I went into the kitchen, lifting the bags of pies I had left on the counter, and opened each of the lids until I found the slice of peanut butter. I grabbed a spoon and brought it over to her.
“Look at how beautiful this is.” She stared at it from her lap.
“How about some tea to go with it?”
“I would love that.”
Since the microwave had died a few days ago and I still didn’t have the cash to replace it, I went into the kitchen and filled up a small saucepan with water from the sink and put it on the stove to boil. I took it off just when the bubbles began to form and filled a mug, dropping a tea bag inside. I picked up the leftover slice of peach and my coffee and joined her on the couch.
“Where did you get all of this?” she asked.
“A friend took me out to celebrate after the show.” I pointed at the bag in the kitchen. “There are more leftovers in there, but that slice”—I nodded toward her lap—“is the only full piece.” I smiled, the peach crumbling over my tongue. I covered my mouth as I continued, “They asked what kind you would like. My guess was peanut butter, so they bought this one just for you.”
“What a wonderful treat.” She dipped in her spoon, her hand shaking as she raised it to her mouth. Small crumbs fell off the sides of the metal as she surrounded the pie with her lips. Her eyes closed as she chewed, taking her time to savor the small bite. “Oh, it’s heavenly.” She took in several more spoonfuls before she voiced, “Dollface, would this friend happen to be a man?”
“Yes.”
The excitement in her expression was undeniable. “Honey …”
I shook my head. “Gran, it’s nothing—”
“Don’t you downplay it.” Her hand went to my knee. “The minute you walked into this house, I saw something was different about you. I know you’re afraid, baby, but don’t be.”
I stared at the sliver of peach, the tightness in my chest taking over. “I don’t want to be like her.”
“You’re nothing like her, and you won’t ever be.”
Vanessa was Gran’s only child, the father a man who was never spoken about—the same way my father had never been identified. Maybe they didn’t know whom those men were; maybe they were too ashamed to admit whom they were. Whatever their reasoning was, I hadn’t pushed either of the women for an answer. And even though Vanessa was Gran’s daughter, I never hid my feelings, and she didn’t with me—a pact we had made when I moved in.
“But, Gran, all I ever saw was men controlling her. From the moment she had me at sixteen and every day that followed, it never stopped. Even now, while she’s behind bars, they send her money and smuggle drugs in for her.”
She took the straw out of her water and set it into her tea, taking a short sip. “Dollface, finding someone to enjoy things with is not going to lead you down the same path. I know you don’t want to be like your mother, but you also don’t want to be my age and be alone, like me.”
I set the pie on the table, unable to take another bite. “I can’t afford the distraction.” I glanced at her, and the emotion in her eyes caused this to hurt even worse. “I have so many goals for us, places I want to take you. I won’t accomplish any of that if I’m tied down.”
“Baby, love doesn’t shackle you; it makes you fly. And if I know you, you wouldn’t spend time with someone who would lock you in a cage. You’d be with a man who would fasten stronger wings to your back and point you in the direction of the sun.”
Many of her words were the same ones Ashe had said. Still, right now, his were only syllables. He needed to prove they were true before I trusted him.
“There’s a chance he could be a good one, Gran.”
She emptied another bite into her mouth, her eyes closing once again as she enjoyed it. “If he was thoughtful enough to buy this for me, then I would say he’s off to a good start.”
Fourteen
After
Ashe
“Congrats, my man,” Dylan said, holding out his tumbler of whiskey, clinking it against mine. “You worked your ass off on this case. Having the murderer in custody must feel good as hell.”
Dylan had been after me for weeks to go on a guys’ trip, but I’d been in the thick of the Mitchell case, and I couldn’t get out of town.
Once the handwriting on that note had proven to be Keith Simpson’s and his DNA had been found inside Mitchell’s body the night she died, things had begun to get interesting. The problem was that Barbara Simpson had an alibi for the hours following the charity event, and it took some time to crack the truth. What helped was the traffic camera on the cross street of Mitchell’s townhouse, putting Simpson there at the time of Mitchell’s murder, along with the polygraph we conducted on the gentleman who had claimed to be with Simpson late that evening, which showed he had lied. Simpson had hired one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the state, but the evidence I’d gathered and turned over to the district attorney was more than sufficient.
Simpson was going to jail; it was just a matter of how much time she would spend in there.
“I just hope the commonwealth will put her away for life,” I replied. “That woman is one evil bitch, and the more evidence I found, the worse of a friend she’d proven to be.”
“Aren’t I one lucky motherfucker to have the best one?”
“I’ll cheers to that.”
We banged glasses again while Dylan said, “But, fuck, getting you out of town is as hard as dragging my fiancée away.” He sighed. “You’re drowning in cases; Alix is married to an ambulance. Who would have ever thought I would be the more flexible one?”
Dylan had been a serial dater until he met Alix in a restaurant one evening while he was sharing a meal with another woman. From that moment, she had become his world and the best thing that had ever happened to him. As a paramedic for Boston, she worked as much as me. That was the problem with our jobs—depending on how ugly things got, our shifts often became blurred, and hours turned into days.
“Drag her onto the plane like you did to me this morning. That’s one way to get her to call in.”
He laughed as he looked at me. “You think I haven’t tried that? I was successful the first few times, but she’s starting to outsmart me.”
“God, I like that girl.”
We chuckled, and I glanced behind my seat. There was a screen built into the wall that showed the distance we’d traveled and how many more miles we had until we reached our destination. We were only thirty minutes in and had a long way to go. If I kept up this drinking, I wasn’t going to remember the landing.
Fuck it.
I emptied my glass, and before I even set it down, Dylan’s flight attendant appeared to fill it back up.
I was just starting to see double when I said, “Where are we going again?”
“Miami.” He extended his legs across the small built-in ottoman in front of him. “I need some heat. I’ve had enough of winter.”
“Did I pack shorts?”
Last night, Dylan and I had stopped at one of our favorite restaurants for dinner, followed by a bar—or three. That was when things had started to get fuzzy, and now that we were flying south, I couldn’t recall if I’d gone back to my place to grab clothes.