Chapter 6 Kyleigh
I closed the door slowly, waited till the latch clicked, then let my forehead rest against the glass. My hand was still on the knob. It was shaking. I’d just stood on my own porch and told a line of Christophers they couldn’t have anything on this property. Not the pine trees. Not me.
Not my daughter.
I’d smiled. I’d kept my voice smooth and civilized. I’d even thrown in a little rich-girl threat for flavor, disgusting myself. I was apparently good at fronting. Now that the show was over, my stomach was somewhere down around my ankles.
“Ma’am? Shall I activate the additional perimeter alarms?” Mr. Benton’s voice came from a few feet away. He was holding one of his silver trays, like he’d materialized straight from some black-and-white movie.
I lifted my head, forcing my face calm. “They leaving. We good.”
“Very good,” he said, but his eyes lingered on me a second too long. For the second time today, he pretended he didn’t know I was lying. “I think I might, in any case. One can never be too careful.”
Max looked up at me and whined softly. I walked with him to the foyer table and picked up my phone like it weighed twenty pounds. My email was still open from earlier, the big firm’s name right there in my inbox.
You have options, my primary attorney had written two months ago when the mayor first started pushing about the trees.
You have resources. Don’t let small-town pressure dictate your choices.
That had been about pine trees and liability clauses, not about a nine-year-old with my ex-boyfriend’s middle name stitched into hers.
I closed out of the email just as a text message from Taniyah flashed across the top of the screen
Taniyah:
ky, please just let me see you.
In that moment I wanted to, so bad. I missed her, could use a friend right now. But I didn’t want to make a mistake. I set the phone face down.
On the outside, I was still the woman who could say “my lawyers” and mean people with offices in New York, LA, and London.
But having access to the best in the business didn’t reassure me when I feared for my daughter…
for me. Inside, my mind kept racing back through everything Zahara had said on my porch.
Paternity. Custody. DNA. Withheld the existence of his child.
A judge wouldn’t care that I’d been eighteen, hurt and humiliated, with parents who had lost their minds a little.
I’d spent my entire pregnancy trying to disappear inside a house that never felt like home.
I’d watched my belly grow and told myself over and over that if I kept him out, I could keep myself and my baby safe.
But no judge would see that. A judge would see a woman with resources and choices who chose to shut a father out.
I pressed my palm to my stomach, like I could hold myself together like that. “You fine, You not gon’ lose her. You not,” I whispered to myself.
“Ms. Kyleigh?”
I jumped. Mr. Benton was closer now, hands still folded around that tray. “Serena texted to say they are ten minutes away. Shall I prepare hot cocoa?”
I latched onto that like a lifeline. “Yes, please. With the little marshmallows Zi likes.”
He inclined his head, disappeared toward the kitchen. I walked to the glass doors at the back of the house, looking down the hill. Emancipation glowed, a scatter of red, green, and warm white. Why couldn’t they realize how magical the town looked with or without the Grindley pines?
Headlights cut up the long driveway. I exhaled as Serena’s SUV came into view, waiting to see the little cartoon reindeer magnet still on the back from one of Aziza’s school projects.
My baby loved reindeer. By the time I opened the front door, Serena was already out, pulling her knit hat off and shaking her curls free.
Aziza ran past her, boots thumping, eyes bright.
“Mama!” she squealed, launching herself at me. “Mama, you shoulda came! It was so pretty, oh my God!”
I crouched to catch her, all the breath knocked out of me at once. “I know, baby girl. Did you have fun?”
She smelled like cold air and sugar and cheap hot chocolate. She was just so beautifully, vibrantly alive that you couldn’t resist adoring her. Max must’ve felt the same; he tried to kiss her face, but I swatted him. I did not play that, and he knew it.
“Yes! They had fake snow, but it felt real. And lights were everywhere. And music. And the train! Ms. Serena let me sit by the window and I waved at everybody and—” Her words tumbled over each other so fast she ran out of breath. She stopped and squinted up at me. “You okay, Mama?”
I realized my arms were still locked tightly around her, like I expected him to appear and snatch her away right here in the foyer. I loosened my grip, smoothed her puffs.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Tell me more about the train.”
Serena watched us quietly, keys in hand, eyes taking in more than I wanted her to. She quirked an eyebrow. I shook my head real fast.
“We brought you something. Well, technically Aziza bullied the vendor and I paid,” she said, stepping forward.
Aziza shimmied out of my arms and dug in the tote bag slung over Serena’s shoulder. She pulled out a plastic snow globe with a tiny fake town inside it, silver glitter swirling around it when she shook it.
“It look like down the hill. See? Little lights. Little people. I picked it for you, so you can have Christmas without no tree,” she said proudly, thrusting it at me.
The lump in my throat nearly choked me. “Thank you. It’s beautiful,” I murmured.
Serena tugged Aziza’s hat off, fingertips brushing her curls. “We ate at a little taco truck. She knocked back two and a half like a grown man.”
“I was hungry! We did a lot of walking,” Aziza protested.
Serena smiled, then looked at me more closely. “You okay? You look… I don’t know. Like you seen a ghost you don’t like.”
“I’m fine,” I said again. “Town business.”
Both of their faces wrinkled in matching suspicious frowns.
“What kind of town business?” Serena asked.
“The ‘I’ll handle it’ kind. Y’all go change. Mr. Benton got cocoa in the works.”
Serena studied me for another second, then nodded. “Come on, ZiZi. Get them boots off before Mr. Benton has a stroke.”
“Okay!” Aziza bounced toward the stairs. Halfway up, she turned, eyes wide. “Mama, can we go again? In a couple of days? Please?”
We might all be in court in a couple of days, baby. Some judge might be deciding when I’m allowed to see you.
But I couldn’t say that, so instead, I gave a weak, “Yes.”
She grinned and disappeared around the landing, Serena right behind her. I stayed in the foyer, fingers tight around that cheap snow globe.
Later, after cocoa and giggles and lots of hugs, the house quieted. Aziza fell asleep mid-sentence, sprawled across my bed in her reindeer pajamas. I lay there for a long time just watching her breathe, a little crease between her brows even in sleep.
“What you dreaming about, girl? Please let it be fake snow and not grown people mess,” I whispered, brushing a curl off her forehead.
At some point, Serena came to the door, leaning on the frame. “You want me to carry her to her room?” she asked softly.
“She can stay. Just tonight,” I whispered back.
Her eyes narrowed. “You sure you okay?”
No.
“I will be,” I assured her. “Thanks for today.”
She nodded, like she knew not to push any more. “I’m right down the hall. You need anything, knock. Or text. Or scream. I got hands.”
A tiny laugh escaped me. “I know, crazy! Goodnight.”
“Night, Ky.”
She closed the door, and it was just my sleeping daughter and I and all the worries I’d picked up today.
I tried to read. Write. Respond to my readers.
All I saw was Jabali’s face. The way his eyes had looked when he said her name out loud.
The way his jaw had clenched, how he’d still called her his daughter even while I was doing everything I could to shut him out.
He’d always been like that, just stubborn, intense.
Jabali was way too willing to take on battles and so unwilling to take no for an answer.
Mrs. Amanda had told me how he’d come by, how he’d seemed hopeful.
I figured he felt guilty for breaking my heart.
Now, he knew there’d been more than my broken heart I was hiding.
Now, he knew there was a child in the equation, a girl with his name in hers and his melted chocolate eyes looking at Emancipation from on top of the hill.
I thought about dragging my baby through custody battles, about the questions a judge might ask, about the way Aziza might look at me someday and ask why I didn’t tell her. I finally drifted off sometime around midnight, cheek pressed against the back of my daughter’s hand.
I woke up, knowing something was wrong.
It wasn’t a sound, exactly. More like the absence of sound. The house had a rhythm to its quiet, the electricity humming, the occasional beep of a security warning, the old bones settling in the night. I’d lived here. I knew when it was right.
This… wasn’t.
My eyes flew open. The room was dim. The curtains were cracked just enough to let some moonlight in, pale strips of light on the floor and bed.
Aziza was still beside me, mouth open, soft snores puffing out of her.
There was someone else in the room. I didn’t move.
Didn’t gasp. My heart went from zero to Noah Lyles in one second flat.
A tall shadow leaned against the far wall, just outside the glow from the window. Not Mr. Benton’s thin shape. Not Serena’s softer one. Every horror movie I’d ever side-eyed flashed through my mind. My hand inched toward the nightstand, toward my phone.
“Don’t,” a low voice ordered.
My fingers froze. I knew that voice. Of course I did.
“Jabali,” I said, throat dry.
He stepped forward, just enough for his face to come into the light. That full beard, those familiar eyes, and an expression darker than I’d ever seen it.