Chapter 3
“I need you to come home and check out my car, Shanae. It’s making a helluva racket. Sounds like the engine’s about to fall out. I can’t afford to be without my car, you know that. It’s the only way I can get out of the house.”
It wasn’t the only way. Any one of her five brothers could take him wherever he wanted to go, but no, he’d only ever ask her now that she was out of the Army. Gabe scribbled something on the whiteboard then stepped away so Shay could read it.
DON’T DO IT!!!!
Shay pulled the eraser from the fridge and wiped the message away. I HAVE TO, she wrote then tossed the pen at Gabe and exited the kitchen, switching her phone from speaker for privacy. “I only just serviced it, Daddy. There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“That was weeks ago, girl. You’re not here; you can’t hear it. Come on over and listen to it. You’ll see. What if when I’m driving down the freeway, something breaks, and I have an accident? Will you believe me then?”
“I believe you now, Daddy.” She closed her bedroom door behind her and leaned against it heavily. “But we’re in the middle of the Brewster restoration I told you about, and we need to get it finished so we can open the garage.”
Her daddy scoffed. “We, we, we. Your Army friends have always been more important to you than your family, than your own blood. Your momma’d smack you upside the head if she was still here, the Lord rest her soul.”
Shay ran her hand over her box braids and sighed. Her momma had never raised her hand to her when she was alive, so Shay was pretty sure she wouldn’t do it if she came down from heaven either. “That’s not true, Daddy,” she said. “They’re important in a different way.”
“I don’t wanna talk about them, girl. Are you comin’ or not?”
“Of course I’ll come.” She checked her watch. “I’ll be there around noon.”
“Can’t you get here sooner than that? I’m playing dominoes with Joe and Sidney at two.”
“It’s just after eight a.m. The city’s gridlocked with morning traffic.
Noon is the best I can do.” And since there’d probably be nothing wrong with the car at all, she was sure he’d still make his daily dominoes meet at the rec center to talk shit with his old work buddies, the same men she thought were more important to him than his family.
“Well, I guess I’ll just sit here stranded until then,” he said and hung up.
Shay closed her eyes and did some deep breathing, but even yoga was powerless against the inevitable and immediate tightening of every muscle and nerve in her body the moment he had called.
And it never settled until she’d dealt with whatever false emergency he cooked up.
Even then, only a meaningless encounter with a woman could fully release the stress.
Maybe Rosie would be free. She fired off a quick text and hit send before she really realized what she’d done.
It had only been a few days since they’d hooked up.
Any subsequent contact with her flings was usually by accident.
But Rosie was different; she’d said she knew what to expect and what not to expect.
Shay recognized a kindred spirit when she saw one, and it was clear that Rosie enjoyed casual just as much as Shay.
She’d know not to read anything into the timing of the text.
The firm knock on her door rattled Shay’s head.
“I’m driving in alone then,” Gabe said.
Shay pushed away from the door and opened it. “What do you think?”
Gabe raised her eyebrow and put both hands on the door frame, almost filling the space. “What I think doesn’t change every time this happens. I think that you should tell your dad to call one of his sons occasionally. They live a lot closer.”
Shay rolled her eyes. “They don’t come even when he does call. You know that.”
“Yeah, and I also know that your dad thinks your time is less important because they’re in relationships and you’re not.”
She shrugged. “I’m not about to change that situation anytime soon.”
“So you’re stuck playing the dutiful daughter, answering every time he cries wolf. It’s not cool.”
Gabe backed out of the door as Shay stepped forward, making it clear she needed to leave.
“I appreciate that you’ve got my back, Gabe, but he’s family.” Shay headed out of her room and down the stairs, while Gabe’s heavy footsteps behind her were an assurance the conversation wasn’t over. It never really was because this kind of thing just continued to happen.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
Shay snorted. “Yeah, that’d go down well.” She poured coffee into her to-go mug then shooed Gabe away from the fridge to get milk. “And you need to be at the garage. The Brewster isn’t going to restore itself.”
“It’s nearly finished. Solo’s lacquering today, and there’s not much else to do until the panels are dry enough to rehang.
” Gabe spun her truck keys around her finger like a fidget toy.
“I’m pretty much a spare part today, so it really wouldn’t be a problem to keep you company.
I could drop you at your dad’s house and wait at Cris’ Café until you call. He doesn’t even have to see me.”
Shay laughed. “Everyone will see you.” She waved her hand toward Gabe. “You’re not exactly easy to miss.” Her size, color, and presentation set Gabe apart in her dad’s neighborhood. “Then Cris will report to Daddy, and I’ll get earful about bringing my other life home.”
Gabe shook her head. “Okay. I’ll wait outside the county lines.”
“Honestly, I’ll be fine.” She tapped the spreadsheet fixed to the fridge. “And this says you’re supposed to be machining the valve seals today.”
“I could just work late and do them tonight,” Gabe said.
Shay punched Gabe’s shoulder. “Take the hint, buddy. You’re not wanted.”
Gabe chuckled. “Fine. Be a martyr and go through your family drama alone.”
Shay raised her coffee cup and nodded. “I will.” She patted Gabe’s arm as she left. “Thanks for the support, bro.”
“Always.”
The drive out of the city wasn’t as horrific as she’d anticipated, and she pulled into her daddy’s driveway just after eleven. The blinds at the living room window twitched, indicating he’d probably been watching for her since he’d hung up the phone.
The front door swung open, and her daddy hustled out of it, holding out his arm and tapping his watch. “Better hurry, Shanae. You’re cuttin’ it fine.”
“Good morning to you too, Daddy.” She closed her car door gently, though she’d wanted to slam it. Hard.
“Don’t sass me. I told you I’ve got things to do. I don’t have time to be hanging around waiting for you to remember what’s important in life.” He raised the garage door and tossed his car keys toward Shay. “Go ahead. Listen.”
Shay caught the keys and clicked the fob to start the engine on the 2021 Ford she’d all but begged him not to choose.
He didn’t share her love of classic cars, and the dealer had clinched the sale with the remote start and heated seat functions.
“Bet your Javelin doesn’t heat your butt on wintery days,” he’d said.
“I need these for my arthritis.” The arthritis he’d self-diagnosed that Shay suspected he didn’t have.
He was still plenty spritely when he thought she wasn’t looking.
The engine came to life first time, sounding as lacking in personality as it had when he’d first driven it off the car lot. “It sounds fine, Daddy.” She popped the hood, surveyed the array of plastic parts, and shuddered internally at its abject ugliness.
“You can’t hear it now. You gotta drive it.”
She leaned in closer. The characterless, generic whirr of the engine indicated there were no issues with it.
“Don’t get your pawprints all over it.”
Shay eased away from the garish chrome finish of the bumper—another thing to dislike—and got in the driver’s side.
Her daddy stepped in front of the car just as she was about to pull out of the wide garage. “Where’d you think you’re going without me? I’ll drive. You ride shotgun.”
She clenched her jaw, swung her legs over the central console, and slid into the passenger seat.
“You better not’ve scuffed my interior with your dirty boots,” he said as he got in.
“And your jeans better be clean too. Why you can’t wear a skirt like a lady, I’ll never know.
Your momma always looked so beautiful and feminine.
” He looked her up and down with unconcealed disdain.
“Dressing and acting like a boy; you may as well’ve been another son. ”
When she got back to the garage where Gabe would insist on a blow-by-blow account of this, that comment would get a big laugh, for sure. “I wear skirts, Daddy,” she said for maybe the thousandth time since she’d come out of the Army, “but they’re not practical for work.”
“Huh. Work. Tinkering with engines wasn’t supposed to be work though, was it?”
Fantastic. He was running through his greatest hits. What she wouldn’t give to have a real father-daughter chat instead of his constant jibes at how she lived her life. He hadn’t been this mean before her momma had died, but then he hadn’t been around that much to be mean.
“You were supposed to do something that mattered with your life,” he said, cutting into traffic. “I remember when you wanted to be an astronaut. Other girls your age had posters of Michael Jackson on their walls, but you had Mae Jemison. You remember that?”
“Yes, Daddy.” Of course she did, but it wasn’t just Dr. Mae’s pioneering she admired. She had other reasons to have that beautiful Black woman on her wall. “But I did do something that mattered; I went to war.”
“Huh. War. Because that was a good use of your 150 IQ—offering up your Black ass to be blown to bits by terrorists. You could’ve been engineering the bombs to blow them up from the safety of US soil.”
Shay held onto the dash when he slammed on the brakes at a stop sign. “I wanted to do something on the ground, Daddy.”
“You wanted to get away from your family, girl, that’s what you wanted to do.”