Chapter 5
Evelyn
Danny had a striking resemblance to Eric. I would never forget the older Puerto Rican man with tawny skin and graying hair around his hairline. Eric looked like he had seen some things on the streets of New York. His eyes held kindness, but the rest of his face said, “try me.”
He was the one who’d told me Charles was gone. Only he hadn’t meant dead like I had wished. After assaulting my body and doing unspeakable things to Celeste, he had disappeared from the burning salon. I knew he meant for me to die beside her, but I made it out.
Officer Eric Morales was first on the scene. If he hadn’t discovered me dragging my near-lifeless body into the alleyway and tended to my wounds until I was taken to the hospital, then Charles’ plan might have worked out in his favor.
Before I lost consciousness, I can remember his stern voice heavy with a signature Bronx accent, telling me that help was on the way and to fight like hell to stay alive.
This wasn’t where I thought the night would take me. Part of me wondered if I was making the same mistake, endangering someone else in my life. I was sitting in a car with a cop on my way to speak to another cop. I hoped like hell that I was doing the right thing.
When they both approached, I couldn’t believe my eyes. What were the odds that two years later I’d be standing in front of the nephew of the man who saved my life? I had to take this as a sign, possibly a move in the right direction.
The last 48 hours had been terrible, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep it together.
Danny told Parker where to go once we were in the car, and we were outside an apartment complex ten minutes later. Parker dropped Danny off at the front of the building before he looked for an open spot. Once we’re parked, I turned to leave, but he stopped me.
“Wait. I’m sorry, I almost forgot,” he said, scrolling on his phone briefly before handing it to me. “I found this photo along with some other evidence near the back of the house.”
My heart nearly stopped, and I was filled with terror as I stared at the photo of Celeste and me on Parker’s phone.
I almost wanted to reach out to trace the lines of her face, her smile.
It dawned on me how long it’s been since I’d looked at a photo of her, and almost all at once, the guilt hit me, and my chest tightened.
My mouth moves to answer the question lingering between us.
“Charles took this picture,” I tell him, looking up from the painful memory. “Almost a month before, he decided that my sister didn’t deserve to live if he couldn’t have her.”
Neither Parker nor Charles should’ve had this photo because it was tucked between the pages of my copy of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
My stomach roiled at the thought of Charles walking around our house, going through our things.
“Charles was your sister's boyfriend?” He timidly asked.
“No.”
Looking at the photo again, I noted the similarities in our faces, the roundness of our jaws, the freckles lining the bridge of our noses, and our hazel, almond-shaped eyes. Most people mistook Celeste and me for twins, but we had only shared a father.
He had been seeing our mothers at the same time, courting them on one of his “business trips.” Our mothers discovered one another shortly after giving birth to us.
They were unlikely friends, and if I’m being honest, maybe a bit of an enemy too.
Neither of them could completely let go of the scornful feelings of being betrayed by a man they loved.
My father and mother grew up together, they were from the same parish, Portland.
She trusted him completely, that’s what hurt her the most. He had a steady-paying job, one that allowed him to travel.
While my mother thought he was earning money for their future, he was seeing Iris, selling her the same dream.
Our mothers immigrated to America for our father, or better yet, for the promises he had made to them—my mother coming from Jamaica, and Celeste’s mother, Iris, from the Dominican Republic.
He broke those promises, leaving our mothers to fend for themselves in a strange place.
My mother was alone here until she discovered Iris and baby Celeste.
Iris, however, had family in The Bronx and Brooklyn waiting for her when she arrived.
Despite being an unconventional family, Iris’ family welcomed us and invited us to every family event.
Celeste’s family was my family. Charles’s mother, Helen, was Iris’s best friend, so, by extension, Charles was our family, too.
Iris had adopted the Irish-American woman into her family.
If you grew up in a Caribbean home, you probably had many aunts, uncles, and cousins that you didn’t share blood with.
That didn’t make them any less your family.
We were inseparable as kids. From summer camp to school dances and teen nights, then moving into our first apartments.
I don’t remember a time without Charles in our lives.
Everyone knew Charles was sweet on Cellie. Despite Cellie dating other people, falling in love not once, but twice. Charles’ feelings never changed. Instead, he graduated to obsession and delusions of grandeur about the life we would all have together.
“Grief can make you do silly things.” Was what I said to Celeste to ease her mind. I never imagined the violence that he would unleash on our family.
Parker sighed when he realized he wasn’t going to get any more information out of me than what I had provided. I wasn’t ready to bare my soul, we were strangers.
“Let's not keep Danny waiting, I guess,” he mumbled as he reached for the door handle to follow me out of the car and into the building.