Chapter 8 #3
“Go, I’ll grab it,” I said.
I kept my body between Levi and his father as I followed him out the door, snatching the car seat on the way out.
As soon as I closed the door behind us, I put my hand against Levi’s back to urge him down the stairs. “Phoenix,” he began to say, but I shook my head.
“Not here,” I murmured.
Once we reached the second floor, Levi said, “Just a second, okay?”
I followed him to an apartment door near the stairs. He knocked, but there was no answer.
“Okay, we can go,” he said as he snuggled Henry against his chest. At some point, Levi had managed to give the child a small stuffed caterpillar and the baby was currently playing with the toy’s different colored feet that also made various sounds .
As soon as we reached the sidewalk, I began crossing the street towards my car, but Levi grabbed my arm. “Thank you for what you did up there. I’ll take Henry to the church until he” – Levi motioned to the building behind us – “goes to work.”
I could tell Levi was tense and I suspected a lot of that had to do with his father’s treatment of me.
“Get in the car, Levi,” I said, keeping my voice light, despite the tension still running through my frame.
He hesitated before saying, “We need the base for the car seat. It’s in my father’s car…I use it sometimes when I have to take Henry to the doctor and don’t want to wait for the bus.”
“Which one is it?” I barely remembered to ask since I already knew which car belonged to Curtis Deming, since I’d seen the car on the video footage from the Mercer Island house.
“The blue Honda,” Levi said as he motioned to the car parked a little farther down the street. Thankfully, the vehicle was unlocked and it only took me a few minutes to get the base out of the sedan and transferred to my SUV.
Once we got Henry settled in the backseat, Levi said my name again as I went around to open his door for him, but I was still too raw, so I said, “Not now, Levi.”
I hated the look in his eyes, but I still had so much to fucking process that I couldn’t deal with the fact that the man I was fighting an insane level of attraction for was the product of a racist.
Even though I’d grown up in an upper middle class neighborhood in the suburbs of Maryland, I hadn’t been completely immune to the prejudices people of color faced in even the most benign of cases.
I’d been completely clueless as to what was happening the first time I’d entered a department store as a teenager to pick out a birthday present for my mother and had been followed around by a security guard for the better part of an hour before the man had told me I needed to leave because the store was for paying customers.
I’d been humiliated beyond words as my parents had had to explain to me what the man had meant, and even my father going down to that store with me in tow to confront the security guard as well as the store’s manager hadn’t made a difference.
That security guard had looked at my father the same way he had me, even after he’d discovered my father was a high-ranking official for the Department of Defense.
And when he’d been fired on the spot by the store’s manager, I’d heard that ugly slur for the first time.
The one I’d heard in high school, boot camp and even from the occasional member of my own team in the army.
The same one Levi’s father had just flung at me.
I’d learned to let that word and all the others I’d heard over the years wash right off my back. But just the thought that Levi might secretly share his father’s views had me feeling sick.
“Where are we going, Phoenix?” I heard Levi ask when I headed in the opposite direction of St. Anthony’s.
“My place,” was all I said.
Levi didn’t argue and he wisely remained silent as I made my way onto the highway. It took a mere fifteen minutes to reach my house. I saw Levi’s eyes go wide as he took in the view. “You live here?” he asked.
I nodded. My house was in Alki Point, which was on a small peninsula just south of downtown Seattle. While my house wasn’t huge, it had a stunning view of the Olympic Mountain range as well as the city of Seattle itself. I also had several hundred feet of private beach.
I got out of the SUV and grabbed the diaper bag as Levi got Henry’s car seat out. Once inside the house, I disarmed the security system and then led Levi to the carpeted living room. I figured it was wide open enough for Henry to crawl around a bit while Levi and I talked.
“Do you want something to drink?”
Levi shook his head. “Can you…can you put some water in this?” he asked. “The formula is already in it…you just need to add water to the middle line.”
I nodded and took the bottle he handed me.
By the time I returned to the living room, Levi was sitting on the floor with Henry.
He was helping the baby to stand and was making funny faces, which had Henry wide-eyed and showing off a toothy grin.
But when the little boy saw the bottle in my hand, he began cooing in excitement.
“Look what Phoenix brought you,” Levi said, a big smile on his face. He helped Henry sit down and then began clapping which had the baby clapping his hands together.
“Thank you,” Levi said to me as he took the bottle and then turned Henry so he was sitting on Levi’s lap and pressed up against his chest. The baby eagerly began sucking on the nipple.
I marveled at the unabashed look of love in Levi’s eyes as he looked down at Henry.
I sat down in a chair in the corner of the living room so I could watch the pair.
Within minutes, Henry’s noisy sucking slowed and I could see his eyes drifting closed.
It wasn’t until his eyes slid completely shut that Levi carefully removed the bottle and then looked up at me. “Phoenix-”’
I could hear the apology in his voice, but I wasn’t in the mood to hear it. Probably because I knew he didn’t really owe me one. I was still pissed about his father’s behavior, but I needed to give Levi the benefit of the doubt.
“Is he yours?” I asked as I nodded at Henry.
Levi shook his head. “He’s my brother’s.”
“And his mother?”
“Her name is Dina. She started dating Ricky after he…after he got out of prison.”
“Your brother was in prison?” I asked, feigning surprise.
Levi nodded. “He killed his girlfriend four years ago. He got out of prison a year and half ago and met Dina. She found out she was pregnant right after he died.”
“So, your brother only served a few years for the murder?”
“My dad gave him an alibi, so the prosecutor decided to offer Ricky a plea deal. Ricky figured doing a few years was better than risking life.”
“Your dad gave him an alibi?”
Levi fell silent and let his eyes drop back down to Henry who was snuggled up against his chest. The sight of them made my heart constrict with painful memories.
“Ricky wasn’t a good person. I know he did it. I was home the night it happened. Ricky and I shared a room…he wasn’t home that night like my dad said he was.”
I wanted to ask Levi why he hadn’t said anything, but I already had a pretty good idea.
From his father’s reaction this morning after Levi had called him out about putting Henry in danger, the man hadn’t given a shit that Levi was right or that he’d been holding a baby in his arms…
he’d been ready to do battle and my guess was that Levi would have come out the loser.
“Dina came to our apartment a few months after Ricky died and told my dad she was pregnant and needed money for the pregnancy. My dad told her to get an abortion, but she said it was too late. I guess…I guess she didn’t realize she was pregnant right away.
She and Ricky both had a drug problem,” Levi murmured.
“My father told her he wasn’t supporting her or the kid and told her to leave.
I went after her and gave her all the money I’d been saving up. ”
“Saving for what?” I asked.
But he shook his head. “Nothing. It’s not important.”
I highly doubted that, but I didn’t say that. “What happened after that?”
“She kept coming back for more money. I got her to agree to lay off the drugs long enough to have the baby and in exchange, I paid her rent and medical expenses. She moved into the same building as me and my dad so I could help her with the pregnancy, and after the baby was born.”
“What did your dad think of that?” I asked.
“He didn’t care. Just told me not to try to shortchange him on my share of the rent for our apartment.
” Levi paused long enough to adjust Henry in his arms a bit.
“I knew from the moment I held him, that I’d done the right thing,” he said softly as he studied the baby.
“I mean, have you ever seen anything so perfect in your entire life?” he whispered as he lifted his eyes to mine.
I took them both in, but didn’t answer him. Because I had seen that kind of perfection…had held it myself. But it was too painful to think about.
“So, you’ve been supporting Dina and Henry this whole time? ”
Levi nodded. “Dina works during the day, but she doesn’t make much and she has a tendency to lose jobs not long after she starts them. I babysit Henry at Dina’s apartment from eight until I leave for St. Anthony’s.”
I considered what he was telling me for a moment. I knew enough about his routine to know he worked until five in the morning. If he started babysitting at eight, it meant he only got a few hours of sleep each day. Even if he wasn’t babysitting Henry every day, it was still a brutal schedule.
“What happened today?” I asked.
“I called Dina while you were getting the formula ready. She dropped Henry off with my dad last night because she had a date,” Levi said, the anger in his voice clear.
“I’ve told her not to leave Henry with Dad, but if I’m even a little bit late getting to her place to babysit, she does it anyway.
Dad’s softened a bit towards Henry, but you saw that he’s not exactly attentive. ”
That was an understatement if I’d ever heard one.
“Do you have a place he can sleep?” Levi asked.
I nodded and then went over to him and carefully helped him stand. I ignored the heat that sparked between us at even the minimal contact and motioned to the hallway. “The bedrooms are back here.”
I contemplated where to put Henry for his nap, but the only place that made sense also wasn’t acceptable to me.
Mostly because it would mean I’d have to answer questions I didn’t want to.
So, when I reached the first door, I turned to Levi and said.
“My room is at the end of the hallway. Would you mind waiting in there and I’ll bring a mattress in there that we can put on the floor? ”
I could see the curiosity in Levi’s eyes as he nodded and turned away. I waited until his back was to me before I steeled myself and forced my hand to turn the doorknob of the one room in my house that caused me unbearable pain every time I entered it.