by Tracy Brown
Dominique knew that things had been crazy around that time. She looked at her daughter and her eyes narrowed. “Did you tell Dashawn?”
Octavia nodded.
“And what did he say?”
“He was stressed, just like me, worried about what his mother would say. But he said he would handle it. He said I could stay with him if you kicked me out.”
Dominique frowned. “But you didn’t even give me a chance to kick you out, Octavia. You just left.”
Octavia didn’t know what to say. Her mother was right. Fear of disappointing and angering Dominique had been only part of the reason Octavia had run away to her boyfriend’s house. Truthfully, she had wanted to feel grown-up, to live with Dashawn, wake up beside him, and have the freedom her mother wouldn’t give her.
Dominique leaned forward in her chair. “And, for the record, I wouldn’t have kicked you out. You’re my daughter. I love you, no matter what you do or what mistakes you make. And you should know that by now.”
“I know.” Octavia did know that her mother loved her. It was just that Dominique was busy all the time and so much more strict than her friends’ parents.
“And you already know that I had you when I was a teenager myself. How could I dare to throw you out when I’ve walked a mile in those shoes already?”
Holly’s mom had asked the same question. Octavia still came up blank for an answer.
“So you ran away, why?” Dominique pressed.
Octavia took a deep breath and thought about the question posed to her. She looked at her mother and came clean.
“I wanted to be with him. I was hoping that he would let me stay there with him like he said he would, and that we could have our baby.” Octavia began to cry. She shook her head in shame as Dominique watched her. Octavia looked to see if she saw disgust in her mother’s eyes. She knew now that the idea of finding her Prince Charming at the age of fourteen and living happily ever after was nothing more than a little-girl fairy-tale fantasy.
“But after a couple of days, his mother started wondering why I wasn’t going home.”
“After a couple of days? What kind of mother wouldn’t question you spending even one night in her home when she hadn’t even spoken to your parents?”
Octavia shrugged again. She didn’t really care too much about what type of mother Dashawn had. She only wanted to be with the boy she had fallen in love with.
Dominique was sick of seeing her daughter shrug her little fucking shoulders. “What is this woman’s name? What is this nigga’s last name?”
“Her name is Dee Dee. Jackson is their last name.”
“And what did she say when she finally found the time to question you?”
“She sat me down in the living room and asked me what was up.”
Dominique pictured the scene in her head. She hated the thought of her daughter being at someone else’s mercy.
“I told her that I was pregnant and she told me to get rid of it.” Octavia was crying, still. She reached and took the box of Puffs that sat on the end table. She took out a tissue and wiped her face as she glanced at her mother.
Dominique did not respond, instead she watched Octavia compose herself.
“She told me that she got pregnant when she was young. She had Dashawn and regretted it from day one.” Octavia thought back to how badly she felt hearing Dashawn’s mother admit that in front of him. It was bad enough that she hadn’t raised him, but to state her regret over his birth so blatantly seemed foul. “She talked about how she worked as a stripper to support him and then started using drugs; how she lost custody of him and he grew up in foster care. Now he’s sixteen and he’s just getting to know his own mother.”
Dominique had heard enough about the woes of the fucker who had gotten her precious child pregnant. She wanted to know where he stood now on that issue. “So what was he saying while his mother was telling you to have an abortion?”
Octavia’s face fell. She toyed with her hands and sadness swept across her. “He told me he agrees with his mother, that we’re too young to have a kid.” She shrugged. “Then they told me to go back home and talk to you.”
Dominique sat back in her chair and looked at her child. She thought about what Octavia was saying.
“So they sent you home, and instead of coming home you went to Holly’s house.”
Octavia nodded.
“Why?” Dominique asked. “What could be so horrible about me that you decided to keep running instead of coming home to talk to me like everyone was telling you to?”
Octavia looked at her mother and her mouth suddenly felt dry. “I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me.”
Dominique felt a tug at her heartstrings. She could tell that Octavia was happy to be home and relieved to have gotten the burden of the truth off her shoulders. She sighed. “So, what do you think you should do now?”
Octavia’s eyes watered again. “I’m scared, Ma. I don’t know what to do. I just … want to get some sleep in my own bed again.” She sighed. “I want to just enjoy being back home.”
Dominique smiled. She wanted that, too. She was relieved that her daughter was back and she reiterated Toya’s assertion that running away was not something Octavia should ever do again. She watched Octavia yawn and she stood up and reached out her hand to her child.
Octavia looked up at her mother and felt so grateful that she wasn’t yelling and screaming. She took Dominique’s hand and stood up. As they stood eye-to-eye, Octavia knew that her mother was indeed disappointed in her. But as Dominique pulled her into a loving and firm embrace, she also knew that her mother still loved her. She held on tight and vowed to herself that she would never take that for granted again.
* * *
Gillian lay awake wondering where Frankie was and praying that he was all right. She had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach and she couldn’t figure out why. That feeling had been there for days. Ever since Steven’s death, Frankie had been quiet and withdrawn. Gillian understood since she, too, was still coping with the loss of her father. It felt as if there were a dark cloud hovering over them, and Frankie seemed to be immersing himself in work as a way to deal with all that had happened.
She flipped on the lamp at her bedside and pulled open the drawer to her nightstand. She reached in and moved a few things around before pulling out a small framed picture of her seated in her father’s lap on the night of her senior prom. In the photo, she wore a poofy pink taffeta dress and sat nestled in her daddy’s embrace, her arms wrapped around him as if he were the world’s biggest teddy bear. As clear as it was from the photo that she was a young lady—tall, buxom, and all made-up—it was equally clear that she was still her father’s baby girl. That had never changed, and now that he was gone she found herself longing for the comfort of his arms more than ever.
She sighed and stared down at the picture, then smiled as she remembered his insistence that she attend the prom with Baron that night. It had been a joy for all her girlfriends who thought her green-eyed brother, who was nearly ten years older, was the finest thing since Al B. Sure! But to Gillian, it wasn’t so thrilling. She had fun with her brother and made the most of the night, but she had envied her friends who came with real dates. Truth be told, Gillian hadn’t really wanted to go with any of the boys from her exclusive prep school. Frankie was the only one she could have imagined herself with. But he was eight years older than her and married. Her father would have had a heart attack at the mere suggestion.
She put the picture back in its original spot on her nightstand instead of returning it to the drawer. It wasn’t so painful to look at it anymore. At first, in the days and weeks after he passed away, she’d found it difficult to look at pictures of him, to hear his favorite songs or smell his cologne. But now, those things gave her comfort and a sense of calm in the midst of all that was going on around her.
Gillian climbed out of bed and walked over to her bedroom window, looked out at the streetlights, the tax
is zipping up her block. She thought about Frankie again, wondered what was keeping him out all night, and she chuckled a little at herself then. Here she was—Gillian Lourdes Nobles—sitting up waiting for a man to come home to her. She felt somewhat pathetic at the thought of that. It felt as if she had switched places with Camille, whom she all but despised.
Frankie came in at 5:55 A.M., and found Gillian standing in the silence of her bedroom facing her large window, the curtains drawn back as if she’d been gazing outside. She looked over her shoulder at him as he came into the room.
“Hey,” he said, wishing she’d been asleep so that he could lay awake in the dark and think. He stood off to the far side of the room and began to disrobe.
Gillian watched him. They had so much to talk about, but she didn’t want to bombard him the moment he walked in the door. The last thing she wanted to turn into was the nagging wifey. Camille had that role sewn up all by herself.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, sitting on the bench at the foot of her bed. “I was worried about you.”
He walked over to her and kissed her softly. “I’m all right.”
He wasn’t, though. His entire world was still turned on its ear and he was convinced that the only good thing in his life was the beauty who sat before him. He looked at her sitting there, so patient, so soft, and yet so strong despite everything happening around her.
Gillian watched Frankie walk into the bathroom and shut the door. She heard him turn on the shower and felt better knowing that he was there, that he was safe. She crawled back into bed and waited for him to emerge. When he did, she watched him climb into bed beside her and wrap her in his arms, whispering that he loved her.
Gillian searched his eyes for more. She knew there were things he wasn’t telling her, but she’d been raised to know better than to ask questions. She was, after all, a Nobles.
She knew that Misa had been mysteriously bailed out by her sister. The DA had called to tell Frankie personally, and Gillian had been with him when the call came in. She knew that Frankie had been wondering how Camille had managed to get her hands on that amount of money. Gillian was convinced that Camille wasn’t such an idiot after all. Obviously, she’d stockpiled money that Frankie didn’t know about. This only added to Frankie’s disdain for his wife, and he wanted her out of his life more than ever before.
Camille and her mystery cash were the least of Frankie’s worries. Misa had murdered his brother. Worse, she’d accused him of an atrocity toward a three-year-old kid, and Frankie hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it ever since. He had been tormented by his brother’s face in his dreams, his mother’s cries in his ears; her cryptic words: “It should have been me.”
Frankie hadn’t been able to sleep much as a result. He had found comfort in the arms of Nobles’s beloved daughter. He knew that the old man would approve, but still felt tormented by the sudden loss of someone who had been so pivotal in sculpting him into the man he had become. And now Steven was gone, too.
Then there was the fact that Baron was in the hospital recovering from his wounds, responsible, in Frankie’s eyes at least, for what had happened to Nobles. Frankie hadn’t been able to visit Baron. He wasn’t ready to make peace with him yet. He was starting to wonder if he ever would.
Gillian took a deep breath, looked him in his weary eyes. “Frankie, I need to ask you something.”
He nodded, hoping it wasn’t some bullshit.
“In court the other day, they mentioned that you owned Mommy’s restaurant. When did that happen? Daddy’s will hasn’t even been read yet.”
Frankie leaned back against the pillows and sighed. This was where he had to hold out on Gillian a little bit. He couldn’t tell her everything. Not yet, anyway. There was more he needed to know before he divulged too much about the conversation he had had with Nobles about Conga.
“Your father and I had a conversation the night before he died. He thought something wasn’t right. He was pressing me to get Baron to step aside and telling me that he wanted me to take over. Pretty much the same thing we talked about when all of us were together. Only this time, I think he … kinda suspected that he had to start hiding his assets. I think he was maybe a little paranoid … Anyway, he signed your mother’s share of Conga over to me that night. He asked me to keep it quiet. He didn’t want anybody to know.”
Gillian raised an eyebrow. This was certainly news to her. Her father hadn’t mentioned any desire to hide his assets when she was around. And if what Frankie said was true, why had her dad been determined to keep it a secret, even from her?
“Really?” Her voice was at once inquisitive and skeptical.
Frankie knew she had a million questions. “He didn’t say why he wanted to hide things and who he was hiding it from,” Frankie lied. Doug Nobles had, indeed, shared his suspicions with his heir apparent, but Frankie wasn’t ready to divulge all the details of that conversation just yet. “He just made it clear that he knew what he was doing and that he wanted me to keep my mouth shut about it. So I did.” He looked at Gillian, saw the pained expression on her face. “I planned to tell you about it after he passed away, but…” He gestured with his hands helplessly. “Everything just started going crazy.”
She nodded. “I understand.” She looked at him seriously. “Does my mother even know about this?” Mayra certainly hadn’t mentioned that her husband had stripped her of owning her beloved eatery.
Frankie shook his head.
“Did he know about Baron coming to me for a loan against the restaurant?” She wondered if Frankie had told her father her little secret; that she’d given her brother fifty-five thousand dollars to repay a debt to Jojo—a debt he hadn’t bothered to pay back.
Frankie told the truth this time. “No. I never told him about it. You know we put that money back and that was the end of it.”
Frankie had discreetly given Gillian the money to pay back Baron’s debt and balance out the books at Conga. Then he had set about getting Gillian acclimated with the ins and outs of business with the various sectors of the Nobles family business so that she would be ready to take over. It had become clear to him, and to Doug Nobles, as well, that Baron was a loose cannon who was compromising the family’s future.
At first, Frankie had assumed that it was Baron, therefore, who had aroused his father’s suspicion and caused him to begin to sign away his assets. But, in fact, it was Mayra—Gillian’s mother—whom Doug Nobles had been worried about.
Nobles had sat down with Frankie and told him that he was fearful that Mayra was having an affair, he was beginning to have doubts that she stayed with him out of love alone as his health failed. He had sworn Frankie to secrecy, making him vow on his life that he wouldn’t tell another soul for the time being. He asked Frankie to keep an eye on Mayra, especially those days when he’d been confined to a wheelchair most of the time, and sluggish.
Frankie didn’t want to tell Gillian these things; didn’t want to taint her relationship with her mother until he knew whether or not Nobles was right.
Gillian could tell that there was something Frankie wasn’t saying. She knew him better than he thought. She didn’t press further, though. She knew that he loved her, that he had loved her father. And she trusted that whatever he wasn’t telling her was for her own protection. But her antennas were up.
“Get some sleep. You look like you need it.” She smiled at him ever so slightly and it warmed Frankie’s heart.
He pulled her close to him and laid his head back against the mound of pillows, shut his eyes. He held her so close that she could smell the scent of the soap on his skin. She kissed him lightly on his stubbly face and watched him fall asleep holding her tightly against his strong body as if he’d never let go.
She missed her father more than ever then. She wished he was still alive, telling her his secrets and his fears the way he’d told them to Frankie.
Emancipation
Misa sat in her mother’s living room on Long Island
feeling apprehensive. Today would be her first supervised visit with her son, and she felt a thousand emotions at once—joy, excitement, fear, sadness, pain, all mixed up in one overwrought cocktail. Shane was being brought to his grandmother’s house by a social worker and Misa was wondering what condition her son would be in today. She hadn’t seen him in close to two weeks—one week prior to her arrest and one week since—and she missed him terribly. All she’d had to get by on for the past few days were updates from the social workers assigned to Shane’s case. Misa wanted to see him for herself so that she could judge how well her baby was coping with what had happened to him.
She bounced her foot as she sat with her legs crossed, scared to death.
Lily stood across the room near the baby grand piano Camille had given her for Mother’s Day. She watched her baby daughter and would have given anything to ease the burden she so obviously bore. Misa had been eerily quiet and contemplative. She’d been spending most of her time sitting in her room, writing in her journal, and speaking on the phone with her attorney about her defense. She wasn’t eating much, hadn’t talked much. In fact, Misa wasn’t doing much of anything except worrying about the meeting that was now about to happen.
The doorbell sounded and Lily noticed Misa jump just a little. Lily walked quickly to the door and said a silent prayer along the way. She came to the door and opened it to find Shane in the arms of a Latina social worker, sucking his thumb and looking meekly at his Gamma. A smile spread across Shane’s face when he saw Lily and she returned the gesture.
“Hello,” Lily said, as she ushered them inside quickly with the winter wind howling behind them. She noticed that Shane was bundled up and was grateful that her grandson was being well cared for.
Shane allowed her to unzip his snowsuit while the social worker continued to hold him. Misa watched from her seat on the sofa, frozen there. She had seen his familiar smile spread across his face at the sight of his grandmother and it made Misa smile, too. Shane hadn’t noticed her yet, and she watched as if captivated by the sight of him. Misa could tell that the social worker, who introduced herself as Ms. Thomas, was trying to slowly reintroduce Shane into the familiar setting. They had chosen Lily’s home for today’s visit because it was the one location that Shane was familiar with where it was certain that no abuse had taken place. It was important that he feel comfortable and safe.
