Chapter Seven
He’s Always Been Darius
Rock Chick Rewind
Also some time ago, but getting closer
and closer to now…
I sat across from my son at our table in the
breakfast nook off the kitchen.
It was Saturday. That day, we were going to the new build to
have a look at the progress and make some final decisions about what we wanted
in the house.
It was also exactly six months since that phone call with
Darius.
He no longer replied to my texts or picked up the phone, but
the envelopes were still on my counter every month.
He’d made the decision for me, him, all of us.
Since then, I’d run the gamut of emotions. Anger, first.
Fear, next (mixed with liberal doses of anger). Back to anger (of course).
Resignation (also mixed with anger) after that.
Finally, acceptance.
And sadness.
“You okay, Mom?” Liam asked, watching me and shoveling
pancakes into his mouth.
I tried to hide it, I really did.
I knew with how closely he was watching me, I’d failed at
hiding it.
“Can we talk about something important?” I asked.
He swallowed. “Sure.”
Was this right, what I was going to do?
Or was this about me and finding my way back to Darius,
using my son as an excuse to do it?
No, it wasn’t about me.
This was right.
He should know.
“You’ve never asked…about your dad.”
He squirmed in his seat and looked out the window, plate of
pancakes forgotten.
He was a growing boy. I’d given him three large, fluffy
buttermilk pancakes and four strips of bacon. Grown men would have trouble
putting away that much food. He’d score through all that, no problem.
“Liam?”
He looked back at me.
“No,” he confirmed he’d never asked.
“Do you want to know?”
“Not if it hurts you.”
Oh God.
My son.
I felt tears hit my eyes. “I loved him very much. I still
love him very much.”
“Mom—”
“You need to know that. He loved me very much too.”
And he loves you very much too, I could not say,
because he’d ask a question to which he was entitled to an answer, that being
if he did, why he wasn’t around.
And I didn’t have that answer.
“We don’t have to talk about this,” Liam told me.
“I need you to know that.”
“Okay,” he said hurriedly. “I know.”
“He lost his dad.”
Liam straightened, his attention perking up. “He did? Like,
his dad died?”
I nodded. “He was really close with his dad. He loved him.
Admired him. It broke him.”
Liam said nothing.
“I didn’t…I didn’t tell him about you,” I admitted. “When I
found out you were in my belly.”
He turned his head and gave me the side eye.
“I tried,” I assured him. “But honestly, not hard enough. He
was dealing with big things. I was young. I made a decision. It was a mistake.
He was upset with me when he found out I had you and he didn’t know.”
“It’s okay. I got you, and Grandpop, and Grandmoms, and
Auntie Lena, Auntie Toni, Uncle Tony and—”
“He would be here if he felt he could.”
Liam looked out the window again, but this time, when he did
it, I felt my small hairs stand on end.
Because this time, it wasn’t avoidance.
It was cagey.
And what I’d said begged the question, why couldn’t his
father be here?
But Liam didn’t ask that question.
“Liam?”
He straightened up again and looked at me.
I spoke. “I can’t explain why he can’t be here because I
don’t understand it myself. But it’s something important to him. He gives us
money. We wouldn’t have,” I threw out a hand lamely, “pretty much most of what
we have if he didn’t look out for us.”
“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” he muttered.
I stared at him.
Was that it?
A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
“He doesn’t know I know he gives us the money,” I
persevered. “I mean, I think he knows, but he doesn’t want us to know.”
Liam was again silent.
“But he, um…gives us a lot of money.”
“Good. Everybody needs money.”
“Do you want me to try to contact him, tell him you want to
meet him?” I offered.
He shrugged and said, “Naw, I’m good.”
Something wasn’t right here, and it wasn’t what seemed to be
wrong on the face of it.
“Fathers are kinda important to little boys,” I said
carefully.
He forked into his pancakes. “Then it’s good I got a daddy
who takes care of us with money. I got friends whose daddies don’t do
anything.”
I knew that to be sad, but very true.
“Do you have any questions?” I asked.
He shook his head and stuffed pancakes into his mouth.
This was too easy.
“Liam, honey, look at me.”
He looked at me.
“If you ever have any questions—”
“I’ll ask,” he said with his mouth full.
“Don’t talk with food in your mouth, baby,” I admonished
gently.
He nodded and turned back to his plate.
I guessed it was that easy.
Even so, I didn’t like it.
I’d have to keep an eye.
Something I did for a long time.
And as I did that, it seemed it was what it was.
Just that easy.
“No, you got to taste. Don’t just throw the salt in.
You gotta see how much it needs first,” I heard Toni say to Liam.
They were in the kitchen, cooking.
I didn’t know what they were making, it was a surprise.
I just knew it was going to be good.
Tony strolled to where I was sitting on their couch in their
living room and handed me a fresh glass of wine.
“Thanks,” I murmured, taking it.
He then sat down beside me in the couch.
Right beside me.
I froze, seeing as Tony had never done anything like this in
all the years I’d known him, and I’d be very disappointed if this was what it
seemed like it was going to be.
I gave him the side eye.
“Been piecin’ shit together for
years,” he said low.
Hovering on the precipice of disappointment was gone, now I
was confused.
“Toni doesn’t want me to tell you. But I disagree,” he
declared. “You should know.”
Right.
Now I was bracing.
“Know what?” I asked.
“Gonna preface this by saying, the war on drugs is bullshit,
and we both know why.”
We sure did.
What I didn’t know was what he had to preface by saying
that.
“Alcohol can fuck a family up. Chocolate and trans-fat can
fuck a body up. The weight loss industry is making billions by fucking with
people’s heads. No one’s locking anyone up for pushing that shit.”
“Agreed,” I said slowly.
“This is not to say I condone breaking the law. Condone
doing the shit you gotta do to live that life.”
I turned to him and started, “Tony—”
“What I can say is, my wife, my daughter, I’d do anything
not only to keep them covered, but to give them more. To give them a leg up in
life. To zero out the needs list and keep the want list low, so they know their
man and their daddy worked his ass off to give them a good life.”
Oh God.
My heart started hammering in my chest.
“Leon Jackson, he’s an Ike,” he announced.
Leon Jackson, Shirleen’s husband, Darius’s uncle.
“An Ike?” I whispered.
“As in Ike and Tina.”
My stomach sunk.
“Oh God.” I said it out loud this time.
“Darius Tucker is serious business. Leon, he’s the kingpin,
but even he’s piss-scared of his nephew. I don’t think it stops it for Leon’s
wife, but I know he doesn’t put her in the hospital anymore.”
I closed my eyes and dropped my head.
Yes, even in whatever he was involved in, Darius was Darius.
Protector.
Champion.
Good guy.
“Leon doesn’t know about you and Liam.”
I opened my eyes and looked back to him.
“If he did, he’d have something to use to control Darius.”
Darius had said this same thing.
“But it’s more,” Tony went on. “You two would be targets if
he let it be known you were who you are. I know it’s been a while since he
broke things off with you.”
It had been a while.
Over two years.
“But I understand why he does it,” he continued. “And Toni
doesn’t agree, but I think you should know what there is to know so you can
maybe find your way to understand it too.”
“He’s protecting us,” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he said.
“He’s a drug dealer.” I was still whispering.
“Yeah,” he grunted.
“He had a scholarship to Yale,” I told him.
“Yeah. And it takes four years to get through college, and
even longer to get sorted in life. And he might have had a scholarship, but his
dad hadn’t been allowed to live a long enough life to set up his family like
they needed if he wasn’t around. They didn’t have the money to send him to
Yale, because you can have a full ride, but it still takes money to be across
the country at a university. They also didn’t have the money to continue to
live the life they’d been living. Darius had to step up. Darius had to look
after his mom and sisters. He was a teenager. He got offered what he thought
was an easy way to do that, and he took it. I don’t blame him. Straight up, in
that situation, I can see myself doing the same damned thing.”
Straight up, I could too. Tony. Me. Anybody, really.
You didn’t have the luxury of defending the high ground when
food needed to be put on the table.
I looked away and took a sip of my wine.
“Lee Nightingale got honorably discharged. He’s back in
town.”
My head whipped around to him.
“And Eddie Chavez is a maverick cop, but he gets the job
done better than nearly everyone. It’s all rumors, but those rumors say he’s
got an inside guy. This puts Darius out there, but it’s him doin’
the right thing.”
“They’re trying to pull him out,” I breathed.
“They’re trying to remind him who he really is. Lee in town
again, I don’t think it’s gonna take very long.”
Oh. My. God.
“What I’m sayin’ is, don’t lose
hope, Malia. Let the man do what he’s gotta do. If I had to steer clear of Toni
and Talia, it’d kill me. But if it meant it kept them safe, I’d suffer a
thousand deaths. It’s killing him, but he still isn’t dead. You get me?”
I nodded.
I got him.
He took me in, decided I did indeed get him, then he got up
and moved to the armchair.
After he settled in, he shouted, “When’s dinner? I’m
hungry!”
Talia toddled out and shouted back, “Daddy!”
Tony grinned and winked at me.
I didn’t have it in me to smile back.
I was holding on to hope.
With everything I had.
I opened my front door and stopped dead.
Someone was in the house.
And I could smell…
Paint.