Ducane
The second I got in the car, I let out the breath I’d been holding since I woke up.
One night on that couch. That was all it took to start losing the fight I’d been having with myself since the beach.
The fight was simple. Part of me wanted to say fuck what Skye had done, scoop up my girls, and move forward with a clean slate.
The other part couldn’t get past the years she took from me.
And every hour I spent in that house, the first part kept gaining ground.
Watching her with Cadence this morning. The milkshakes.
How that little girl looked at her mama.
Skye had been scared, plain and simple, scared enough to keep a secret I still hadn’t found a way to forgive, and I was sitting here three feet from forgiving it anyway.
Then there was Cadence. From here on out, my whole life was about to revolve around Cadence Noelle Simmons. My twin. My junior in a tutu. She deserved both of her parents, and she deserved to see them love each other while they were at it.
And that was where it got complicated. I wanted Skye. I’d never stopped wanting Skye. But wanting her and trusting her again were two different roads, and after one night home, I still didn’t know how to get from one to the other without feeling stupid.
“Sir,” Kareem said, pulling me out of it.
I looked up and caught a smile on his face.
“She’s beautiful, Ducane. Absolutely beautiful.”
“Thank you, Kareem. I still can’t believe it.”
He nodded and looked back at the road. But when his eyes returned to the mirror, I knew he had something sitting on him that would serve me best out in the open. Kareem had been more than my driver; he was family. A confidante. And a wise man.
“Say it,” I told him.
“What she did was wrong. Almost unforgivable.” Kareem met my eyes.
“Almost. But Ducane, I drove you two around for years. I heard every one of those backseat conversations about the life y’all were gonna build.
The house. The kids. Running off where your daddy couldn’t reach you.
That girl loved you like I ain’t never seen, and I watched what losing her did to you.
” He turned back to the road. “All I’m saying is, whatever she did, she did it scared, not cold.
Don’t let the fear she had back then cost you the family you have been waiting for. That’s all.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute. He wasn’t wrong, and we both knew it.
“I hear you, Kareem.” That was all I had.
I looked out the window and let Coupeville roll past while I turned it all over in my head. Carter, especially, my boy, the one who’d been right there through all of it. I heard Skye asking me to let him off the hook. I wasn’t doing that. Everyone was going to feel my wrath, starting with Carter.
We pulled up to the courts closest to the college, and there they were. Carter, LaDrake, and Carlos, shooting around, already talking trash before I even made it to the court. I couldn’t believe I’d been gone for damn near a decade.
I was out of the car before Kareem came to a full stop.
Carlos saw me first. “My nigga, Cane. Welcome home.”
I dapped him up and turned to Carter, who set the ball down on the asphalt nice and slow. He didn’t run. Didn’t throw his hands up. He just turned, squared his shoulders to me, and waited, because he was a real one, and a real one knew when he had a fade coming.
I walked up to him and put my fist in his stomach.
He grunted, folded, the air going out of him in one gust. I got down close to his ear.
“You know what that’s for, nigga.”
LaDrake moved. “Aye, hold on, hold on—”
“Get the fuck on, Drake. This is between me and him.”
“Leave him alone,” Carter threw a hand back at him, still hunched, still pulling air. “He owes me that one.”
LaDrake stopped. Him and Carlos backed off the blacktop and let us have it, because they weren’t slow, they could see this wasn’t really a fight.
“I owe you a body bag, but I fuckin consider us boys. You foul Carter. Y’all niggas too.”
“I don’t know shit that’s going on,” LaDrake said, hands up.
Carter came up slow, one hand on his stomach, and looked me right in my eyes.
“That it? Or you got more in you?”
“My daughter, Carter. Mine. You broke bread with my child every Sunday and ain’t say a word.”
“You’re right.” Not an ounce of flinch in him. “I knew.”
My jaw flexed so hard it hurt.
“And I’d do it the same way again, so hear me out before you swing on me twice.” He spat to the side and squared back up. “Skye came to us pregnant and terrified. Your wife came to us.”
“Wife?” Carlos questioned.
“Carter, Cadence is Ducane’s?” LaDrake asked, looking between us. “Bro hell nah.”
“Fuck y’all, she showed up crying at my kitchen table at three in the morning, asking me to help keep her baby safe. That’s Airalynn’s blood. That’s the family sleeping under my roof. You think I was finna sell her out for a nigga who’d already let his daddy ship him four hours away.”
“This is about you. About what you did and didn’t do. I’m sick of y’all niggas blaming me.”
“Nah.” Carter shook his head slowly. “This is about your daddy. And you still can’t see it.
” He stepped in. “Cane, wake up. That man hates you. Always has. He just dressed it up as control so you’d keep calling it love.
” He dropped that shit on me like a bomb.
“And if you think for one second Ruben Simmons didn’t know he had a granddaughter walking around this city, you’re dumber than I ever took you for. ”
The court went silent.
“What did you just say?”
“You heard me.” Carter didn’t blink. “A man like that knows everything. You think a baby with your face popped up in Coupeville and it never got back to him? Come on, brother. He knew.” He shrugged, hard.
“Your pops has been three moves ahead of you your whole life, and you keep lining up to lose. That’s the part that kills me to watch. ”
I sat on the edge of the bench.
Carter waited until I finally looked back at him.
“Everything you ever cared about became a target. That pro bono clinic we ran in law school? You loved that thing. As soon as it started making noise, the funding dried up out of nowhere. That was him. A clinic. A girl from Silverrun with a smart mouth, no money, no family. You think a granddaughter was gonna be any different?”
I couldn’t breathe right.
Because if Carter was right, then my father had also looked me in my eye at every dinner, every holiday, every cold handshake, knowing I had a daughter. That wasn’t control. That was war.
“And one last thing, so we can move on.” He stepped in.
“When the engagement to Bianca hit the blogs, I called you. Four times, Ducane. I left you a voicemail saying it was important, that I needed to see you face to face. Man to man.” He looked at me dead on.
“You ain’t never call me back. Not once.
And you never even brought it up. I let it go after that, kept it moving like it didn’t happen, because what else was I supposed to do?
So nah, don’t roll up on me like I ain’t try to put it right when I had the chance. ”
That took everything out of me. Because I didn’t remember those calls. And that was worse than if I had.
“Damn.” I scrubbed my hand down my face. “My daughter took her first steps, and I was four hours away. How fucked up is that?”
I pushed back up to my feet and cracked my knuckles.
“Here’s what I’m gonna say to you as your brother.
” Carter’s voice dropped. “Go to war with that nigga. Crash out, lose to him again, do whatever you need to do with all that, I don’t care.
But understand me on this one thing.” He stepped all the way into my space.
“That little girl is my family. Like my own kid. You put one ounce of this mess on her, you let any of this touch her, and it’ll be you in a body bag. We clear?”
I stepped right back into his space, close enough to feel his breath.
“Let me tell you what’s clear, my nigga. That’s MY daughter. Mine. I don’t need a warning from you or anybody else about how to treat my own child.” I didn’t blink. “I hear you love her. Good. You should. But don’t get it confused. Can’t nobody take care of my flesh and blood better than me.”
“Aight.”
“Yeah, aight. And we ain’t good right now. You kept my child from me, and you gon’ carry that with me until I decide we square.”
He took a breath through his nose, then gave one measured nod.
“Fair.”
“Fuck you.”
I walked off, leaving all three of them standing there. LaDrake called my name. I didn’t turn around. So much for a fucking reunion.
I slid into the back of the car, and my phone started ringing. Skye.
“Yeah?” My voice came out flat. Worn all the way down.
“Hey.” A pause. “Are you okay? You sound, I don’t know. Off.”
“I’m good.”
“Ducane.”
“I said I’m good, Skye.” It came out harder than I meant it. “I didn’t hurt that nigga, if that’s what you calling to check on. Carter’s fine. We talked. Everybody’s fucking fine.”
“That’s not why I called, but alright.”
“Then what? Why you care so much all of a sudden, huh?” I felt it climbing up my throat, all of it, the calls I didn’t answer, the steps I missed, my father’s face at every dinner I now knew was a lie.
“Where was all this caring about me when you kept my child from me? You could’ve called me.
You could’ve picked up a phone at any time and told me I had a daughter.
But you didn’t. So don’t call me now asking if I’m okay, like shit is sweet. ”
The line went quiet. I pulled the phone back and looked. I’d expected her to clap back or hang up.
And in that silence, I stopped holding on.
“I missed everything, Skye.” My voice broke, and I hated that it did, but I couldn’t stop the emotions bubbling over.
“Everything. Her whole life. And come to find out, my own father knew and said nothing. That muthafucka sat across from me at Christmas. Shook my hand. Knowing.” My eyes were burning, and I pressed the heel of my palm into one of them.
“Keep going,” she said softly.