41. JUSTICE
JUSTICE
I saw Kira’s ass before the car even came to a full stop.
This sneaky bitch was coming around the side of my house like she was plotting something. I never pegged Kira to be a stalker and at that moment I regretted ever fucking her. She was a nuisance. We’d just talked a few days ago, when I banned her from coming around my kids.
Everything good the morning had put in me drained straight out through the floor of that car.
“Get Rita inside,” I told Skye, already opening my door. “I’ll be in in a minute.”
Skye read my face and didn’t ask a single question. She got Rita out the back and toward the kitchen door quick and quiet. Then I turned to deal with the woman standing in my motor court like she’d been invited.
“You lost?” I said.
“Justice.” She had the nerve to smile, soft, sad, like we were two people with something to work out. “I’m not here to fight. I just came to drop some things off. That’s all.”
“I told you what would happen if you came back here.”
“Storie called me.” She said it fast, playing it like a shield. “She asked me to bring her the stuff I had at my place. She said she wanted it back. What was I supposed to do, tell that baby no?”
And there it was.
Storie called her. That little girl had gone around me, reached out to the one woman I’d banned from this family, and pulled her right back at my house.
I would deal with her later.
“You should have called me.” My voice came out flat and cold.
“Anything of hers you had, you call my phone, and I drive to you and I get it. You do not step one foot on my land. You do not come around my house. You do not walk up on my grandmother and my kids like everything’s fine.
You had my number the whole time. Why did you choose this? ”
“I was trying to do something nice—”
“You were trying to get back in.” I took a step toward her, and watched her recalculate the situation in real time.
“And you let a fifteen-year-old use you to do it. You know what that tells me? That tells me my daughter’s got you on a string.
She calls, you come running, straight past a man who told you to your face to stay gone.
That’s what you are to her now. An errand runner. ”
That one landed. I saw it cut.
She should have left right then. If she’d had any sense left, she would’ve walked to her car and I’d have let her drive off my land in one piece.
But Kira never could leave a wound alone.
Through the kitchen window, over my shoulder, she caught sight of Skye at the sink, helping Rita with a glass of water. And I watched something ugly and jealous come up in her face and take the wheel.
“So that’s how it is.” Her voice changed, went sharp and mean.
“You let me go out for that. The help.” She laughed, and there was no humor anywhere in it.
“You’re really gonna stand here and act righteous with me while you got the nanny in Monica’s kitchen.
In Monica’s house. How long, Justice? How long you been sleeping with her? ”
“Watch yourself.”
“No, you watch yourself.” She jabbed a finger toward that window, toward the woman I’d woken up next to.
“You don’t know one real thing about that woman.
She showed up out of nowhere and you just handed her your whole family.
Your kids. Your grandmother. Your bed, apparently.
How much do you actually know about her, Justice?
Where’s she from? Who is she? You run her all the way down before you let her sleep under the same roof as your daughters, or did the pretty face handle that for you? ”
For one half of one second, standing in my own driveway, something cold moved through me that had nothing to do with Kira.
Because I’d asked myself a version of that once. The sister that didn’t show in any file. The scar. The tired eyes. The subject she closed every time it cracked open.
Then I looked at that woman through my kitchen window. Holding my grandmother’s water glass steady to her lips with two hands, patient, gentle, present for a family that wasn’t even hers. And I let every doubt Kira was trying to plant die right where it stood.
“Here’s what I know about her,” I said. “She showed up for my grandmother when nobody else could handle it. She loves my little girl like she made her. And she called me the second she saw Storie in trouble, when she could have looked the other way like everybody else in this child’s life has learned to do.
That’s more than I can say for you. You who encouraged my underage daughter to have sex. ”
Kira flinched.
“You’re gonna regret this,” she whispered.
“Is that a threat?” I stepped in close, close enough that she had to look up at me, and I dropped my voice all down to the register nobody in my life ever wants to hear from me.
“But understand me, Kira. Real clear. If you ever come to my house again. If you ever put your hands near my children again. If you so much as call my phone one more time. It is not gonna be a conversation. You knew Monica twenty years, which means you know me almost that long, which means you know I don’t make threats.
I make promises. And I keep every single one. ”
The color went out of her face.
“Now walk to your car.” I stepped back and gave her the room to do it. “And don’t ever let me see you on my land again.”
She set the little gift bag down on the pavement between us like it still meant something, and she walked to her car on unsteady legs, and she drove off my property too fast, tires chirping at the gate.
I stood there until I couldn’t see her taillights anymore. My chest was so tight. I couldn’t understand what the fuck my daughter thought she was doing.
I was still standing outside trying to get my chest right when the driver pulled up with the girls from school.
Dream came out first, running, backpack bouncing, hollering about a gold star she got in reading. I caught her up, kissed her and told her I was proud. I meant it, even standing there shaking with what just left my driveway.
Then Storie stepped out, and here came the performance. Sweet as anything, little smile on, like butter wouldn’t melt.
“Hi, Daddy.”
She had no idea Kira had already come and gone.
No idea her little phone call had detonated in the driveway she was walking across.
She breezed toward the house with her backpack on one shoulder, playing the good daughter.
That smile, on a girl who’d gone behind my back to sneak a banished woman to my home, turned my stomach.
“Dream, take it in the house and go show Grandma Rita and Miss Skye,” I said. “Go on now.”
Dream ran. The door shut behind her.
“Storie.” It took everything I had to say it calm. “How did you call Kira?”
“I used Brie’s phone and called her at school. I just wanted her to bring my stuff.”
“I told you I didn’t want you talking to her anymore.
You went around my back and invited her back to this house.
” I stared at my child. “So I’m gonna ask you one time, and I want you to think about how you answer.
What is wrong with you, Storie? For real.
What is going on with you? Because you skip school for a man.
You lie to my face for weeks. Now you’re running people in and out my house behind my back like you the one in charge.
I’m a minute away from sending your lil ass to military school. ”
Her chin trembled. The mask slipped, just at the edges.
“I just wanted my bag,” she said. Her voice cracked, and the tears came up fast and real.
Or real enough. “I left my Von Dutch there. Plus some make-up. I left them at Kira’s spot from the last time I stayed over.
I didn’t do it to hurt you. I just wanted my stuff back and I knew you’d say no if I asked. That’s all it was, Daddy. I swear.”
She cried but I didn’t soften. I couldn’t afford to anymore. But I didn’t get louder either.
“A bag.” I said it quiet. “You brought that woman back into my house, after everything, over a bag and some lip gloss.”
“I’m sorry.”
“If you wanted it that bad, you come to me. You say, Daddy, Kira’s got my things, can you get them.
And I would’ve gotten them. That’s what I’m here for.
Me. Not her.” I leaned down so she couldn’t look anywhere but at me.
“You do not talk to Kira again. You do not call her, text her, none of it. Ever. She is done. She was done the day she took you to a doctor behind my back and taught you to keep a secret from your own father. You understand me?”
She nodded, wiping her face.
“And one more thing.” I straightened up.
“You’ve got an appointment tomorrow. Somebody I found for you to talk to.
A therapist. You’re going. That’s not a punishment and it’s not up for a discussion.
Something’s hurting in you and I can’t reach it, and I’m done pretending I can fix it by myself.
I love you too much to keep losing you a piece at a time.
So we’re getting you help. Starting tomorrow. ”
For just a second, her eyes did something I couldn’t name. Not gratitude. Not relief.
Something closer to calculation.
Then it was gone, and she was just my crying teenage daughter again, nodding, saying “okay, Daddy,” and going inside.
I was out of punishments for her. If therapy didn’t work I wasn’t sure what to do next.