Beginning #2
I met Jules when I was fourteen. That was the age I learned how to look grown without being it. I learned quickly how to talk like I knew what I wanted, even though all I really knew was what I didn't. My home wasn't bad. It just wasn't mine.
We moved from Florida to Louisiana, but I never understood why.
We just up and left one day. My mama spent her life scrubbing toilets and bathrooms at the health department for little to nothing.
She came home smelling like bleach and tiredness, hands raw, back aching in ways she never complained about.
My daddy worked for the dog pound, chasing down strays and putting on a hard face like the world hadn't already taken enough from him.
We weren't dirt poor. We always had just enough.
Enough food. Enough clothes. Enough house.
But "just enough" started feeling like a ceiling I was already pressing my head against.
Jules was the opposite of that. He was Flashy without trying and known without asking.
His name carried weight before he ever stepped into a room.
When I saw him for the first time, something in me settled like it had finally found where it belonged.
I fell in love fast and loud and without permission.
We were inseparable after that. By age sixteen, I'd decided I was grown and knew enough to make permanent choices with only temporary understanding.
I didn't want to be away from him. I wasn't trying to imagine a future that didn't include the way he looked at me like I was already chosen.
My parents didn't say much about him. Not directly. But silence has its own language, and I understood it well enough. They knew his family history and the kind of shadow that followed his last name. My daddy knew of Nash’s family and would often bring him up or try to force him on me, but I didn't want that.
Nash was always cool, but he could never be Jules.
When school let out that summer, I went home and packed a bag.
My mama was sitting in her rocking chair in the living room, tears sliding down her face like she'd already seen the end of the story.
My daddy had just walked in from work, uniform still on, shoulders heavy.
Nobody yelled or begged. "If you leave here, Nia," my daddy said, voice flat, eyes tired, "don't come back.
Not when he put his hands on you. Not when he leave you pregnant. "
I didn't argue with my daddy. I walked out that day and never returned.
For two months, Evie and Saint didn't even know I was living in their house.
I stayed quiet and tucked away. When they found out, all hell broke loose.
Evie raised hell all day and all night. She cursed me out so bad you would've thought I was her daughter.
When I told them I couldn't go back home, they let me stay.
That was the first time I learned what it meant to be absorbed into something bigger than yourself.
The St. Jean name wrapped around you and dared you to survive it without asking questions. I did.
The car line crawled forward at the school, kids spilling out of cars with backpacks too big for their bodies.
Jezel and Juelz climbed out, kissing my cheek quick before slamming the doors and running toward their friends.
I waited until they were inside before pulling off, watching until the building swallowed them whole. Only then did I let myself exhale.
The road felt longer without them talking in the backseat.
The radio stayed off. I didn't need music.
Didn't need anyone else's voice filling the space.
My own thoughts were loud enough. I drove the same way every morning once the kids were dropped off, past the church with the faded sign that still promised deliverance, past the corner store that never quite opened on time, past the stretch of road where the pavement dipped just enough to make your stomach lift if you didn't slow down.
Muscle memory took over. My hands rested lightly on the steering wheel, my foot hovering easily over the brake, my mind doing that drifting thing it did when nothing urgent demanded it.
Routine didn't fix anything, but it made things quieter.
It gave grief somewhere to sit without spilling over.
The car filled with the low hum of the road, tires whispering against asphalt still cool from the night air. I didn't have the radio on. I rarely did anymore. Music had started asking questions I didn't have answers for. Every song sounded like a memory I wasn't prepared to revisit.
I was thinking about the grocery list and whether we were low on milk again.
I replayed Julise's attitude this morning and the way Jezel had smiled at me like she was trying to keep us both afloat.
I thought about how Juelz had been sleeping with the light on again, claiming monsters but never saying whose.
I wasn't thinking about Jules. That's what I told myself.
The phone rang through the car speakers, sharp and sudden enough to make me flinch. The sound cut through my thoughts, leaving everything else scattered. I glanced at the screen and felt something in my chest tighten in awareness.
It was Mr. Simnole, Jules' lawyer. He didn't call often. When he did, it was usually brief. Logistics. Updates that felt too heavy for voicemail. Sometimes he passed messages for the kids on birthdays, holidays, moments Jules wanted marked even from the other side of concrete and steel.
I answered before the second ring finished. "Hello?"
"Mrs. St. Jean," Mr. Simnole said, his voice steady in that practiced way people use when they don't want to sound like the bearer of anything disruptive. "I hope you're doing alright."
That question never landed the way people thought it would. I didn't pause to consider it. "I'm doing okay," I said, because that was what I always said. "What can I do for you?"
There was a small breath on the other end of the line, controlled but deliberate. The kind people take when they're about to shift something in your world and want to soften the impact. "I'm calling because I need to know if you can be at the prison around five today to pick up Mr. St. Jean."
The road blurred for a second. Not enough to be dangerous, just enough to remind me I was still inside my body. "Wait," I said, my voice moving faster than my thoughts. "Pick him up? What you mean?"
"The state's witness disappeared," he said. "And the judge threw out a portion of the evidence this morning. They granted him a bond."
My heart started beating harder, pressing forward like it had somewhere important to be.
I kept my eyes on the road, tightened my grip on the wheel, and focused on the sound of his voice like it might ground me.
"You... you sure?" I asked and immediately hated how small that sounded. "You sure this is right?"
"Yes, ma'am. The paperwork's already processing."
I swallowed. My mouth felt dry, like I'd been holding it open too long without realizing. "And he wants me to pick him up?" I asked, careful to keep my tone neutral and careful not to let anything hopeful or bruised slip through. There was a pause this time. Not long. Just enough.
"He made it clear he wanted his children there," Mr. Simnole said. That distinction landed exactly where it was meant to.
I nodded even though he couldn't see me.
Of course he did. Of course, that was the condition.
The kids. Not me. Never me. "Okay," I said.
"We'll be there." I ended the call before he could say anything else.
The silence that followed felt heavier than the call itself.
The car kept moving, the world kept going, but something had shifted under the surface, like a floorboard creaking in a house you've lived in long enough to know every sound.
Jules was coming home. He would be physically present in a way he hadn't been in over a year.
My hands started to ache from gripping the steering wheel too tight.
I loosened them slowly, one finger at a time, like I was talking myself down from something I hadn't meant to climb.
I didn't know how I was supposed to feel.
Relief didn't fit right. Neither did I dread.
Everything landed somewhere in between, leaving me feeling unsettled, suspended, and unfinished.
I told myself it didn't matter how I felt anyway. The kids mattered. They always did.
The gravel crunched under the tires as we turned onto the narrow road that led toward the prison.
Trees crowded in on both sides, thick and quiet, their branches leaning like they were listening.
This stretch of road always felt longer than it was, like it stretched itself out on purpose just to give you more time to think.
Julise sat in the passenger seat, chin tipped down toward her phone, thumbs moving fast like she was trying to stay somewhere else.
Jezel and Juelz were in the back, leaning forward in their seats, talking off and on, pointing out the window at nothing in particular.
They kept asking the same questions in different ways.
How long he staying? Can he come to the school?
He gonna be home tonight for real? And I kept giving the same careful answers.
"He's bonding out," I'd said. "We just picking him up.
" I hadn't said anything more than that.
As the prison came into view, all concrete, fencing, and razor wire, something in my chest tightened. The building sat there like it had every right to interrupt our lives again. Like it hadn't already taken enough. I slowed down without realizing it. Then I saw him.