14. JUSTICE
JUSTICE
It was a little after three when I sat on the edge of the hotel bed and started pulling my clothes back on, and Kira watched me do it from the sheets like she already knew what was coming.
“I want to chill on this for a while,” I said.
The room went quiet. She sat up, holding the sheet to her chest.
“Why?”
“I just don’t feel right about it.” That was the truth, plain as I could say it. I buttoned my shirt and didn’t look at her, because looking at her would’ve made it a longer conversation than it needed to be. “Haven’t in a while. Tonight I felt it worse.”
“Justice.” She said my name soft, reaching. “Monica would want you to be happy. You know that. That woman loved you. And you have paid for every mistake you ever made a thousand times over. You’ve bled for it. Nobody in this life has punished you harder than you’ve punished yourself.”
“Kira.”
“No, listen to me, because somebody needs to say it.” She leaned forward. Her face changed into something old and knowing. She’d been sitting on it a long, long time.
“You walk around carrying all this guilt like you’re the only one who ever did wrong in that marriage.”
“Don’t.” It came out flat. The register that ends things. “I told you last fuckin’ time to not mention Monica to me. We done.”
Kira closed her mouth. Whatever she’d been about to say, she swallowed it back down, and for a second she looked almost frightened, like a woman who’d walked up to the edge of a thing and felt how far the drop was.
She didn’t know the half of what she was talking about.
I just knew I couldn’t stand to hear my dead wife’s name in a hotel room at three in the morning, used to make a case for the very thing that shamed me.
Monica had loved me better than I deserved.
She’d taken the worst thing I ever did and forgiven it.
And I would not sit in a hotel room and let anybody, not even her best friend, tell me the woman I buried had a debt to me. She didn’t. I was the one who owed.
“This is the last time,” I said, softer now, because none of this was Kira’s fault, not really. “The girls love you. You’re family, and that don’t change. But I can’t do this with you no more. It ain’t fair to you, and it ain’t right by me.”
She was quiet a long moment. Then she pulled the sheet a little higher and lifted her chin, and there was a dignity in it that made me respect her even as I was leaving.
“Fine,” she said. “But I still want to be there for those girls. Monica made me their godmother. I take that serious. That has nothing to do with you and me.”
“That’s fine. That’s more than fine. They need you.” I pulled my jacket on. “I’ll see you Saturday. At Dream’s party.”
“I’ll be there.” She almost smiled. “Wouldn’t miss my baby’s birthday.”
I left her there. And driving home through the empty streets, I didn’t feel free, and I didn’t feel clean. I just felt like a man who’d finally put down one weight and knew for a fact he was carrying a heavier one he hadn’t even found the shape of yet.
The house was dark when I came in, everybody down.
Everybody but one.
She was in my kitchen, sitting at the island in the low light over the stove, a glass of red in her hand and her hair down out of the neat way she wore it during the day.
Barefoot and soft, a different woman than the one who ran my house in daylight.
She looked up when I came in, and something jumped between us in that quiet kitchen before either one of us said a word.
“Well.” I set my keys down easy. “Somebody’s up past curfew.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” She turned the glass by the stem. “Figured a little of your good wine might help. I’ll replace it.”
“You won’t.” I came a little further in. “Drink the whole bottle, it’s yours.”
She almost smiled. Then she looked at me straight, and the almost-smile went somewhere more serious.
“Where were you?”
It wasn’t a nosy question. It came out careful but tinged with a hint of jealousy.
”Out,” I said.
“Out.” She nodded slow. “Can you give me a heads up next time? When you’re gonna be gone all night?” She held my eyes. “I’m in this house with your grandmother and your babies. If something went down, if Rita took a bad turn at two in the morning, I need to know how to reach you.”
She was right. I liked that she said it. I liked more that she’d been sitting up thinking about the safety of my family instead of her own comfort.
“You can always reach me.” I moved in closer, close enough now to see the flecks of gold in her eyes in that low light. “Any hour. You call me, I answer. I don’t care what I’m doing or who I’m with or what side of this city I’m on. My phone rings and it’s you, I’ll pick up. Every time.”
I watched that land on her. Watched her try to hold her face still and not quite manage it. Because I hadn’t just said call me about Rita. We both heard the other thing under it, the thing I probably shouldn’t have let into my voice, and the kitchen got about ten degrees warmer with it.
She was close. I was closer. A few inches of warm quiet air between us, a glass of my wine going warm in her hand. Every reason in the world to close that distance. Every reason in the world not to.
Skye broke first. She set the glass down, soft, and slid off the stool, and put the island back between us like she needed the furniture.
“I should get back to bed,” she said.
“Yeah.” My voice came out rougher than I meant it. “You should.”
She went. I stood in my kitchen and listened to her bare feet go down the hall. I didn’t allow myself to follow the sound. One weight down tonight. I had no business picking up another.
I poured myself the last of the wine she’d left in the bottle and drank it standing up, alone, in the dark.