!”
But he didn’t hear her…or maybe he did, yet didn’t care. Blood sprayed in all directions. She desperately raced towards them and tried to grab Ace’s arm, but there was no stopping him. His flesh felt like frozen rock dipped in concrete. He kept rearing back his fist, and going towards the man’s face and chest with full gusto. She couldn’t believe her eyes and her screams were continuously falling on deaf ears.
“Aaaaaaccccccceeeee! Pleaaaasssse! Stop! Stoooop!”
After a few more punches, with a grunt and a curse, he let up and stood from his bloody victim, his chest heaving. He stumbled backwards and blinked hard, as if coming out of a trance. Brooklyn stood there for a moment, her eye darting back and forth, until finally she rushed to her father.The blood from his lip smeared across her cheek as she held him close. She cradled his face in her hands as his eyes welled in tears. The man looked at her, then back at Ace, then again at her. The corners of his mouth lifted, exposing blood covered teeth and a hearty smile. He reached upward and caressed the side of her face, the tears now brimming over.
“Lynne…you’re alive. I always knew it. I’ve missed you so much…”
~***~
Ace ran his hand across his bruised and sore knuckles. He didn’t expect to have to get into a physical altercation anytime soon, especially with his girlfriend’s old man.
How the fuck did he get into my home?
His jaw twitched. The two of them lay huddled together on the floor with blood splotches all around ’em, soaking into the carpet fibers. A tender scene unfolded before his eyes; nothing like he expected. He danced with anger, resentment and confusion until he could take it no longer.
“I thought you said you were afraid of him?” Ace blurted as he fisted and unfisted his aching knuckles.
They both looked up at him, as if realizing once again that he was in the room after a long hiatus.
She looked at him, as if working out something in her brain and he had a feeling that whatever her conclusion was, he wouldn’t like it.
“Ace, I think I need to speak to my father…alone please.”
I don’t believe this shit.
“I’m not going any damn where. I’m not leaving you alone with this man!” He pointed angrily at the two of them, then at the floor, driving his point home.
Over my damn dead body.
“I know you’re concerned for me, but he’s here now. We kinda expected this, remember? I need to talk to him.”
“Well, then talk. I will be in the bedroom…with the door open.” He shot Henderson a foreboding glance. “And don’t try anything slick, Mr. Henderson. I know all about you.” The threat was real. “I’d hate to have to take matters into my own hands.” He cracked his knuckles, uncaring that they were swelling up, then stormed off…
~***~
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A warm, wet cloth, several Kleenex and a tossed pair of heels were the order of the day. She sat across from her father, a glass of water in her slightly shaking hand and a headache of epic proportions forming inside of her skull. He dotted his mouth with the towel, treating his wounds, wincing along the way.
“So he told you he was a detective?” The man shook his head in disbelief.
“Not right away, but yeah, I know now. That doesn’t matter though. Ace isn’t the problem...” She brought her knees together and ran her hands over them, nervously trying to gather her wits. The alcohol at the elaborate wine tasting had done strange things to her. In retrospect, she surmised it was a good thing. It made her a bit less fretful, but her stomach was a ball of nerves all the same.
“I can’t…wait any longer,” the man choked out. He coughed into one of the balled up, pink-hued tissues and eyed her. His posture slumped, as if he were a snowball under the blazing sun. He looked one hundred years old compared to how she remembered him. She wasn’t sure if it was due to the beating her boyfriend had given him, or years of stress. “Answer me, Lynne, please. Why did you leave?”
She sat there for a good while, ogling her thumbs as if she’d never seen them before. She pushed them together, side-by-side, and simply stared at them. A mundane focal point to center her, bring her back to reality.
“I was…” She paused and blew into a tissue. “I didn’t want to mess the family up.”
“Lynne, honey, what are you talking about?” He stretched his leg and tapped his foot as if a good beat were playing. She’d forgotten that he did that — a nervous habit he had. She smiled inwardly at the memory.
“I…witnessed something...something horrible.” She heard her own voice, and she sounded like a damn child. She recoiled into herself, feeling that eighteen year old all over again, and everything that had transpired then seemed once more fresh and new.
“Like what?” He snaked a cigarette out of his pocket, flicked his lighter and lit it. Puffs of smoke poured forth. His eyes narrowed, almost in a threat. Suddenly, she felt brazen; her back stiffened. The fear she had for the man during those last few days had resurfaced, but now, as she studied him, she fought releasing the hounds of her wounded inner soul. Yes…Ace would be there in a moment; only one scream from her lips was needed, but even if he weren’t, she believed this new emotionless wave would roll over her, and left the fearful woman behind.
“Well.” She shrugged. “I guess there is no time like the present…”
“Tell me. I have the right to know!” her father yelled as his fist punched the couch. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere! Calling here, there, all over the country! Running towards false leads, putting up posters… Your mother cries all the time, still, to this day!” His voice quaked with anger as he laid into her hot and heavy. “You’ve put us in a terrible spot, Lynne! Here you are, laughing, having a good time…and all the while we’ve been suffering! How could you do something like this?!” Before she could utter another word, and cool from her shock over the man’s audacity and declarations, Ace showed up in the arched doorway, a cigarette ember burning bright orange with waving churns of smolder twirling between his fingers. He stood bare-chested, his elaborate tattoos in relief, the flames the most prominent.
“Is there a problem, Mr. Henderson?”
The man snapped his neck in Ace’s direction, and for the first time ever, Brooklyn saw a bit of fear in her father’s eyes.
“You’ve done enough!” The man pointed to Ace, getting over his trepidation rather quickly. “I paid you to find my daughter, and instead all you did was lie and make her your damned girlfriend! I was in your office and saw that letter in the envelope on your desk. Imagine my surprise to open it and discover a damn love letter you’d written my daughter, telling her she was safe from me, whatever the hell that means, and how you were so damn happy to have her! I hope you two had a great time with those two tickets for a helicopter ride over Chicago! I should have you reported, you sneaky, lying, two-faced son of a bitch!”
Ace pounded towards the man like a wild cat gone rogue.
“Ace! Please, stop! Enough!” Brooklyn shook her head and put her hand up. Her lover stopped in his tracks, and then she noticed a shiny black gun in his damned pocket. He wasn’t fucking around. She watched her father’s eye go to it as well, and he simmered down a bit, drew back, recoiling like a frightened snake. Ace gritted his teeth and pointed at her father, his finger straight at the man’s face.
“You have a lot of fucking nerve, you know that?! Don’t push me, Mr. Henderson. I’m not sure who you believe you are, what status you hold, but that only works on your own turf, down in Texas. You’re in my world now, and your daughter is a part of my domain so if you want to pop off at the mouth and start screaming at her again, threatening me, and getting out of hand, then I’m going to address it just like I did the first time you ran towards me like you were fucking crazy. Only this time, you won’t be getting back up.”
Her father laughed mirthlessly; his teeth gleamed as he bared them at Ace.
“I will make sure your license
is revoked and you are in jail.” The man patted at the side of his mouth with the Kleenex. “That’s what you deserve. I told you to find my daughter, not fuck her!”
“Fix your fuckin’ face.” Ace took a casual puff of his cigarette not getting riled up from the man’s declarations. “I’m solution driven, and you are not a problem that is hard to solve…if you get my drift. Don’t come in here,” he pointed at Brooklyn but didn’t look at her, “pushing your weight around, making demands, acting as if you are a damn victim! Lower your goddamn voice when addressing her, do you hear me?! Don’t make me come back in here again, and watch what you say to me, too. If I have to return, please believe that I’ll finish what I started.” And then he disappeared.
Her father kept staring at the doorway long after Ace exited the room. His jaw contracted, his fists grabbed at the air and the ends of his coat as his anger seemed to teeter at the edge of a cliff, ready to dive off and explode. He wanted to harm Ace, to make him pay for adding to his misery, but he was frozen in his tracks and no doubt confused as to what all was going on. Here his daughter was, missing for over ten years, and with the man hired to find her. Only, they’d been kissing…laughing…and her things were in his closet.
“Dad, again, this isn’t about Ace, so let’s not get distracted. He’s just protective of me.”
“And so am I. That man has known you, what? Five, six months?” He pointed at the spot where Ace had stood and his smoke still lingered. Now the only thing left was the odor of his long-gone cigarette haze intermingling with her father’s, one strangling the other for top billing. “You’re my daughter!”
She nodded and smiled sadly, then looked back down into her lap to compose her thoughts.
“Yeah…I am your daughter, Dad.” She looked up at him, holding back the tears she refused to let fall. She was getting stronger, so much stronger now. Each minute comprised a spiritual body building moment, and as she looked into that man’s eye, she felt within her soul that God’s promise was right. No weapon formed against her would prosper. “So, I will tell you…I will tell you the truth.”
“Thank you, Lynne. I think I deserve that much.”
“…It’s Brooklyn, now. I had it legally changed,” she said in a hard tone.
The man’s eyes dulled, his chin jetted out in defiance. He didn’t have to share his thoughts; they were obvious. He would not be calling her Brooklyn, and that was final.
“I had come down to your office one day,” she wiped her nose with the balled up tissue, “to tell you some good news. Mr. Turner was there…”
As soon as the words left her mouth, the color from her father’s face seemed to drain away into some invisible gutter, leaving behind a paler version of something that had been shocked by a blinding light of truth. She remained speechless for a spell as he gripped the material of his suit pants, his long, dark fingers bunching it up and twisting it hard.
“To this day, I don’t know what happened.” She picked up her glass of water, shaking. She took an unsteady sip then placed it back down, staring at it ripple until it settled. The water in the glass was at peace, the complete opposite of her mind, body and soul, but damn it, she was getting there...one lonely second at a time. “All I know is, you killed him and took his body away…” There, she’d said it.
Her father sat there for a long while. He offered nothing but a blank stare. She imagined his heart had plummeted into his shoes as if dropped from a rooftop onto the busy traffic of reality, straight below.
“And then I saw he was found, you know, on the news.” She crossed her legs and sucked her teeth. “And I realized — either I could tell the police on my father, and ruin his life, my mother’s life, my brother and sister’s life, too. Or, I could sacrifice myself, and simply…disappear, act like it never happened…vanish like magic.” She held her hands in the air and moved her fingers as if they were falling glitter. “I couldn’t stay in that house! That’s all I wanted to do — fade away. That way,” she shrugged and swung her foot, “I could live my life, and you’d all be okay. I couldn’t stay with you knowing what you’d done. I couldn’t be around you, knowing you did something like that! I tried, but it was too much!”
He exhaled loudly and picked up his cigarette from the ashtray. It had waited there for him like a dog for its owner after a long day’s work, and he eagerly puffed the thing, his eyes dancing and speculating.
“I didn’t expect this,” he finally uttered.
“What did you expect?” She tried to take the bass out of her voice, to sound soft and open, but something in her was shutting down. Her insides had grown hot with fury. Initially, a small part of her was jubilant to see the man after her shock had waned. For a brief moment, all she could think was, It’s Dad come to make everything all right…come to tell me it was all a bad dream.
This man had been her favorite person in the world for such a long time in her early childhood. He had been a pivotal role model in her life, nurtured her desire to learn and grow, told her she could be anything she wanted. For so long he wore the king’s crown in her life. Then, tremendous indignation overtook her when she realized he had no concept of recognition on how he’d turned her life around. She needed a moment away from the whole thing, so her mind wandered. She wanted to know how her boyfriend was doing; she wanted him to return and sit by her, hold her hand.
Ace’s temper regarding the matter was palpable. She could still feel his tension, his energy hanging in the room like a dense fog. Then she thought of the gun, shiny and lethal, at his side. He had tossed her father around like a feather in a dryer and would not hesitate to do it again. She imaged her father felt degraded and humiliated, but had more pressing matters to address. Not only had he gotten his ass beat, the man that did it had played him like a damn fiddle.
“I thought…I thought maybe you were abducted.” He sniffed and sat back as if the wind were knocked out of him. “I thought, maybe you’d even gotten into drugs or something. Never in a million years did I think this had anything to do with…Mr. Turner.
“I’d like to tell you what happened that night, Lynne. I think…the whole story, the truth, is needed right now. By telling you this, I’m…confessing, but, there may be some aspects you are unaware of. I need to set the record straight.”
Brooklyn wasn’t in the mood for any tall tales. She inwardly prayed that that wasn’t the ride her old man was going to try to take her on. She’d heard enough cover-ups, lies and schemes to carry her through three more lifetimes, and some of these mendacities were her very own. No, that was all over. Either come clean and correct, or don’t come at all.
“Okay.” That was all she was in the mood to offer. She sat back and crossed her arms over her breasts, as she looked nonchalantly at her father. Amazing how many emotions she’d run through in that short span of time. She’d spent all of these years running away, and now, what she believed she feared most, was sitting right there, in front of her, and she didn’t give a damn. Resentment gripped her. She needed him to speak all right, to tell her something she could grab hold to. Something that would stick to her bones and give her some nourishment straight to the soul because she’d been starving, living on the fumes of fear, disaster, loneliness and deprivation.
“Mr. Turner was not only a good friend of mine, Lynne; he was a business partner.” He took a nervous puff of his cigarette. “We were going to start our own construction business together. You may or may not recall those discussions at that time. I wanted to venture out on my own, and he was the only person I trusted to come along with me, make a go of it. I had taken all our savings, almost all that I had,” he set his cigarette in the ashtray then placed his hands out in front of him as if they were holding the world, “and invested in this idea we’d been working on for years. We both were tired of working for other people, Lynne, making other people rich. He was like my brother.We confided in one another, trusted one another.”
“And then you killed my Godfather. So much for trust.” Sh
e sucked her teeth.
He paused and looked up at her, his momentum ruined. Then he shook his head, and continued on, pushing her words aside. “But then, I found out that…I found out that Richard had taken the money and didn’t do as we agreed upon.” He looked up at her woefully, an expression almost as if to say, ‘I can’t believe I’m telling her this, but I must.’
“I confronted him about it, about what he’d done, told him I was going to the police if he didn’t come up wit’ my money in the next twenty-four hours, and he acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about. Then…” He hung his head. Now the world had moved from his hands to his shoulders as he sank even further down in the chair, wilting like a flower. “We agreed to sit down and meet the following day, but instead he came up to my job after everyone had left. Beforehand, you know, when I’d confronted him, he kept telling me he had a good explanation, that it wasn’t what I thought.
“So, when I saw him pop up at the place, at work, I was ready to listen, but I still didn’t believe him. After he was done, I told him that, just like I said it to you.” He lifted his eyes to hers, his expression firm. “I said, ‘You are lyin’.’ Just like that. And I let him know that he’d be reported, that I wasn’t fooling around. He’d put everything I had built, earned and worked for in jeopardy. In that moment…while…while we argued, he must’ve got spooked. He…pulled a gun out on me, Lynne!” His voice trembled. “I…I just went by instinct; it was a matter of survival. I grabbed at him. The gun went off but missed us both and in the scuffle I turned his arm in, and he got shot. I don’t know, to this day, if I pulled the trigger or he did, but I panicked! He was going to kill me…I didn’t want anything to happen to you, to your mama, to your brother and sister, baby. I’d already lost all of my money; I couldn’t have that, too. In an instant, I saw my life flash before my eyes!
