Chapter 30
One hour earlier…
I was just about to head out the door to Ishmia’s show when I decided to make the call. I opted for a video call because I needed to be able to read her face, or at least try to read it. I always thought I was good at discernment. I wasn’t so sure in this case. Too many emotions were involved.
“Hello? Edmund?” Taneisha answered, her eyes wide with what appeared to be hope.
“Hey, uh…I’ve been thinking about all the stuff you said. I…I don’t know if I believe it. I’m having trouble processing it all,” I admitted.
“I understand. Everything you thought you knew is in question. You believed your mother didn’t care about you, and I’m telling you she did.”
“You…you really believe all that stuff she told you? The stuff about giving me to my father’s people?”
“I do. My sister wasn’t a saint, but she wasn’t a liar.”
I nodded, dropping my eyes to the floor before returning them to my phone’s screen. “What about my father? Is he dead, too?”
“No, he’s very much alive.”
I frowned. “Why he ain’t tried to find me, then? Why’re you the only one?”
“He didn’t know about you.”
Now that was some unbelievable shit right there.
“Okay,” I scoffed. “So, everybody is innocent in this shit? I guess it’s my fault I got dumped in a government office, huh?”
“No! Of course not!”
“How you know he didn’t know? Why wouldn’t your sister tell him?”
“She couldn’t. Our mother said she had a dream about fish. It sounds stupid, but that’s what she said, and because of that, she drilled Tierra into telling her she was pregnant on the same day Tierra realized it herself. Once our mother knew, she took Tierra out of school and sent her to that home. It was all very immediate. She didn’t have time to tell him.”
“But you said she took me to his house—shit, why am I saying me? Why am I letting this mess upset me? I don’t even know for sure how I’m related to you. All I’ve got is what you’re telling me, and none of it makes any damn sense!”
“He wasn’t home when she took you there. His mother was, and she never told him about you. Edmund, you really are my sister’s son, a little boy she named after his father.”
“What about after that? All those years you said your sister was searching for me, what was he doing?”
“She…Tierra didn’t tell him. She didn’t want to tell him until she found you.”
“So, he still doesn’t know?”
“I do now. She told me today.” That voice definitely belonged to a man. It was deep and had a rough edge to it, almost a growl. Whoever it belonged to was off camera.
“Who-who-who is that?” I stammered, my heart rumbling, my hands beginning to tremble.
In an instant, there he was—brown skin and my eyes.
My eyes. My face.
He had my face.
“My name is Jah Mitchell,” he said. “I’m your father.”