The Opportunity (The Secrets #3)

Prologue

“Paul Dee!!! Paul Dee!!

Paul Robeson Davis looked up from the hood of the Buick Skylark he was working on to see his wife Grace dragging their daughter Nadine by her curly, sandy brown ponytail across the yard.

A dust of red clay trailed behind them like a devilish tornado.

He wiped the sweat from his eyes and turned down his radio that was blasting Public Enemy’s Fight the Power.

He let out a sigh. What had the girl done now?

When they got closer, Paul Dee’s heart nearly broke at the sight of his oldest daughter locked in a battle with his wife.

Tears streamed down Nadine’s face, her hazel eyes red and puffy.

She tried to squirm away, but Grace held on to her ponytail even tighter.

She dare not wince or even scream, otherwise her mother would slap her again.

Paul put down his wrench and wiped his hands on his Dickie coveralls. “Grace, let the girl go, now. Whatever she did, it can’t be that bad.”

“Oh, you say that now!” declared Grace, her burgundy-red Jheri curl swinging. “You ain’t heard what she did yet! She embarrassed our good name!”

“Embarrassed, how?” asked Paul. He turned to his daughter. “Deanie, what you do, girl?”

“Daddy, we were just playing house!” Nadine said, declaring her innocence. “I swear it.”

Grace turned to her daughter, fuming. “Oh, really? You call what you was doing with Mae Alston’s daughter, playing house?”

“Gracie,” Paul chuckled. “All this over playing house? Ain’t you overreacting just a bit?”

“It ain’t funny, Paul Dee!,” screeched Grace. “And it wasn’t as innocent as you think it was!”

Frustrated, Paul folded his arms across his broad chest. “What was it like then?”

Grace gave Nadine a scorching look before continuing.

“Well, I went to pick her up from the Scouts meeting and we couldn’t find nary one of them.

We was calling out for them for a good five minutes.

Finally, me and Mae went out back behind the house to the little clearing near the creek.

We caught Deanie and Allison kissing like grown ass folks in the woods, rolling around in the damn dirt.

They was kissing on each other like a bunch of filthy dykes!

I’m telling you, Paul Dee, it wasn’t normal! It wasn’t what kids their age do!”

Paul sighed. “But they still kids, Grace. They don’t really know what they doing.”

“You ain’t seen it, Paul. Them girls’ skirts was hitched up around they waist, panties all exposed! Uniforms full of grass and dirt. I am telling you, it was disgusting!”

Grace turned to Nadine, who was looking down at her filthy Brownie uniform and her red clay streaked Keds. “What you got to say for yourself, Nadine Paulette? Lord Jesus! They probably gonna kick you outta Girl Scouts now!”

Tears welled up in Nadine’s eyes again. She could only whisper her response. “We was just playing, Mama, that’s all.”

Grace folded her arms and shook her head. “You need to talk to her, Paul Dee. ‘Cause I ain’t raising no nasty bulldagger. This is a Christian household! Nadine needs to act like she was raised right. I serve on the Usher board with Mae! And you know she's gonna tell everybody!”

Paul leaned against the car, studying the vexed expression on his wife. “Grace, you go on in the house, now. PJ said he had some summer camp permission slips that needed signing anyway. Imma go ‘head and talk to Deanie.”

“Fine,” Grace huffed. “You give her a good talking to, Paul Dee. Cause if you don’t, I might kill her.”

Nadine watched as her mother made her way up the steps. The slamming the rickety screen door made her nearly jump out of her skin.

“Come over here, Deanie,” said her father in a soft voice. “Help me work on this car.”

“Ok, Daddy.” Nadine wiped her runny nose with the back of her hand and walked toward her Daddy, head still slightly bowed.

“Hand me them big pliers, there, Deanie.”

Nadine rifled through the toolbox until she found the pliers, handing them to her father. She sat on the step stool near the tool box, watching him work. They said nothing to each other for several minutes, the sound of metal scraping metal filling the void.

“Your Mama is real upset, sugar.” Paul as he stared straight ahead at the engine.

“Am I in trouble?”

Paul shook his head. “No, sugar. You ain’t in no real trouble.” He stuck the pliers in the back pocket of his coveralls and stooped down to be eye-level with Nadine. “But you and Allison can’t be kissing like that in the woods no more. Or ever.”

“Why?” asked Nadine. “She’s my friend. And I like her.”

“You can like her, Nadine. But you ain’t gotta kiss her. At least not like you’d kiss a boy.”

Nadine frowned. “Kiss a boy? Eww. I don’t want a kiss boy. I don’t like boys.”

She thought boys were probably the most vile creatures on earth.

They farted, ate boogers, scratched their butts, and smelled musty like a bag of Vidalia onions.

Well, not all of them. Teddy Johnson always saved the pink Starbursts for her, sliding them in her hand in Sunday school.

Coincidentally, he always smelled good. He also didn’t dare eat a booger or scratch his butt. He was the exception.

Paul chuckled softly. “You say that now, Deanie, but you ain’t but nine years old, sugar. You don’t know what you like and don’t like. You’ll grow out of that.”

Nadine looked up into her father’s similar hazel eyes. “I like Allison, Daddy. She’s… nice. I kissed her because I like her.” She’d seen her father kiss her mother a million times like that. Isn’t that what you did when you liked someone that way?

Paul sighed, grabbing his daughter’s tiny hands with his oil-stained ones.

“Nadine. The natural order of the world is that a man and a woman be together. To love each other. Like how me and your mama are. Don’t you want to get married someday?

Have a husband and a family? Wear a pretty wedding dress and let me give you away in a church? ”

Nadine furrowed her tiny brow, her bang sticking to her sweaty forehead. She didn’t know why her daddy was asking her any of this. She was only nine. “I don’t know.”

“It’s alright,” laughed Paul. “That ain’t a question you gotta answer now.

But in time, you’ll realize that girls are supposed to like and kiss boys, not girls.

Girls and boys are to be together that way.

Not two girls, understand? And you can love your friends who are girls, baby, but just…

not like that? Just be normal, alright? Understand? ”

Normal? Nadine didn’t really understand what that meant, but she nodded her head anyway. “Okay, Daddy.”

He leaned over, kissing his cherub-faced daughter on the cheek.

“Good. Now, go in and apologize to your mama. Then call Mrs. Alston and apologize to her. Tell her it won’t happen again.

” He paused, carefully choosing his next words.

“And maybe you and Allison need to take a break from each other. Go play with Alisa and Tatum next door instead, ok?”

But she didn’t want that. She played with Alisa and Tatum all the time.

She didn’t want to play with them the way she did Allison.

Allison tasted like watermelon Bubblicious and hot dill pickles.

She felt soft and round, with mahogany skin as smooth as silk, and smelled like baby powder.

She was her special friend, no one else’s.

But Nadine didn’t tell her father any of that. Instead, she nodded obediently and replied, “Yes, sir.”

“Go on, now.” Paul patted his daughter’s head and resumed his work on his car. Nadine got up from the stoop, making her way to the house.

“And Deanie,” Paul called out from under the hood, stopping Nadine near the steps.

“Yes, sir?”

“You’re still a good girl, baby. You just made a mistake is all. God forgives sin, sugar.”

Nadine chewed her lip, mulling over his choice of words.

Mistake

Good

Sin

Was she a sinner? Pastor Josephs said that sinners go to hell. Was she going to hell over a kiss? Was kissing Allison a sin? Was she still a good girl if she had sinned? Was she a good girl if it was a mistake?

Nadine stared down at her dirty Brownie vest and shook with anger. She ripped it off, buttons flying to the ground, and threw it in the trash.