by D. A. Young
Nate reached out and curled his hand around his nephew’s. “Son, keep your money. You have my word that Georgie will never want for anything.”
“Cause your word is your bond, right?” Graham jeered as he snatched his hand away and tossed the money on the bed. “Man, whateva!”
His nephew was full of anger and unbridled hostility toward him, Nate realized. Graham wouldn’t look at him as he shifted around him and grabbed a duffle bag from the closet and started yanking his clothes off the hangers and flinging them into the bag aggressively. Nate’s heart was heavy for all the weight that had been put on his nieces’ and nephew’s shoulders. Shame washed over him, percolating into his skin, and Nate knew that as long as he lived, he would never forgive himself for what happened to his family. He should have been more vigilant in his watch.
“I understand that you’re mad at me, son, but you can’t do this on your own,” Nate began, but Graham’s vigorous headshake gave him pause.
“Nah, I ain’t mad at you. I’d have to give a damn about something first in order to be mad. You’re just like every other relative in my life who’s disappointed me,” Graham spoke in a neutral tone, but the rage and hurt in his eyes denounced him a liar. “I’m mad at myself for believing you were different. This shit is all on me.”
“No, Graham. This is on ME,” Nate spoke sharply as he set down Georgie’s toys. “You’ve got every right to your feelings. I didn’t do enough. I just believed what you kids and Ingrid told me. I was so busy and wrapped up trying to get my business up and running that I never stopped to question anything.”
“The hell you talkin’ about?!” Graham threw the clothes on the bed and squared up, fists curled and nostrils flaring uncontrollably. “I ain’t never said shit to you since we left Baymoor! You remember that, right?! I was only three but, nigga, I remember that shit like it was yesterday!” His lips twisted into an ugly sneer. “You hugged me real tight and said you’d always be here for us if we needed you! Well, guess what?! We fuckin’ needed you, but you cut us all off! So, don’t stand you’re lyin’ ass in front of me and fuckin’ tell me we talked!” Graham barked.
“Son, I understand that everything is a mess right now, and emotions are running high. Everyone is doing their part to figure stuff out, but I’m giving you fair warning that if another cuss word flies out of that loose mouth of yours, then you and I are gonna be in a place there won’t be any turning back from,” Nate warned him coldly, forcing his nephew to take measure of exactly who his adversary would be. Unlike Watts’s fat ass, Nate was athletic and powerfully built. He would prove to be a formidable opponent for Graham if he foolishly chose to go that route.
“Then stop lying! You never called or gave us another thought!” Graham shouted in a voice raw with his unchecked emotions as he spun away. “You must think I’m on some straight sucka shit!”
Oozing with uncurbed fury, he kicked the closet door in, using it as an outlet for his volatile emotions. Graham repeated the action until the wood door splintered apart, and Nate snatched him away from the mess, whirling him around to confront him.
“I sent money to your mother every month! She called me, and I spoke to you and Eliza every other week! Not Georgie because of her supposed speech impediment and shyness. I’ve got your school pictures hanging in my hallway at home but was waiting on Eliza’s senior ones,” Nate swore as he swiped his hand over his face, realizing exactly how thoroughly Ingrid had manipulated all of them. His bleak eyes met Graham’s as he exclaimed in a voice taut with pain, “Don’t you understand what this means?!”
Graham’s head was aching as he tried to comprehend the extent of Ingrid’s betrayal. His instincts told him that it was Barbara’s family. Like Ingrid, Barbara was another prostitute who worked alongside Ingrid in the brothel Russell previously owned. She was Ingrid’s only ‘friend’ that only came around when she needed a fix which Ingrid always had and now Graham knew why.
She endlessly complained about being broke, but Ingrid always made sure they got new outfits for school and took pictures. The realization of the reason behind her motives, sickened Graham to an all-new level of disgust. There was no way his uncle would have continued to send money if he didn’t have some sort of proof that they were okay.
Barbara had kids and tons of nephews and nieces who were criminals in the making but no younger ones. It would have been easy to convince them to impersonate him and his sisters to get what they wanted. Instead of taking care of her children, Ingrid allowed the responsibilities fall on them while she blew through the money, buying drugs and God knows what else. She’d duped all of them, including her piece of shit husband.
“She played us,” Graham conceded in a dull, lifeless voice. “We wanted to come and live with you, Grandma, and Grandpa, but Ingrid said that y’all had disowned us. I shoulda known something was up when you got here so quickly.”
“Nothing would have kept me away from you guys, Graham,” Nate vowed thickly. “On my life, I promise you, son. I didn’t know. I promise you I didn’t know…”
He grasped the boy to him. No, not a boy. Graham was a young man, no, a warrior that had taken on a battle that he never should have had to wage. Nate hugged his nephew’s reticent form tightly, repeating his words until Graham finally broke down crying. It was the affirmation that he didn’t know he was seeking. To know that someone actually gave a shit what happened to the Carlton siblings when they’d been abandoned by the two people who should have readily laid down their lives to protect their children.
Bawling uncontrollably, Graham clung to his uncle, allowing himself to be comforted for the first time in his life. Against his neck, Graham could feel dampness and realized that the older man was also crying. It was confirmed when Nate choked out, “I love you, son, and I’m not going anywhere. Come back to Baymoor with me. Give me the chance to prove it to you.”
***
“What is she doing here?” Eliza demanded as she looked outside the window of the Denny’s Nate had brought them to for breakfast. It was their last day together as a family before Graham and Georgie went back to Baymoor with Nate. They’d decided to go to breakfast, the movies, and then Circus Circus before getting Eliza settled into her new studio apartment.
Although Nate urged her to come with them, Eliza was opting to stay in Las Vegas for the time being. With a flushed face, she’d confided to her uncle that she couldn’t leave just yet. Nate fervently hoped it wasn’t because of David Rossini’s interest in her. He’d met the sophisticated Italian businessman who was unfailingly polite and professional, but Nate had not been oblivious to his interest in Eliza. He was grateful to him and his lawyer, Nero Santos in helping his family, but this time Nate, would be more vigilant in his efforts to protect his recently reunited family. He intended to have a word with David later this afternoon before they caught their flight home.
Nate followed Eliza’s stare out the window and saw Ingrid sitting in a Chrysler Sebring convertible with an older, overweight white man with a head of badly bleached blonde hair. He wore an impatient expression on his bloated, heavily jowled face as he gestured toward the restaurant while Ingrid rolled her eyes at him. Nate was disgusted when his sister leaned over and gave him a kiss with tongue action included.
“I posted her bail this morning and told her that she needed to sign over custody for Graham and Georgie before we head out.” Nate leveled his somber eyes at each of the children. “I told her to meet us here so that perhaps, you could have some closure.”
“I don’t need closure,” Eliza replied icily. “That bitch has BEEN dead to me. I lived with the fear that she’d get us split up and the lie that you didn’t want us. We were trapped in that nightmare because of her greed and selfishness.” She turned to Georgie who sat quietly between her and Graham, staring at Nate with large apprehensive eyes and rubbing her fingers together furiously, something Nate realized she did whenever she was emotionally overloaded.
Graham picked up Georgie’s hand
and kissed it. Immediately, she stopped. “Chill, Little Bit. Everything’s all good.”
Georgie squeezed his hand as Graham explained to Nate in a low voice, “I think she still believes there’s some good left in Ingrid.” He shrugged his shoulders carelessly. “It’s not hard to understand why. Kids expect and want the best of their parents, to know they matter to them.”
“Is that what you want as well?”
Lips twisted in a cynical smile, and eyes hardened by ugly realities, Graham replied, “Unc, I haven’t been a kid in a long time. Let’s get this over with.”
Nate paid the bill, and they walked outside and stood on the sidewalk, forcing Ingrid to exit the convertible and come to them while her sugar daddy wisely stayed in his car. She toddled in ridiculously high black heels and a miniscule black and white polka dot tube dress. Despite her years of hard living and the thick caking of makeup, she was still pretty. Nate could see a little bit of the sister who used to follow him around and hang on his every word.
Ingrid sneered at the condemnation in Eliza’s and Graham’s eyes and refused to meet Nate’s as she snatched the papers out of his hands and signed them sloppily. Georgie, she ignored altogether, notwithstanding the hopeful look in her youngest daughter’s eyes. The asshole in the car rudely honked but stopped when his eyes connected with Nate’s. To her brother, Ingrid said, “Now you have three brats to feed. Hope it’s all you want it to be, ‘Saint Nate’. Good riddance.”
She teetered away but stopped when Eliza shouted, “Ingrid!”
Eliza met her halfway in the parking lot and spoke to her mother in a low tone. Nate, Graham, and Georgie were not sure what was said and could only observe the way Ingrid’s eyes widened as she stumbled away from her daughter, leaving Eliza standing in the middle of the parking lot staring after her coldly.
That’s when the man spoke, “Baby, why don’t you talk to your oldest daughter? She’s a looker and would definitely bring in more money so you won’t have to work so hard.”
He laughed lecherously and licked his lips lewdly at Eliza as he perused her body, and that’s when Graham lost it. He ran past Ingrid and snatched the man out of the car, beating his ass with a fury he’d thought died with Watts as Ingrid screamed loudly for someone to call the cops. By the time Nate managed to pull him off, the man was unconscious.
Graham was hauled off to the juvenile detention center, and it was there that he found out his victim suffered from a concussion, broken nose, several broken ribs, and a shattered left cheekbone. But he was alive. Pity.
Even when Graham didn’t get the chance to return to Baymoor with him and Georgie, Nate kept his word. Graham was transferred from the juvenile detention center to a group home and received visits not just from Eliza, Georgie, and Nate, but Aunt Valerie as well. But the group home was full of troubled youths who were filled with as much anger and pain as Graham. Confrontations and strife were inevitable. Graham wasn’t one to back down from a fight or hold his tongue, which earned him V.I.P. status on the homeowners’ shit list. By the time he turned eighteen, Graham was in trouble again, this time for alleged grand larceny. Unfortunately for him, the judge was tired of seeing and hearing about his antics, so the only deal Nero was able to secure for him was either the military or jail time. Graham wisely chose the Marines.
***
“Everything is going as planned, but that’s not why I’m calling. I guess you could say I’m checking in on everyone there.”
Nate laughed on his end. “You want to know if my sister has managed to hoodwink me and scam every man in town out of their money yet, right? Graham, it’s been less than forty-eight hours! She’s good but not that good.”
Graham relaxed. “Then I shouldn’t be worried because you’re laughing? If she’d already planted a knife in your back, laughing wouldn’t be possible.”
“Son, after all the crap she’s pulled, Ingrid would have to drive that knife, or better yet a stake, through my heart in order to get me to stop breathing down her neck,” Nate replied somberly. “She insisted on staying here but I don’t want her in my children’s sanctuary. Y’all may be grown, but this will always be your home as well.”
“Which we appreciate,” Graham spoke with great feeling. “I know that I was a pain in the ass to you and Aunt Val before pulling myself together—”
“Yes, you were, but we wouldn’t have had it any other way. You were young, and there was a lot to figure out. I think the military was a far better choice than jail time. You even reenlisted because you enjoyed it so much.”
“Seeing the world on Uncle Sam’s dime wasn’t a bad gig, but more than anything, I liked the sense of unity and purpose it gave me. Nothing forces you to get your life in order faster than having to put it on the line to defend the lives of others,” Graham added wryly.
“Regardless of the reasoning, your Aunt Val and I are proud of you,” Nate countered firmly. “Now, it’s late and I’m not even going to ask what you’ve been up to. Get yourself some rest. Tomorrow’s a big day for you.”
Graham rolled his eyes. Clearly, everyone in his family shared the same sentiment regarding Annabelle. “Yo, Unc, chill. It’s not a big deal; she’s just a regular woman.”
A chuckle filled his ear, and in a superior tone, Nate retorted, “I was referring to your flight. I didn’t say anything about a woman. That was all you. But since you did, rumor has it that you’re smitten with Annabelle.”
“Awww, man! Not you too, Uncle Nate. Did you put in on that wager?” Graham didn’t know why he bothered to ask when he already had the sneaking suspicion of what the answer would be.
“Not me, but your Aunt Val did. I’ve got faith you’ll find the right woman. I’m not saying that’s Annabelle, but I always did like her. She was a nice, well-mannered girl, and you know any friend of Georgie’s was alright in my book. She, Kenya, Chelsea, and your sister were inseparable.”
Nate fell silent before adding, “All that changed when Annabelle became involved with Davis. She was always an outgoing girl but suddenly became withdrawn and tense. She hardly hung out with any of the girls, and that group was pretty tight. I hope that wherever she is, she’s happy and at peace.”
No matter who Graham talked to about Annabelle, the results were always the same. Her light had been diminished by the time she’d spent in Davis’s company. “Time will tell. I’ll keep you posted. I’d appreciate it if you did the same for me regarding your sister.”
“I know you and the girls don’t have the ambivalent feelings about Ingrid that I do and for good reason,” Nate acknowledged heavily. “But she’s still my sister. I’d like to see her get on her feet and stay on them.”
“Nothing would please me more than escorting her out of town upright instead of tossing her out on her ass.” His declaration was met with silence, but Graham refused to take it back. Rubbing his jaw in vexation, he raised his eyes to the ceiling, and struggled to say something kind. “Unc, I get where you’re coming from because I have sisters too and would move heaven and earth for them. At the same time, I won’t allow them to be hurt any longer by your sister. Just please keep in mind that all blood ain’t family,” Graham softly reminded him. “Aiight?”
To which Nate replied, “I love you, son. Be careful and call us if you need anything.”
Chapter Three
Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia
“I have great news for you, Mrs. Lenza! Princess Grace isn’t dying. She’s just going to be a momma! All that laying around was her nesting in preparation for her babies,” Annabelle beamed as she patted the white Maltese’s back affectionately. Her tail, covered in multi-colored ribbons, wagged lethargically in response as she snuggled closer to Annabelle. “Congratulations!”
“Puppies?!” Mrs. Lenza exclaimed clutching at the strands of grey Tahitian pearls around her neck. Her shocked blue eyes were magnified by the enormous black bifocals she wore. “But how? She hasn’t been properly introduced to any dogs, and the only place we go
to socialize is the dog park! All the pets there have been very civilized…”
Her voice trailed off at Annabelle’s raised eyebrows and knowing look. “Ma’am, there’s no such thing as a ‘civilized’ animal. That’s an oxymoron.”
“Well, who is the father then? I’m demanding a DNA test!” The elderly woman huffed indignantly as she turned and addressed her dog. “How could you be sweet-talked into something so irresponsible? What will the neighbors think? When we get home, you and I are going to have a serious talk about your loose behavior.”
This was starting to sound like a “Jerry Springer” show, Annabelle thought. “We can figure something out, but for now, let’s focus on what’s important. All the blood tests for intestinal and blood parasites like hookworms and heartworms came back negative, which is great. I’m especially pleased to see that Princess Grace is not a carrier of any serious bacteria causing diseases like brucellosis, which could result in liver damage and arthritis in humans.” Annabelle carefully picked up the dog and rubbed her face gently. “All of her vitals are normal and her vaccinations are up-to-date. Judging from the x-rays we took, I counted four spines and skulls. Sometimes they’re hidden but for now you can expect at least four puppies. If there are no other questions, you’re good to go! Our receptionist will schedule Princess Grace’s next appointment.”
Mrs. Lenza smiled gratefully at Annabelle as she accepted the sleepy-looking Maltese. “Always a pleasure to see you, young lady. Thank you for taking such good care of my baby!”
Annabelle smiled as the older lady left the exam room. She washed her hands at the sink before walking to her office at the end of the hall, where she hung up her white lab coat and gathered her large green and white polka dot beach bag.
“Dotty, I’m going to lunch now. I’m headed to my usual spot if you need anything,” Annabelle informed Dotty at the front desk as she promptly turned off Good Charlotte’s Pandora channel to listen to her. “If the lab results come back early on Ms. Cleo, please give me a call. I’d like to get her back in as soon as possible. Oh, and if Dr. Bass calls for the hundredth time, please let her know that I didn’t burn the place down; we’re doing great, and yes, the hospital is still functioning in her absence.”
