by Donna Hill
She sighed. All she could do was the best she could.
“Okay, ladies, let’s order that pizza before dad gets home “
“Yippee!”
* * *
“Still reading?” Rowan asked as he slid under the sheets next to his wife.
“Hmm.” She closed the folder that held the information about the Recorder and Zoie Crawford. She placed it on the nightstand, then curled next to her husband. “Remember when I told you about that reporter who wants to shadow me during the campaign?”
“Hmm-umm. What about her?”
“Not about her specifically. It’s the idea in general. Now I’m not so sure if I should go through with it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” She looked up at him. “It’s so invasive. I’ll have to be ‘on’ all the time.”
Rowan chuckled. “Politics is an invasive business. You know that. Besides, isn’t it better to have someone on the inside who gets to see the real you, rather than someone who is only out for the next salacious headline?”
She sighed deeply. “You’re always so logical.”
Rowan hugged her closer. “Sweetheart, this is your show. Whatever you want or decide, I’m behind you. Our government needs someone like you, as long as it’s what you want.”
“That’s why I love you,” she whispered and leaned up for a kiss.
“And all this time, I thought it was my startling blue eyes and dashing personality,” he said against her mouth.
“Hmm, maybe a little,” she teased and ran her tongue lightly across his lips. She rose up and braced her body above his, straddling him. Her long blond hair cascaded around them, cocooning their faces.
Rowan groaned when she ground against him. He palmed her heavy breasts, teasing the pinkish brown nipples until they peaked and Kimberly whimpered.
In the beginning of their relationship, she was always tempted to turn off the lights when they made love, but Rowan wouldn’t hear of it. He said he wanted to witness everything that happened to her when he was inside her. He wanted to see her face, watch her body flush, her throat clench, her breasts swell. How could she deny him? Now she wouldn’t have it any other way.
Rowan clasped the back of her head and pressed her toward him. He kissed her long and deep to muffle the sounds of her cries when he pushed inside her.
CHAPTER 8
“How did the meeting go?” Gail asked when Kimberly entered the office.
“Pretty good. We made some progress. Of course, Donald Hayes had a laundry list of reasons why we should wait on the vote.”
Gail shook her head. “What would politics be if everyone agreed?”
“True. Can you try to reach Ms. Crawford? I want to get some kind of timeline.”
“Sure. Everyone on the team has confirmed for the planning meeting at noon. I’ve had everything set up in the small conference room, and I ordered lunch.”
“You’re the best. You do know that if I win the Senate seat I’m taking you with me.”
“Not if you win, when you win.”
“From your lips . . .” She walked into her office and settled in. She took the folder from her tote and placed it on the desk. She flipped open the folder.
From what she’d read about Zoie Crawford, she was a stellar journalist. Her exposé on the World Trade Center attack was outstanding. It was clear that she had the vision to look beneath the surface for the human side of the story. She was a craftsman and dedicated to truth. Kimberly liked that, respected it, even if she generally didn’t hold the press in the highest regard.
Her intercom buzzed.
“Yes?”
“I have Ms. Crawford on the line”
“Thanks, Gail. Put her through.” She waited a beat for the call to connect. “Ms. Crawford, thanks for taking my call. I want to discuss some of the particulars about your article and try to work out an amicable timetable.”
“Of course.”
“I’ve reviewed several of your pieces, and I’m very impressed with your work. May I ask why politics, when recently you were working on a Trade Center series?”
“It was an editorial decision. My boss believes that I’m the best one for this assignment.”
“I see. Do you feel the same way?”
“Of course.”
“I didn’t see in any of your clips that you’ve done any prior campaign work, specifically what you plan to do with me—essentially embed yourself in my life.”
“That may be true to a point, but I pride myself on being the best at whatever I do.”
“Glad to hear it. Okay then, my assistant, Gail, will be in touch with you to work out the schedule. I do want to meet you first, before we get started officially. The two of you can discuss that as well.”
“Um, Mrs. Graham, I don’t want to start off on the wrong foot. But I do want you to know this upfront.”
Kimberly braced herself. “Yes?”
“I’m currently in New Orleans. I recently lost my grandmother, and I’m here with my family trying to tie up some family business before I return to New York.”
“Oh, I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks.”
“As I said, work out the details with Gail. The wheels of the campaign will keep turning. You join us when it’s feasible.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Graham.”
“Enjoy your day.” She disconnected the call.
* * *
Zoie put her cell phone down on the bed and expelled a sigh of relief. One hurdle was out of the way. At least Graham was still on board with the plan for her reporting, and although she didn’t sound thrilled, she was good with her arriving in New York once her “family business” was settled.
She crossed the room to sit on the ledge of her bedroom window. Kimberly Graham. She’d seen photos, black and white, from different newspapers, but she didn’t sound the way she looked. Her appearance was picture-perfect, flawless. She expected her to sound the same way. But there was no getting away from the Nawlins drawl in her voice, that lullaby tone. What was she really like? Who was the person behind the voice whom she tried to tamp down? She’d find out soon enough.
Zoie pushed to her feet and headed back up to the attic. She still needed to figure out how she was going to manage Nana’s business and do her job. Maybe the answers were in that trunk.
Once again, she was hit with hot air, but at least this time she was prepared and dressed for the occasion in shorts and a tank top. She headed straight for the trunk.
The lid was heavy, and the hinges were stiff with age. It took a bit of elbow grease, but she finally got it open. She expected to find more old clothes and family heirlooms, but instead she found at least two dozen or more notebooks with flowered covers. Her brows drew together. She took out one and opened it.
The pages were in her grandmother’s neat handwriting. It was some kind of journal. The first page was dated a year ago. She flipped through the pages. The book appeared to chronicle the last year. She took out another. Same thing, only this one was from five years earlier.
Her heart thumped. She had no business reading her grandmother’s personal diary, but the investigator in her begged to differ. She began to take out the books and lay them on the floor. There were forty in all. If what she initially discovered held, then these books catalogued the past forty years.
The enormity of it shook her. Was there a story in one of them about her dad, an explanation for why her mother and her aunts resented her so much, and the real reason Nana had left everything to her?
Among the photos and journals were packets of letters. She untied the ribbon that held one packet together and gingerly opened the weathered envelope. The letter was dated 1942, the year that her grandmother had arrived from Barbados. It was a letter from her older sister Celeste . . .
Dear Claudia,
I pray that you are well and arrived safely in the States. Mami and Papi send their love.
It is usually the eldest that go
es off to the States, but it was only right that it should be you. I need to stay and take care of our parents.
I want you to take care of yourself, work hard, and be a good girl. You have a chance to make a wonderful life. Choose wisely in all that you do.
The money in the envelope is from Mami. Hide it away and only spend what you need.
The Maitlands are a good family. They made a good impression on Mami when they came down here, and that’s why they agreed to let you live with them. So do as they ask.
We miss and love you. Write to us soon.
Love, Celeste
Zoie dropped the letter as if it had caught fire. The Maitlands!
She picked up the letter and read it again to make sure that she hadn’t made a mistake. No. It clearly said Maitland. Her grandmother left Barbados to live with the Maitlands?
She frantically picked up one letter after the other and raced through them, trying to glean bits of information. For the most part, they were letters from home asking how she was, wishing her happy birthday, and merry Christmas. One letter among the many stopped Zoie cold. It informed her grandmother about the passing of her mother. Zoie’s heart ached when she imagined how her grandmother must have felt, losing her mother and being so far away from home. It went on to say that there wasn’t enough money to send for her to come home for the service, but to know that her mother thought of her to the very end.
Zoie held the letter to her chest, then reverently refolded it and returned it to the yellowed envelope.
She got to her knees, then stood, stiff from hours of sitting on the floor, and she’d barely scratched the surface of what lay in front of her. She randomly took two of the journals and returned the rest to the trunk.
Back in her room, she shoved the journals under her mattress and went to find her mother.
“Where you been?” her aunt Sage asked as she stepped out of the sitting room, cutting off Zoie’s path to the kitchen.
“The attic.”
Sage’s odd-colored eyes flashed for a moment. She leaned on her cane. “Why?”
“When did Nana work for the Maitlands?”
Sage’s nostrils flared. Her lips tightened into a bud.
“Aunt Sage . . .”
“That’s no concern of yours!” She jammed the cane against the floor, making Zoie flinch. She flapped her hand in the air to push the conversation away. “Leave the past where it belongs, if you know what’s good for you.” She huffed loudly and walked away, the beat of her cane echoing her footfalls.
The worst thing you can tell an investigative journalist is that a story is off-limits. For Zoie, no was a shot of adrenaline. It fueled her.
Clearly, there was much more to the story of Nana working for the Maitlands. There was nothing odd about Caribbean families sending their children to the States for a better life. That wasn’t the issue or what was gnawing at Zoie. The issue was what had happened all those years ago between her family and the Maitlands that rose to the level of a topic not to be discussed? Did Kimberly Maitland-Graham know what had transpired?
A thunderstorm of questions relentlessly pelted her, giving her no escape. She had to get to the bottom of things, pull the story out by the roots.
* * *
“What?” Miranda squealed into the phone.
“Yes. You heard me. My grandmother was sent from Barbados when she was about eighteen to live with the Maitlands as live-in help.”
“Okay. But why is that a big secret?”
“That’s what I want to find out. My Aunt Sage nearly snapped my head off when I asked about it.”
“What about your mom?”
She groaned. “She’s next. But I know my mother. She’ll be on the defensive before I get two words out. And Aunt Hyacinth—well, you know the sad story with her and her health and memory.”
“Then I guess you’re going to have to do what you were trained to do, sis, which is investigate, sift through information, and put the pieces together. If you can’t get assistance from your family . . .” She let the idea trail off.
“I know.”
“On another note, how is this going to play out with your interviews of Kimberly Graham?”
“Girl, that’s the question that has been running relays through my head. I haven’t begun to crack the surface of how long my grandmother worked for the Maitlands, but from what I gleaned from skimming the letters, it was until she was at least well into her thirties, probably longer. I’m thinking Kimberly must have known my grandmother.”
“And your Nana never talked about where she had worked?”
Zoie frowned, tried to recall. “I don’t remember her ever saying anything in particular, just that she used to work as a live-in. That’s about it. I was a kid and, sad to say, uninterested. And I’m positive the name Maitland never came up.”
“Hey, maybe it’s no more complicated than your Nana had a bad experience and quit. You know how the privileged folks can be, especially back then.”
“Maybe,” she said on a long breath.
“But your gut is telling you something different.”
“Yep.”
“What are you going to tell Mark tomorrow?”
“That I got this.”
Miranda chuckled. “Of course you do, girl. If there is a rock to be turned over, you are the go-to.”
They laughed.
“Anyway,” Zoie said, “I’m going to read these journals. Hopefully the answers are in there somewhere.”
“Keep me posted. But before I let you go, how long do you plan to stay down there?”
Zoie sighed. “At least another week. I have to meet Kimberly, and that can only be put off for so long.”
“True. Okay, well, keep me posted.”
“Will do.”
“Love you, girl.”
“Back at ya.”
Zoie put the phone down and looked at the journals on her bed. She picked up the blue-and-red-flowered journal and began to read.
Diary,
Today is master Kyle’s birthday. Ms. Lou Ellen and Mr. Franklin done gone all out. I been cooking and cleaning since sunrise.
All this fuss. Back home a birthday celebration was just family. Mami would bake a cake, and folks on the street might stop by and bring food or a small gift wrapped in brown paper. Some birthdays was nothing more than a good wish and a kiss on the cheek.
They spoil him rotten, and he ain’t going to be no good husband material.
Diary,
I miss home terrible. The Maitlands are nice enough, but I’m lonely.
Diary,
When I went to town to do the shopping. I met someone. He is so handsome. Tall and brown with pretty white teeth. His name is Duncan Bennett.
Grandpa! Her heart hammered. She flipped through the pages.
Diary,
Duncan met me at the park today. It was my day off. We been planning this day for weeks. I was so excited that I was sick to my stomach all morning. Ms. Lou Ellen told me I needed to stay in bed if I was sick. But I had to see Duncan since I didn’t know when he’d back. He getting ready to ship out in the morning.
I pulled myself together and put on my best yellow dress and went down to the park, praying the whole way that he hadn’t changed his mind.
He was as sweet and handsome as always, and I swear I don’t know how I’m gonna make it with him gone for the next six months and me growing big. But we’d gotten the papers taken care of and took them right down to the Justice of the Peace today.
I came back home tonight a married woman. Least my baby will have a daddy’s name on the birth certificate. I ain’t never been so scared in all my life.
Diary,
Ms. Lou Ellen said I can stay here as long as I like when the baby comes. That’s a blessing. But I don’t think Mr. Franklin is too happy about it. Seems like the bigger I get, the more work he wants me to do. When Duncan comes home on leave, we need to find our own place as husband and wife.
Zoie continued to read
through the journals. From what she gathered, her grandfather was a career marine, and each time he came home, he left Nana pregnant. Nana’s entries were sporadic, without dates, but the more she read, the more she felt her grandmother’s growing loneliness and the hard times she faced raising three little girls alone, working for the Maitlands and only seeing her own children on weekends and her days off. She used part of the money she made to pay someone else to take care of her children. Apparently, the birth of Hyacinth was acceptable, as Nana and her first baby continued to live in the house. But the births of Sage and Rose over the succeeding years put added stress on Nana and the Maitlands.
Why didn’t Nana just leave? Why stay and not be able to take care of your own children? Zoie simply could not understand it. She knew that things were different in the forties and fifties, and opportunities for blacks were limited at best. It brought to mind the stories she’d read about the slave women who were confined to the “big house,” charged with caring for the master’s children while neglecting their own.
Zoie shoved the journals aside. She shook with anger. No wonder the Maitland name was reviled in the Bennett household. It stirred up a past of hurt and dependency that was best forgotten.
But even as she fumed about what had happened to her grandmother, something still nagged at her.
From everything that she knew of her grandmother, she was not the kind of woman who settled. She always reminded Zoie how strong and bright and independent she was, and that she could be anything that she wanted. Claudia Bennett was a woman who had launched a thriving business in her seventies. Those weren’t the qualities of a woman who would lose herself to a man who wasn’t as committed to her as she was to him, or who would sacrifice raising her own children to raise someone else’s. Nana always touted that family was everything.
This picture that was forming of her grandmother was not the woman whom she’d known and admired and adored.
Zoie wanted to write it off as her grandmother being young and naïve, but she still felt in her gut that there was more to the story.
