Chapter 19 Quest
QUEST
I left Justice’s office feeling better than I had in weeks.
The casino was done. Construction complete, inspections passed, liquor license approved, staff hired.
The grand opening was in a month, and Justice had the numbers laid out in that meticulous way he did everything—spreadsheets color-coded, projections conservative but promising, every line item accounted for down to the napkins.
We dapped each other up in the parking lot and I told him I was proud of him because I didn’t say that enough and he needed to hear it.
He nodded the way Justice always did when something hit him in the chest—quiet, controlled, eyes a little glassy before he blinked it away.
The casino was going to change everything for us. Legitimate revenue. Clean money flowing through a business that had our name on it without any dirt underneath. Banks Reserve had survived on grit and shadows for twenty years. The casino was supposed to be the light.
I drove to Rita’s estate because I hadn’t seen her in two weeks and that was too long.
Her house sat in manicured grounds, the circular driveway behind a gated entrance in one of DC’s most exclusive neighborhoods.
It had been paid for with decades of building Banks Reserve from the ground up.
Rita had been there from the beginning. Every major decision in family history had been made in her kitchen.
Every crisis managed from her living room.
And every grandchild who walked through that door got fed, whether they were hungry or not, because Rita didn’t believe in empty stomachs or empty hearts.
She opened the door before I knocked because she always heard the Maybach in the driveway and she always beat me to the door and she was eighty-four years old and still faster than most people half her age.
“There he is,” she said, pulling me down for a hug. She smelled like cocoa butter and cinnamon and something baking in the oven that I was absolutely going to eat before I left. “My favorite grandson.”
“You say that to all of us.”
“And I mean it every time. You seem tired.”
“I’m always tired, Grandma.”
“That’s because you’re always running. Sit.”
I sat at the kitchen table and she put a plate of sweet potato pie in front of me without asking. I didn’t argue because you didn’t argue with Rita about food. You ate what she put in front of you and you said thank you and if you were smart you asked for seconds.
“How’s the casino coming?” she asked, settling into the chair across from me with her tea.
“Done. Grand opening’s in a month. Justice has everything locked down.”
“Good. That boy needs something to focus on besides grief. He’s been carrying Monica’s death like a suitcase he won’t put down.” She sipped her tea. “And how are you?”
“I’m good.”
“Mmhmm.” She looked at me over the rim of her cup with those eyes that had been reading people since before desegregation. “Try again.”
“I’m fine, Grandma. Business is good, the casino’s—”
“I didn’t ask about business. I asked about you.” She set the cup down. “Something’s different. Your energy is different. I feel a light beaming off of you.”
“A light.”
“A light. Like somebody struck a match in that dark little cave you call a heart.” She smiled. “You got a crush on somebody.”
“Grandma, I do not have a crush. I’m thirty-eight years old. Grown men don’t have crushes.”
“Grown men absolutely have crushes. They just don’t call them that because it hurts their little egos. So who is she?”
“There’s no she.”
“Boy, I raised you. I changed your diapers. I taught you how to tie your shoes and how to read a balance sheet. I taught you how to shoot a gun. You think you can sit in my kitchen and lie to my face?” She leaned back and crossed her arms. “Is it one of those two girls you were running around with? Please tell me it’s not.
I never understood that situation. Two women at the same time—you’re not a damn Mormon, Quest.”
I almost choked on the pie. “No, Grandma. I’m done with all that.”
“Done? For real done, or ‘I’ll be back in two months’ done?”
“For real done. Lyric is living in the penthouse. Camille moved back in with her. I’m at a hotel. It’s over.”
“Good. That whole arrangement was just you hiding from yourself and I’ve been biting my tongue about it for two years.” She picked her tea back up. “So if it’s not them, who put that light in your eyes? And don’t tell me nobody because I will sit here all night.”
I rubbed the back of my neck and looked at the ceiling because looking at Rita when she was right about something was like looking directly at the sun. “It ain’t nothing serious. I just went skating with somebody.”
Rita’s eyebrows shot up so high they nearly left her face.
“Skating? You haven’t been skating since you were seventeen years old.
You used to beg me to take you to Crystal Skate every Friday and then one day you just stopped going.
” She set the tea down again and leaned forward.
“Who is this woman that got you back on skates?”
“Zainab’s sister. Mehar.”
“Mehar? Oh I love that girl. Zainab brings her by sometimes.” Rita was grinning now, full and wide. “So you took her skating. And you’re sitting in my kitchen looking like you just won the lottery. But it ain’t nothing serious.”
“Grandma.”
“Don’t Grandma me. I’ve been waiting for this for fourteen years.
” Her voice softened and the grin settled into something warmer.
“Baby, I know you’re still hurting. I know what happened with Peanut broke something in you that you’ve been trying to fix with work and money and women you’d never actually fall in love with. And I understand why.”
I put the fork down because the pie suddenly felt heavy in my throat.
“But you can’t live in that pain forever, Quest. You’ve been locked up inside yourself for so long that you forgot what it feels like to let somebody in.
And if this girl is making you feel something you haven’t felt in a long time, don’t run from it.
Don’t bury it under business. Don’t convince yourself you don’t deserve it.
” She reached across the table and put her hand over mine.
“Your grandfather made me so mad sometimes I wanted to hit him with a skillet. But he also made me laugh every single day for forty-seven years. That’s what love is—somebody who makes you crazy and keeps you sane at the same time. ”
“She might be more on the crazy side,” I said.
“Good. You need crazy. Normal bores you.”
I was about to respond when there was a knock at the front door. Three hard knocks, uneven, like whoever was on the other side couldn’t decide how much force to use.
Rita sighed. “Lord.”
She knew who it was before she stood up. So did I, because there was only one person who knocked on Rita’s door like that—like they were apologizing and demanding at the same time.
I followed her to the foyer and she opened the door.
Calvin Banks was standing on the porch looking like the last five years had each taken a decade off him.
He was gaunt, cheekbones too sharp, clothes hanging off a frame that used to be thick with muscle.
His teeth were bad—a couple missing on the bottom, the rest yellowed.
His eyes were glassy and too wide and darting around the way they do when somebody’s system is running on chemicals instead of food.
“Unc,” I said. “What you doing here?”
“I came to see my mama, boy. What you doing here?” He said it with bugged-out eyes and a grin that was half charm and half desperation. That was Calvin—even strung out, he had personality. The Banks charisma didn’t care about crack; it just kept running on fumes.
We hugged. He smelled like cigarettes and outside and something sour underneath it all that I didn’t want to identify.
It was crazy because he used to be the man.
When my father died he sort of fell apart and started hittin’ the pipe.
Grandma Rita, tried to mold him into the one to take over the company, but he didn’t have the heart for it.
He ended up taking out a bunch loans and ran that shit in the ground. I eventually cleaned it all up.
His addiction killed his relationship with his kids and his wife.
And I’m sure it helped mold Thaddeus into what he became.
I had love for my cousin, but I wasn’t gettin’ in the way of those girls’ revenge.
If Zahara was my sister I would’ve done the same thing.
Well, I would’ve put a bullet in his head.
Not hold him captive like some 1980s serial killer. Crazy-ass.
“MAMA!” he called out, arms wide, shuffling past me into the foyer.
Rita looked at her youngest son with an expression I’d seen a thousand times, love and heartbreak braided together so tight you couldn’t tell where one ended and the other started.
She pulled him into a hug and held him for a long time, longer than she’d held me, and I looked away because watching Rita love Calvin was one of the saddest things in the world.
“Boy, how much you need?” she asked, still holding him.
“Just two hundred, Mama. That’s all.”
She let him go and walked to the kitchen. I heard the drawer open where she kept cash—the same drawer where she kept the birthday cards, the old photos, and a .38 revolver that she thought nobody knew about.
“Where you staying at, Unc?” I asked while she was gone.
“Off Kenilworth Ave. I got a spot.”
“In the abandoned apartments?”
“Yeah, but I’m aight though. I’m a hustla.
Old school hustla.” He said it with pride, tapping his chest, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that there was nothing old school about sleeping in a building with no running water.
But Calvin had always narrated his own life like he was the hero of it, and maybe that delusion was the only thing keeping him upright.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said.
Rita came back with the cash and pressed it into his hand. Calvin pocketed it fast and then his face changed—the grin faded and something more serious crept in behind the glassy blue eyes.
He shared her light skin and had light eyes, just like our pops, just like Prime and Cannon.
“You seen my boy?” he asked. “I ain’t heard from Thad in months. He ain’t called, ain’t come by. That ain’t like him. I know we have our issues, but I at least hear from him once a month”
My chest tightened, but my face didn’t move because I’d been lying about Thad for six months and the muscle memory was automatic by now.
“Nah, you know how Thad is. He goes ghost sometimes. Probably caught up in something.”
Calvin studied me for a second, then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, you probably right. That boy always was hard to pin down.” He sniffed hard and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “Tell him to call his daddy if you see him. Aight?”
“I will, Unc.”
He hugged Rita again, hugged me, and shuffled back out the front door. We watched him walk down the driveway and disappear around the corner, and the house felt heavier after he left the way it always did.
Rita closed the door and stood there with her hand on the knob for a moment. Then she turned to me with an expression that had nothing to do with Calvin’s addiction and everything to do with what I’d just said.
“Where is Thad?” she asked.
“I told you, I don’t—”
“Boy, don’t lie to me.” Her voice dropped into that register that had been making grown men confess since the 1960s. “I can smell a lie the way I can smell rain coming. Where is Thaddeus?”
I rubbed my jaw. Looked at the floor. Looked at the ceiling. Looked everywhere except at my grandmother because the truth was ugly and she was going to have an opinion about it and I wasn’t ready for either.
“Grandma.”
“What did he do?”
I exhaled. “He killed Mehar and Zainab’s sister. Zahara. Raped a girl. Cheated on Mehar, had a whole double life with Kacey and the kids.”
Rita didn’t flinch. She absorbed it quietly, completely, with a stillness that most people mistook for calm but was actually a woman processing information at a speed that would put a computer to shame.
“Mmhmm. That’s the least of his rap sheet,” she said. “His daddy’s blood runs thick. Calvin raised a monster because Calvin was a monster. I prayed it would skip a generation, but the Lord said no.” She looked at me directly. “Where is the body?”
“He’s alive.”
Rita blinked. “Alive?”
“Mehar has him. In a cage. In a warehouse. Has been for about six months.”
“A cage.” Rita repeated it slowly. “Like a dog cage?”
“Like a dog cage.”
“Oh Lord.” She pressed her hand to her chest and then did something I wasn’t expecting. She laughed. A short, sharp laugh that came from somewhere deep and surprised both of us. “Oh, that girl is crazy.”
“Grandma, this is serious—”
“I know it’s serious. I’m not laughing because it’s funny, I’m laughing because it’s familiar.” She waved her hand. “I had a man chained up in a—”
“When?”
“Never mind. That’s not the point.” She collected herself, smoothing her hands down the front of her dress.
“The point is, Thad is my grandbaby. And as terrible as he is—and Lord knows he is terrible—his father just stood in my foyer asking about him with shaking hands. And those babies in Frederick are growing up without a father.”
“I know.”
“So this girl needs to make a decision. Either she kills him and we handle the aftermath, or she lets him come home. There is no in between. Keeping a man in a cage for six months isn’t justice, Quest. It’s torture. And torture has a way of turning the torturer into the thing they hate.”
“I’ve been trying to get her to let him go. She’s not ready.”
“Then she needs to talk to somebody who understands what she’s going through. Not you, you’re too close to it now. You’ve got feelings for this girl and feelings make people stupid.” She pointed at me. “I want to talk to her.”
“Grandma, you can’t just—”
“Bring her to my birthday. I’m turning eighty-five and I want the whole family there.
Zainab, Prime, the babies, Justice, and this Mehar girl who’s got my grandson locked in a dog cage and my other grandson out here roller skating.
” She picked up her tea and took a sip like she hadn’t just issued a royal decree. “I’ll talk to her myself.”
“She’s not going to just—”
“Quest.” Rita looked at me. “Bring her.”
“Aight.”
“Good. Now eat the rest of that pie before it gets cold. And tell me more about this skating date because I know there’s more to the story and you’re going to tell me every detail or I’m calling Zainab.”
I sat back down at the kitchen table and ate the pie and told my grandmother about the roller rink and the neon lights and the woman who fell four times and got back up every time and the hallway where I almost kissed her but didn’t.
“You should’ve kissed her,” Rita said.
“I know.”
“You won’t make that mistake twice.”
She was right. I wouldn’t.