Chapter 24
Buzzing with the energy from her conversation with Rosie, Shay took the stairs back to the ICU unit on the third floor.
Rosie’s only surviving family member not attending her mom’s memorial sounded unbelievable, but after everything Rosie had told her, she could believe anything.
Shay was using it as inspiration; she wouldn’t let her family go anywhere near the path Rosie had been forced to travel.
Her momma wouldn’t be happy if she did, and she’d probably find some way to tell her so too—like striking Shay with lightning for the second time.
She pushed the door open onto the third-floor hallway just as Aaron emerged from the doorway of their father’s room. “Hey, little brother.”
“Hey, big sis.” Aaron gestured to Shay’s face. “What’s got you all grinny and happy?”
She touched her lips, unaware she’d been smiling. “Nothing.”
He scoffed. “You’ve always been able to hide your feelings from the rest of our brothers, mainly because they’re too wrapped up in their own crap, but you can’t keep anything from me. Spill.”
Shay shrugged. “I was just talking to a friend, that’s all.”
“The same friend you went to Tijuana with?” He narrowed his eyes when she nodded. “Just a friend?”
“A friend with benefits, if you must know.”
“You lucky dog.” He lightly punched her shoulder. “And clearly, one of those benefits is making you smile like a clown at a face paint sale.”
“That’s a weirdly emotive metaphor. Don’t you hate clowns? I have a memory of you screaming like a coyote when Momma brought a clown to one of your birthdays.”
“What can I tell you? The therapy is fixing more than my relationship with my whole family.” Aaron nodded back toward their father’s room. “Speaking of which, maybe now—”
“Stop.” Shay put her hand up. “I’ve already had a real therapist suggest I talk to Daddy. I don’t need second-hand therapy from you.”
Aaron put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed hard. “I’m proud of you for having therapy.”
She shrugged him off. “Don’t be. I’m not. Rosie’s a therapist.” Although she wasn’t one right now, Shay had a feeling Rosie would soon return to her calling.
“Rosie is the friend with benefits?” When she nodded, he grinned widely. “Great choice of friend. She’ll save you a fortune in counseling sessions.”
“Why are you saying friend in such a weird way? It’s not like that.”
“Not like what? Not like anything deeper than a friend? The Lord forbid you open your heart to anyone.”
Shay frowned. “What’re you talking about?”
“Come on, sis, you’re not stupid. You were always such a loving kid. But it’s like you shut down after Momma died. Isn’t it about time you stopped being such a player and got serious with someone? Someone who makes you smile like Rose.”
“Rosie,” she said. “Look, Aaron, I love that therapy is making you re-evaluate yourself and your life, but you don’t need to pay it forward.
Not everyone gets to marry their high school sweetheart and live happily ever after, like you and Bisa.
” Not even their parents had managed it, and they were more in love than anyone she’d ever known.
Although Gabe and Lori looked like they were heading that way.
“Okay, sis.” He held his hands in the air. “You’ll figure it out in your own time. But you’re not getting any younger, so don’t leave it too late.”
She shoved his chest hard. “Asshole. I’m only thirty-eight.”
“Exactly, you’re nearing the end of your fourth decade, and you’re still alone because you’ve spent all your post-Army time looking after your family.”
“Someone had to after Momma died. That’s what she would’ve wanted.”
“No. She would’ve wanted you to be happy. Like she was.” He glanced at his watch then tapped it. “I have to go. My happily ever after is waiting for me to have dinner and help the kids with their homework.” He patted her shoulder on his way past. “Maybe you and Rosie could join us one weekend.”
She couldn’t help but smile thinking of Rosie with her at Aaron’s house, but then she stopped herself.
Would an invite to her brother’s house overstep the boundaries of their situationship?
Or would it be considered just a friendly gesture?
After going with Rosie to pick up her mom’s ashes, they’d definitely taken their friendship to a new level, and the intimacy between them had ramped up a hundred notches.
Was she getting actual feelings for Rosie?
She shook her head. Of course she had feelings, and they’d been getting stronger since she stepped on the plane to San Diego—she just needed to know what they meant.
“Shanae?” her daddy half-shouted, his voice echoing in the quiet hallway.
So he was getting his strength back then. She rounded the doorway and smiled, not sure what reception to expect. He gave her a small smile, but she couldn’t interpret his expression. It certainly wasn’t one she’d seen in a long time.
“Hey, Daddy.” She dropped into the sleeper chair beside his bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Like Kelly Pierce cracked my head open with an ice pick and dug around in there for ancient artifacts,” he said. “How do you think?”
And there he was again. Whatever they’d drained from his brain, it hadn’t been his grumpiness. He groaned as if in pain. “Is something wrong? Do you need me to get a nurse?”
He shook his head and didn’t make eye contact. “No nurse or doctor can fix this.”
“Are you in pain? They can probably increase the morphine on the drip.”
“Morphine can’t make the pain in my heart go away, girl.”
Was he delirious? They’d said to look out for signs of inconsistent behavior, and this didn’t sound like him at all. She was half out of her chair, going to call for a nurse anyway.
He patted the bed. “Relax, Shanae. My head’s fine, and I’m not confused.” He opened his hand to her. “In fact, I haven’t been this clear since your momma died. Seems like I needed a giant knock to the brain to wake me up.”
Shay tentatively accepted the gesture, not wanting to speak in case she broke whatever spell this was. He hadn’t held her hand since she was maybe ten years old on one of those rare family trips to the park for a community picnic.
“I was lost when your momma passed,” he said quietly, “and I haven’t been able to find my way back to any of you, but you especially.”
The initial shock of whatever this was began to recede, and all the questions she harbored about the past six years pushed to be voiced.
“Why? Why me? You’ve been so angry with me, so dismissive.
I just don’t know what I did wrong.” She looked up at him and what she saw almost made her jump out of her chair like she’d received an electric shock.
His dark brown eyes were edged with tears, and then one escaped and tracked along the deep lines of his face.
“You’ve done nothing wrong, girl. This is all on me. I was angry because you weren’t there when your momma died. She wanted nothing more than to see her baby girl one more time before she passed, but by the time you got home, she was gone.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” Shay said, finding her feet again. “My CO—”
“I know, I know. But I was already angry at your choice to join the Army. You got a math scholarship to Yale, Shanae. You were the first in our family to have a chance to do something more than blue-collar work, to be a Black professor. Hell, you could’ve been our first Black female president.
But you chose the Army. Did you know that your grandpa spent three months in Long Binh jail—”
“The military prison in Vietnam?” She knew her grandpa had served, but this was new information.
He nodded. “For supposed insubordination. You know what your grandpa actually did?”
“No,” Shay whispered.
“He refused to follow an order to beat a fellow soldier, another Black man, who was caught with marijuana.” He pounded on the bed with his other hand.
“You need to calm down, Daddy, or the alarm’s gonna go off.” She gestured toward the monitor and his rising heart rate.
He glanced at it and nodded slowly. “Did you know it took the US government nearly sixty years to award his Black captain the Medal of Honor for his bravery in the Vietnam War?”
Shay shook her head. “I had no idea.”
“The real fight for us was in America, not Vietnam. It was okay for us to put on a uniform and shoot Viet Cong, but back home, we couldn’t even sit at a lunch counter.”
“Things have changed, Daddy. That was nearly fifty years ago,” she said with a conviction she had no right to feel and no evidence to support.
She’d experienced it herself, especially from their old CO, Nelson.
Her daddy’s rejection started to come into focus; it was more about his dislike of her career choice than her as his daughter.
“Have they? Five percent of the most senior officers in the military are Black, Shanae. Five percent. It’s not a glass ceiling; it’s made of cement to stop us from getting to the top.”
“We can only change that from the inside,” she said. “Look, Daddy, thank you for sharing that part of your history with me, but it should be exactly that: your history. By taking that out on me, you’ve made it your present…and your future if we don’t fix things.”
He squeezed her hand gently. “This isn’t a good apology, is it?”
She tilted her head slightly. It really wasn’t, but it was progress, and it was the longest discussion they’d had in forever.
“I’m sorry. Your momma told me I should get better at admitting when I was wrong.”