Page 77 of Kandie Shoppe

“Definitely.” I smile and give him a nervous laugh. Normally it’s me who’s doing the flirting, but I have to hand it to Pastor. He has a little swagger.

“I’d love to take you to brunch at The Camellia this Sunday,” he says when I give him the bear claw and the complimentary coffee.

“I don’t think that’d be a good idea, Pastor Nathaniel.” Giving him a gentle smile, I don’t tell him what everyone already knows just as well in this messy ass town. I belong to Ulysses, and hebelongs to me. We don’t have to put labels on it to make it so, it just is.

“I’m going to keep trying,” he murmurs, green eyes with a hint of sadness, before giving me a jaunty wink and turning to leave the store.

“What’s he on about?” I turn to see Joi's scrunched-up face looking after Nathaniel.

“Nothing, he’s a sweetie pie,” I say, wiping the counter. “What?”

“I don’t know yet. A little smarmy, no?” She brings her smart onyx gaze around to meet mine. She’s probably the shortest of us all, but has the most energy. Her hair is in two loose French braids with wild wisps coming out in a haphazard way, like she couldn’t be bothered to do more than one brush through because she’s so busy getting the story.

“No,” I snap emphatically. I knew smarmy. I ran up against jack-leg ministers up close and personal and Pastor Nathaniel is not one of those. He’s kind and not even his bad judgement in trying to date me when Ulysses would crush him in one fist can change that fight.

“Go find some real corruption or man the front while I fix some sandwiches.” Rolling my eyes at her I turn to the kitchen.

“I can do both from right here. This is where all the best gossip is. All my best leads come from here.” Watching the way her eyes miss nothing I know she’s not lying. The only difference with me is people willingly share the tea with me. Joi eavesdrops and uses other nefarious methods for information.

Later,I close the shop and am grateful for my cousin after having spent the last hour going through my voicemails. I spedthrough a lot of them because they were basically for orders that I wasn’t there to fill. The last half dozen were more recent and left me feeling sick to my stomach. One was the sounds of Ulysses and me having sex and another had an overlay with a distorted voice calling me every type of dirty whore.

“You should call the sheriff,” Joi whispers beside me as we make our way up the stairs to my loft.

“He’s with his mom,” I tell her, looking over my shoulder to her onyx gaze pushing the key in the lock.

“Ohhh—mygodness.” I see where she’s looking past me.

Stepping into my loft, rage fills me. The small space is littered with paper. This time the person didn’t do major damage, probably because I was downstairs. How’d they get in, though? Looking around, I see my French doors standing open.

“I’m calling the police.” Taking her phone she starts to dial.

“No, don’t. They are just going to tell me to leave and I’m not going to give this motherfucker the satisfaction,” I tell her, going over to the balcony French doors and closing them.

“This is how he got in. I was being silly. You can see it’s open from all the way across Big Love Park. He saw an opportunity and took it. The alarm wasn’t even set.” I’d left the doors open because I thought it smelled a little musty this morning and thought it would be filled with the scent of honeysuckle when I got back. I’d let the safety I felt at Honey Love Farm give me a false sense of security.

“You sure?” Her expressive face, so like that of her Korean mother, is filled with concern. And just like Aunt Nari, she is tenacious. “I think I should call, regardless.”

“Joi, no,” I exclaim. “I’m tired. People are already sick of me causing problems. Just help me clean this up.”

Reluctantly she begins helping me set the place to rights. I make popcorn and break out a bottle of Cooper and Thief and we make a party of it. It probably takes us longer than it should forus to finish and by the time we are done we’ve had two bottles but my loft is spotless.

“Like it’s never happened.” I smile over to Joi who’s busy reordering my important papers that were in disarray.

“Yeah, I’m almost done,” she says, smoothing out one of our crumbled birth certificates. Mama-Pete gave me my legacy when I turned eighteen which included Daddy’s heirs’ property claim and all of our birth certificates. At the time I didn’t know where Nikki was and Kerania and my parents were dead so I kept them all for safe keeping.

“Thanks,” I tell her, feeling my phone buzz in my pocket as I head to the restroom.

U: How are you?

Me: Fine.

U: What’s wrong?

Me: Nothing. Just had a busy day. How is Marlene?

U: …

My tummy drops. I hope he wouldn’t tell me she passed over the phone.

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