Chapter Seventeen What Regret Can’t Fix
“What’s wrong with Daddy?”
Time didn’t move.
No one breathed.
Five kids stood outside the house of a man they buried.
And the man just stood there.
Looking like a ghost too scared to haunt the home he abandoned.
Kane stepped forward again, voice shaking but bold.
“You got anything to say?”
Prince stood next to her, arms crossed. “Or you just gon’ keep letting us do the talkin’ while you hide behind your lies?”
Marcus opened his mouth—
And then—
“Mommy?” A small voice from inside the house.
Keisha turned.
Two little ones stood at the front door now—Zora and KJ—confused, barefoot, still sticky from party cupcakes.
The little girl clutched the doorframe. “Mommy, who are those people? Why are they yelling at Daddy?”
Keisha gasped and turned, shielding them instinctively.
“Go to your room, baby,” she said, voice trembling. “Go on now.”
“But Mommy—what’s wrong with Daddy?”
Zora’s voice cracked the porch wide open.
Because Marcus had dropped his head into his hands, shoulders trembling.
Silent.
Finally feeling.
Sunni pressed herself against the house’s outer wall, hand over her chest. Her heart pounded like it was trying to break free. Her legs went weak. Her mouth dry.
Tears streamed down her face—but this time, not soft. Not poetic.
Ugly.
Screaming down her cheeks.
Not because she wanted him back.
But because this man—this man she gave everything to—had shattered her babies, and now his were standing in the doorway asking what was wrong.
Keisha wrapped her arms around her kids and hurried them away, her face flushed with shame and guilt. They didn’t deserve this.
No kid did.
Not hers.
Not Sunni’s.
Not anyone’s.
The front door slammed shut behind them.
And for the first time, Marcus stood truly alone.
He looked at each of them.
Kane.
Prince.
Sunni.
Even Bunny and Dexter from the window.
He tried to speak.
His voice broke.
“I messed up.”
Nobody moved.
“I thought I could run away from it all… be somebody else… start over…”
He looked at Kane, eyes wet.
“I didn’t know how to be the man you thought I was.”
Kane’s voice sliced through the air.
“So you left us to figure it out alone?”
More silence.
And then Marcus whispered the only truth left:
“I regret it every day.”