by Eden Butler
“And?” I asked, a little twitchy for information.
“And,” Sara started, her voice rattling a little when she cleared it. “The P.I. had the check Cass had given him to hire the girl. Five grand. Two for the girl. Three for the P.I. When they confronted Cass about it, he didn’t bother to deny it. Didn’t set right with the big dogs at Sony. They figured if this asshole would blackmail his competition to get a contract, there wouldn’t be much he wouldn't do. Like maybe hold out for money when the time came to renegotiate contracts or jump ship altogether. They didn’t think he was worth the risk or the hassle so they cut him loose.”
The mood in the room didn’t seem fitting for punching the air, celebrating my gut instinct. Especially not when I looked down at my mother’s face, seeing how she squeezed her eyes shut, how that hand on her neck moved quicker and quicker.
“So,” Sara said, clearing her throat again, “Keira, if you don’t mind me sticking my big nose in your business, your artist is a shithead and I think if you keep him on, especially with you trying to give your new label wings, you’re gonna run into some walls with him. You know how our people talk. You know how loyalties work in Nashville. He stepped on some pretty big toes a few years back. No telling what he’s gotten up to since then. Or how far he'll go in the future, if he goes anywhere.”
I exchanged a look with Aly when Mom walked to the large window at the back of the room, watching the lake stretching out with the slow, steady current keeping her attention, likely distracting her enough that she didn’t break down.
“Sara, thanks so much,” I answered for Mom. “We appreciate you digging around for us. Mom I know appreciates…”
“I do,” Mom said, over her shoulder. “Sara, honey, thank you. Looks like I…well. Hopefully I dodged a bullet.”
“Good to know, Keira. Next time you’re in town…”
“I owe you a beer. A bunch of them. Thanks honey, I’ll make good.”
Phone back in my pocket, I watched Mom staring out of that window, continuing to keep to herself until Aly went behind her, slipping her gaze between my mother and me. “Keira?” she tried.
Mom only shook her head and I knew she needed a second to absorb everything Sara had revealed. She was likely dissecting the details, probably wondering how much stock she should put into office gossip, maybe trying to wage what she knew of Cass and what she knew of most wannabe artists trying to land a contract.
I would have let her go on just staring at nothing, thinking, keeping to herself, but the footsteps overhead knocked me out of my patience as did the chirp of my phone when the text alert sounded. Koa and Mack were upstairs, doing God knew what. They didn’t need to see Mom break down and when I read my message, smiling at my father’s confident attitude, I realized we needed to get things rolling, to find out if Cass had tried to pull another shitty game to get something he wanted: my mother.
“Mom…”
“He’s the type, isn’t he?” she asked, finally turning around. “He just seems like the type to go a little desperate, lie to people, pay people off to…” She rubbed her face, holding her palms over her eyes. “If he’s the one…”
“We’ll find out,” Aly said, standing next to my mother. She glanced at me, looking like she wanted me to move, take action, at least give her an idea what was in my head.
“Yeah,” I said, standing in front of my mother to kiss her forehead when she looked at me. “We’ll figure this out.” Over Mom’s head I noticed the darkness descending and the quick swarm of lightening bugs that flew over the water’s surface. Dad needed me and if I was convincing enough, we’d get the answers we wanted, one way or another. “Listen,” I told Aly when Mom went to her chair, slumping against the leather. “Can you stay with them tonight?”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m not sure, but I think Kona has some thoughts.”
“The non-violent kind?”
“Yeah, ko`u aloha, I promise. But I need to get him some things. Can you…” I nodded at my mother as she shook her leg, making her whole chair move. Aly looked back up at me, not hesitating once with her nod or the warm smirk she gave me. The distraction of Cass’s misguided seduction and Sara’s call had put us off the conversation we’d tabled out by the fire pit. Just thinking of it made my chest feel tight and my mind clustered with the realization that she’d kept something so important from me for so long. More than that, Aly had battled her demons without my help. She’d made decisions that I had zero say-so in.
“Will you be all night?” she asked, stepping closer and for a second I didn’t care what Cass had done or why my mother would ever believe Kona would lie to her. Just then, I didn’t think about family drama or a future with no babies. I could only look down at Aly, at the soft angle of her jaw and the lush plump of her bottom lip. I could still taste a hint of her tears on my tongue and feel the greedy rake of her nails against my neck.
When I didn’t answer, Aly moved her head to the side, narrowing her eyes as though she didn’t understand my silence and then the confusion left her features as I bent down, kissing her mouth. “I’ll be a while. Then we’ll deal with all this tomorrow and we’ll figure this out.” Looking down at her, I held her face, moving my fingers along her cheek. “When this is over, we’ll discuss…everything and I’m going to convince you where you belong.”
“Ransom...” Aly shifted her gaze to my mother, but then focused back on me when I tilted her chin up.
“I’m going to remind you every day if necessary that you love me, that we all love you, that I see you, that we need each other and that you cannot be without me. No matter what.” Another kiss, this one harder, leaving no room for indecision and when I looked over her face, Aly had gone a little breathless. “That okay with you?” I didn’t care if it wasn’t and didn’t give her a chance to answer. I moved out of the studio and down the hall, pulling my phone out of my pocket to answer my father’s text.
Kona: Bring me my Tom Ford suit and my black Oxfords. Time to make shit happen. I’ve got a plan, brah.
Ransom: I’m on it and I’m sure as hell with you.
Inside my breast lives a promise.
Broken,
Mended,
Given new life.
It beats,
It pulses,
Until,
The steady pump moves the blood
Until,
There is the force of life
The peak of living.
Until,
Its resurrection is complete.
And that promise
Bumps,
Gives,
Lives once more.
Nineteen
Athletic ability. Strength. The incomprehensible desire to achieve. The predictable need to prove yourself. Kona Hale had given me all of these things. They’d come with the shape of my nose and the sharp cut of my jaw. They’d come with the cleft in my chin and the weird bend in my left pinkie that was identical to my late uncle Luka’s. Hale blood ran thick inside me. Riley blood accompanied it and from my mother’s French ancestors I got an affinity for music, the odd talent of picking at notes, strumming or plucking on instruments until a song I’d heard once was second nature and streaming from whatever musical instruments I found at hand. My temper came with equal parts from both Mom and Dad.
Genetics. DNA—all funny little things I’d never much appreciated until Koa and Mack came along mimicking the weird things my parents did, the same strange quirks I thought were mine alone. It seemed, if today’s trip downtown was any indication, that my father’s genetic makeup did not extend to the child he was supposed to have fathered with his ex-girlfriend Simone.
I hadn’t expected much when Dad had me trail him, sitting across the sidewalk on a wrought iron bench as he waited outside the large building housing a bank of offices, one entire floor belonging to the law offices of Mayeaux and Miles, the latter of which Simone had hired to handle the paternity suit. A little nosing around, a short phone call to E
than and my father knew who Simone’s lawyer was and when the deposition was happening. He’d also discovered the other girl, a twenty-two-year-old from Arkansas, was Cass’s cousin. Just as greedy, just as manipulative. Ethan had discovered that her child was eighteen months old, with a birth certificate that claimed “Unknown” as the father. That one would be easy to dismiss. It was Simone my father wanted to focus on and to do that he needed his Tom Ford and Oxfords.
If I’d expected him to charge toward the woman when she emerged from the tall stone building—slowing as she navigated the black steps, one hand sliding down the silver steel railing as she went—then I was wrong. Kona was smoother than that. And, it seemed, more perceptive than me. Of course, he’d been with Simone for two years before he and Mom reconnected. He knew her the only way a man knows the woman he’s been with. I could tell you without looking at Aly when she had a headache because she grumbled under breath like she tried talking herself out of the pain. I knew when she was depressed, clinging to memories of her childhood that seemed to creep up on her with no real cause at all. When that happened, she’d sing old Creole songs she only knew half the words to because her grann had a terrible memory.
A man just knows his woman. Even if she isn’t his anymore.
Simone had looked like every other skinny rich bitch trophy wife I’d seen drinking wine at post-game parties or at the charitable events we typically ran in the off season. Simone was in her early forties, at least five years younger than my father, but she hadn’t seemed to age well. She was younger than my mom and looked a good fifteen years older.
I asked him about it later, after Kona had politely—almost gallantly—escorted Simone into a nearby coffee shop and I spent some time with her son, keeping him occupied while we both played pinball on the vintage machine tucked in the back corner. They talked for a good half hour, and I lost what must have been a whole row of quarters, but it worked. Dad found out what he wanted, and I kept her son from getting caught up in it all.
“One look at her, those wrinkles around her eyes and I knew.” Kona shook his head, relaxing an arm on the steering wheel as we drove back to Mandeville.
“Knew what?” I asked, not getting why he wasn’t bouncing off the walls happy. Then Dad looked at me, frowning.
“She’s sick.” He didn’t elaborate, but I made out the lines that moved across his forehead while he stared ahead at the long bridge in front of us. “She wouldn’t say what it was, but I got the point.”
“When did you figure that out?”
He didn’t move his head to look at me, but still shifted his gaze in my direction. “When you took her kid to the pinball machine. She watched that boy like she thought someone might run in and snatch him.” Dad adjusted his body, holding the wheel steady with his knee as he unbuttoned his jacket. “I remember being like that when Koa and Mack were little things. Not so much now. Simone’s kid is fourteen. She should be worried about him sneaking smokes or trying to talk naive girls into letting him feel them up. Not him playing pinball.”
“You asked her about it?”
“Yeah. Like I said,” he loosened his tie, finally slipping it over his head, “she didn’t say what she had, but I could tell it was serious. Simone was never the type to let herself go and trust me, she has in the past thirteen years. She’d started in on Botox at twenty-five. No way the woman I was with would skip that unless something serious kept her from it.”
“Maybe she’s just broke now. You said she never got married after you broke up.” Dad had filled me in on his ex that morning while he dressed. He made the suit look good, to say the least. That was something else I was grateful Dad had passed down to me—the ability to work a damn suit like he had that morning. Poor woman hadn’t stood a chance when Kona strolled her way, using that Hale Demon Magic, as Mom called it, to put Simone at ease once the shock of seeing him had ebbed.
“She’s not broke, keiki kane. Her priorities have shifted.”
It was the boy, I realized. The one that had met his mother before she’d made it down the steps. Across the sidewalk I had watched him, holding onto his mother’s elbow, helping her down the steps in a way that you didn’t often see with kids his age. It was more than respect, more than affection and seeing it that afternoon had me a little taken aback when I understood the kid had me smiling despite what his mom was trying to claim about him. The boy was loyal to his mother. His single mother. Just like I’d been at that age.
“She didn’t scream or bitch like I thought she would.” Dad only acknowledged me with a lift of his chin. There was an odd, faraway expression on his face as though whatever Simone had told him either severely pissed him off or made him incredibly sad. Maybe it was a little of both. “How much did Cass pay her?”
“Nothing,” Dad said and when he did, that sad melancholy left his features, transformed by the twitch working along his cheek as though his anger hummed beneath his skin. “That mother fucker just put the idea in her head. Tracked her down, made it seem like your mom and I were heading toward a divorce.” Kona glanced at me, teeth pressed together in a grind. “That asshole told her it would be a prime time for her to get some cash out of me since I’d be eager to keep anything that threatened my bank account from Keira. He actually convinced Simone that I cared more about my money than my family.” His focus back on the road, Dad squeezed the wheel, moving his large hands as though he needed something to hold onto. “She should have known better than that, but, hell, I guess I know now why she was desperate. She’s got a kid that’ll need support if she doesn’t get better.”
“A kid she tried to say was yours.” Dad nodded, moving one hand from the wheel to rub at the bridge of his nose. “Koa, me, even Mack, there’s no denying us.” Dad jerked his head to the right, glaring at me as though he thought I was saying he might actually try it. His reaction was swift and so abrupt that I laughed, watching his features relax immediately. “I’m saying, not that you’d want to deny it, but a blind fool could see we belong to you. It’s the blood, Makua kane. Your genes are strong.” A quick flush warmed my face when my father smiled at me. He liked it when I called him Makua kane.
“That kid…” I started, trying to distract myself from my father’s broad smile, how he seemed unable to keep if off his mouth. “It was obvious at the arcade. That boy was different from us. Nowhere similar to looking like he belonged to you.” The kid had been shy, so quiet around me and hadn’t looked Dad in the eyes once, though Kona had tried repeatedly to engage him. But…Anthony…that was his name, had eagerly shied away, leaving the conversation to his mother. I’d gotten the feeling that he knew damn well who his father was. “He’s tall, and lanky, sure, but he has no bulk.”
“Got most of that from Simone. She has legs that go on forever.” Dad fought a slow-moving smirk that told me he was remembering something I didn’t really want to know about. “But you’re right. He’s not mine. I don’t need a test to tell me that. Besides, Simone admitted the truth inside ten minutes of our coffee.”
We took the exit toward Mandeville and I noticed Dad’s body had gone stiff, as though he wasn’t sure if he could contain his excitement the closer we drove through town. “You alright?” Dad nodded, fists tight again on the wheel. He’d been so slick, so charming with Simone, like he was on his game and wanted the world to know it. Watching him throw a smile her way, nothing more than a simple flirt to relax her, how he looked right into her eyes, hung onto every sound that left her mouth, had me guessing this was his point. To relax her. Schmooze her, warm her up to get to the bottom of this bullshit drama. But even when he had and the truth came to him, Kona hadn’t dropped the charm. In fact, he’d seemed genuinely interested in what she had to say after a while. Never once did he lose his confidence or his swagger.
Now though, he fidgeted and moved in his seat like he had to have a piss and wasn’t sure if he’d make it home in time. Dad’s tie hung around the mirror, but otherwise he still looked decent, impressive even. Mom was likely
to be as flustered by his presence as Simone had been, but from how Dad carried on, I got that he wasn’t thinking about that.
“Listen, Dad, just be chill. Don’t storm in there expecting her to drop whatever she’s doing to hear you out. I mean she…
“Ransom, I know how to talk to my wife, especially when she’s pissed at me.” That was bullshit. This past week was proof enough of that, hell the past few months were. If he’d talked to his wife to begin with, this would have all gone a different way, a fact he seemed to realize when I moved my eyebrows up, staring at him like he was a dumbass. Finally, Dad sighed, letting one short laugh leave his mouth. “Well. Under normal circumstances, when I’m not being an asshole, I know how to talk to her.”
Dad slowed the car, taking the curves with cautious movements that had me guessing his excitement was waning and the doubt creeping in, now that we were getting closer to home. At least, that’s what I assumed until we came to a stop at the red light at Greenleaves and 190.
“What you told me,” he said, leaning against the door as the traffic moved in front of us. “About Aly and what I said to her the night of your mom’s birthday party…”
“Dad, you couldn’t have known.”
“Maybe not…” Kona dipped his head, expression guarded but I could see that whatever he thought gutted him and it looked as though he couldn’t decide what to say or how to tell me what he thought.
“Dad…”
“I might not have known about it, but I still shouldn’t have opened my damn mouth.” The cars across the highway sped past, afternoon traffic still thick at this intersection but Kona didn’t seem bothered by it. His attention wasn’t on the road or the cluster of cars that waited for the light to turn. “I’m sorry, Ransom. I really am and I’ll do my best to make it right.” He didn’t look away from me until the car behind us laid on its horn, and Dad peeled out from the light.
