Chapter Six The DNA of Deceit
Sunni sat on the porch swing, arms folded tight across her chest, rocking slowly like it could rock the storm out of her mind.
Kane sat beside her, knees pulled up, hoodie over her head, watching the stars. The night was quiet—the kind of country silence Eads delivered like a secret. Crickets. Distant barking. Wind blowing through tall grass.
“Kane,” Sunni said finally, her voice soft but worn, “I gotta tell you somethin’.”
Kane didn’t look over. “Is it about Daddy?”
Sunni nodded.
“I met the woman. The one who called me. Her name’s Keisha. She has two children with him. She said Marcus told her our marriage was over long before he disappeared. Then he told her I died. She didn’t know she was the other woman, Kane. He lied to both of us.”
Kane didn’t speak at first. Just blinked up at the sky like she was trying to swallow a planet.
“He ain’t dead?” she whispered.
“No, baby,” Sunni said. “He’s out there. Breathing. Living. But not with us.”
Silence stretched like the distance between them and Memphis.
Kane finally asked, “So what we gon’ do?”
Sunni sighed. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
She turned to her daughter. “Kane… it took me a year to pull this family back together. A year of cryin’ in closets, skipping meals, praying with one eye open.
And now we got a routine again. Mornings with waffles.
Nights with homework. Laughter in the rooms. You gettin’ your spark back.
Natty smilin’ in her sleep. I ain’t ‘bout to let him come through and ruin what we rebuilt.”
“But Mama—”
“I already buried that man. And in my mind, he still in that ground.”
Kane swallowed hard. Her voice cracked. “But he’s not.”
Sunni shook her head. “Maybe not. But that don’t mean he belongs here no more. He made a choice. So I’m making mine.”
They tried to let it go.
For a while, Sunni treated the truth like a box shoved to the back of a closet: out of sight, never gone.
The house found its rhythm again. Bills got paid—slowly but surely. Sunni earned a small promotion at work. She journaled. Prayed without begging. Bought fresh sheets. Some nights she even slept all the way through.
But the cracks showed up in ordinary places.
Kane started checking the front window whenever a dark SUV slowed near the house.
Prince stopped wearing the watch Marcus gave him and buried it in a drawer.
When a school form asked for “Father’s Name,” Bunny left the line blank and told Sunni she did not know what she was supposed to write.
Father’s Day was the worst. Dexter came home with a paper tie he had made in class, dropped it in the trash, then dug it back out after everybody went to bed. Sunni found him smoothing the wrinkles at the kitchen table.
“You can miss him and still be mad,” she told him. Dexter nodded without looking up. “I know. I just wish he would’ve picked us.”
That was the problem with pretending Marcus was dead. The children kept finding places where he was still alive.
And eventually, so did Sunni.