CHAPTER FOURTEEN
NOLA
Family dinner at her parents’ house usually required three things: Curtis overcooking something on the grill, Denise telling everybody he overcooked it, and Dre showing up late enough to avoid helping but early enough to eat.
This Sunday had all the first two and none of the third.
The empty chair bothered everybody.
Nobody said it directly.
Curtis complained about the Eagles’ offensive line. Denise moved food around on her plate. Nola answered questions about work. Kai sat beside her because somehow her mother had invited him after meeting him once.
“He’s helping find your brother,” Denise had said when Nola asked why.
Translation: I want to inspect him.
Kai knew it too.
He showed up with flowers for Denise and a bottle of bourbon for Curtis.
Nola had stared at him in the driveway.
“You trying to date my parents?”
“I was raised right.”
“Your mother did all this?”
“Mostly.”
“I need to meet her.”
Kai’s face had done something funny.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“There it is again.”
Now, at dinner, Denise asked him where he grew up, how long he had owned Vaughn Recovery, whether he had siblings, and why a man his age was still single.
Nola nearly choked on macaroni.
“Ma.”
“What?”
Kai looked amused. “No siblings. Started the company at twenty-six. And I’m single because I haven’t married anybody.”
Denise stared at him.
“Smart mouth.”
“Ma’am.”
Curtis laughed.
For a few minutes, the room felt normal.
Then Denise got up to bring out dessert and her loose blouse shifted at the shoulder.
She tugged it back in place and muttered, “This thing hangs off me now.”
Curtis looked up from his phone. “You been losing weight again?”
“Two pounds.”
“You need to eat more.”
Denise’s mouth tightened.
Nola watched it happen.
Her mother had spent her whole life trying to gain weight. Protein shakes. Extra snacks. Doctors telling her she was healthy while strangers told her she was “too skinny” like they’d been appointed to a committee.
Curtis had always loved her body. Openly. Embarrassingly.
He used to tell Nola and Dre, “Your mama fine. Y’all lucky I let y’all live here.”
Denise would throw something at him and laugh.
Tonight she didn’t laugh.
“I eat,” she said.
Curtis looked back at his phone.
“I ain’t saying you don’t.”
Nola watched her mother carry the cake in silence.
Kai watched too.
Later, while Curtis and Kai stood on the back patio talking about towing regulations and football, Nola helped Denise wrap leftovers.
“You okay?”
Denise pressed foil over a plate. “I’m fine.”
Nola gave her a look.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you about to fix something.”
Nola stopped.
Damn.
Everybody was on her ass about that lately.
“I was just asking.”
Denise sighed.
“I don’t know.”
“About?”
Her mother glanced toward the patio.
“Nothing. I just feel old lately.”
Nola looked at her.
“You are not old.”
“I didn’t say ancient. I said old.”
“Fifty-four is not old.”
“Tell my knees.”
Nola smiled.
Denise didn’t.
“Everywhere you look now, women got ass out to here, breasts up to here. All them little girls online built like you and Mani.”
Nola frowned. “Okay?”
“And I’m still shaped like I was at twenty-five.”
“Ma, you been skinny your whole life. Daddy loves that.”
Denise’s hands paused on the foil.
“I know.”
The answer came too fast.
Nola looked toward the patio.
Curtis was laughing at something Kai said, phone face-down on the table now.
“Something happen?”
“No.”
“Ma.”
Denise shook her head. “I said no. Don’t make something out of nothing.”
Nola let it go.
For now.
On the patio, Kai saw them looking and said something to Curtis that ended the conversation. He came inside.
“We should go,” he told Nola.
“Why?”
“Malik sent me something.”
Her attention shifted immediately.
“Dre?”
“Maybe.”
They left five minutes later.
In the truck, Kai handed her his phone.
Malik had recovered a backup copy of the message queue from the night Dre moved the box.
The instruction wasn’t just initials.
MOVE LOCKBOX TO OLD DISPATCH. AUDIT MOVED UP. - R.B.
Nola read it twice.
“Rome.”
“Maybe.”
“Kai.”
“Anybody can type initials.”
“Who knew he would trust those initials?”
“That’s the better question.”
Nola handed the phone back.
“You really think somebody is setting Rome up too?”
“Possibly.”
“Or Rome did it.”
“Possibly.”
She stared out the window.
“You always this careful?”
“When it matters.”
“Must be exhausting.”
“Less exhausting than fixing shit after I move too fast.”
Nola thought about her mother.
About the little pause before “I know.”
About Curtis’s phone face-down on the patio.
She wanted to ask Kai if he’d noticed anything.
Then she stopped herself.
Not everything needed an investigation because she felt uneasy.
That was new for her.
Kai reached over and rested his hand on her thigh.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
He glanced at her.
“That’s my word.”
“Not tonight.”
She covered his hand with hers.
For once, Nola let the unanswered thing stay unanswered.