Page 16 of Happy Is On Hiatus
Sharae didn’t agree with the way he used his size and position to step around the older sister and into the house, but she followed him, her attention focused on both girls as she closed the door behind them.
“Our daddy’s on his way to get us,” Destiny told Sharae as she now stood in the living room.
The scent of cigarette smoke mixed with a cotton-scented air freshener she suspected was plugged into one of the outlets assaulted her nose. The Aunts loved using plug-ins throughout their houses, which was how Sharae knew the varying scents. Fresh cotton was one of Aunt Rose’s favorites.
“Stop tellin’ all our business,” the older girl snapped and walked away. “Besides, he was ’sposed to be here hours ago.”
Destiny crossed the room to where her older sister now stood at the window. “He’s late again, Jazzy?”
Jazzy nodded in jerky movements. “Yeah, Des. He’s late again.”
But Jazzy’s tone sounded more like she didn’t expect her father to come at all. Sharae sucked in a sharp breath as she realized she’d never expected to hear from Sanford again. Or to find out he was dead.
“We can’t touch anything ’cause we don’t have a warrant, but I’m gonna look around,” Malik said, his words pulling her out of her thoughts. “You give social services a call. I don’t want to leave them here alone.”
She didn’t either. Their father wasn’t coming to pick them up. Jazzy knew that, but she was trying to give Destiny hope. As Sharae pulled her phone out of her pocket, Desmond Brown’s business card came out with it. She stared down at the lawyer’s name and number and knew instinctively that any hope she’d ever had of letting her father rot in jail forever was gone. The memory of the man who’d taken everything she loved away from her was coming back in forceful dark waves, and she didn’t have a moment to catch her breath because she had a job to do. There were two young girls who needed the attention that Sanford hadn’t been able to give Sharae because he was a cold-blooded killer.
Chapter 8
STARVE A COLD, FEED A...PISSED-OFF DAUGHTER.
Humming was in no way as satisfying as cooking; still, Rita was doing both on Wednesday evening. Taryn and Necole were coming over for dinner, so she’d changed out of the old sweatpants and tank top she’d been walking around the house in all day, and slipped on black ankle pants and a red blouse. In the back of her mind, she could hear Sharae chuckling and asking why she thought she had to get dressed a certain way for her daughters to come over. But for Rita, her clothes, her hair, the personality she showed to everyone, were all part of the complete package. The carefully put-together woman who was determined not to shatter. At least not again, since yesterday’s driveway scene was still fresh in her mind.
She didn’t put on shoes, but instead slipped on a pair of Cruella de Vil ankle socks because they matched. And she was a Disney villains fan, now and forever. That was probably the one wild streak she allowed herself in life, and she planned to hold on to it tightly.
The russet potatoes had been cut into long slim strips and now waited in a bowl of warm water while the oil in the double-basket deep fryer heated. She’d cook them first and then add the crab cakes so in case a fishy tinge was left in the grease, it wouldn’t seep into the fries.Going to the refrigerator, she retrieved the glass bowl that contained the pound of lump crab meat she’d carefully picked this morning.
Her humming continued as she took down another bowl and began adding the ingredients to her binding mixture. The old Natalie Cole tune had been on her mind all day. Vi loved her some Natalie Cole and used to blast that in the house almost as much as she did her gospel music. Natalie sang about an everlasting love, but Rita had already started to believe that was an impossibility.
She was just about to scoop out the amount of mayonnaise she needed to start the binding mixture when the alarm sounded, signaling that someone with a key and who knew the code had entered the house.
“You put Daddy out of his house?” Taryn asked the moment she walked into the kitchen, and Rita’s humming stopped. The heels to the white sandals she wore clicked loudly over the gray tile. “He stopped by our place this morning and told us what you did and that now you’re ignoring his text messages. Don’t you think that’s a little immature?”
Rita continued to scoop the mayonnaise, dropping it into a second empty bowl. She closed the container and reached for the yellow mustard. At least Necole, her youngest child, came over to kiss Rita on the cheek before she started with her interrogation.
“Is it true? Are you really divorcing Daddy?” Her tone was much calmer than Taryn’s, which was the norm since Taryn was boisterous and extroverted like her father, and Necole was compassionate and easygoing like Rita. At least that’s what Aunt Ceil always said.
Both Taryn and Necole had Rita’s honey complexion. Taryn even shared Rita’s narrow nose, easy smile, and high cheekbones. Today, her eldest wore a lavender shirtdress, belted at the waist. Her hair hung past her shoulders in a light, wavy style. She, like Rita, loved to dye her hair, and today’s color was a soft bronze highlight that mixed well with her natural dark-brown tresses. Necole wore her caramel-brown natural curls pulled up into a high puff. Her yellow jumper highlighted amber eyes that were the same as Rita’s.
“Hi, baby,” Rita said to Necole and then looked over to where Taryn stood at the end of the island as if she needed space. “Hello, Taryn.”
Rita watched as Taryn placed her small purse with its chain strap on the island and stood with one hand on her slim hip.
Thoughts of when Rita had considered herself grown enough to stand in her mother’s kitchen with her hand on her hip crossed her mind. That had ended with Vi reminding Rita that there was only one woman in that house that was grown enough to stand that way, and Rita wasn’t that one. Rita declined to say the same thing to Taryn because she’d thought it a foolish statement when her mother had said it. After all, it didn’t matter how old she was, she had hips just like her mother did. Still, the sentiment alluded to disrespect, and the instant tinge of irritation at her daughter’s tone and posture could attest to Vi’s instincts.
“I’m just mixing up the crab cakes. Necole, you can start the fries,” she said, deciding it was best to keep talking instead of thinking. Rita measured out the mustard, dropped it into the bowl, and closed that container. She picked up the ground mustard and shook the desired amount into the mixture as well. A few years ago, she’d written down her recipe for crab cakes, just in case her daughters might want it in the future. But she never pulled it out when she was actually cooking. Years of being in the kitchen with the Aunts and her grandmother had taught her to measure with sight and taste.
“I’d hoped to have a nice dinner with you two and tell you first, but since your father beat me to it, yes, we’re getting a divorce.” And she hated Nate a little bit more for rushing over to see the girls before Rita could talk to them. Clearly, he’d wanted them to hear his side of the story first. She refrained from sighing, just kept moving and kept acting as if everything would be all right. There really was no other option.
“You think food fixes everything!” Taryn huffed. “Well, it doesn’t. And my father is hurting. He’s staying at a hotel, you know.”
She did know, because one of his many text messages she’d received told her so, but she’d decided not to care. Actually, she’d thought he would do what she said and go back to stay with the hoochie he’d impregnated, but in the end, it was better not to think about that either.
Rita went to the refrigerator and retrieved an egg. She cracked it, and while it dropped into the bowl, she glanced at her daughter. “Food doesn’t fix everything, but it calms your nerves while you figure out what to do.”
Grandma Patty used to say that whenever Rita joined her in the kitchen. Her grandmother’s kitchen was half the size of this one, which Rita had painstakingly designed to her specifications. But as far as her grandmother and great-grandma Fannie were concerned, food was everything to their family. It was the glue that had held them together throughout the hard years of slavery and into the world that still didn’t want Black people there.
“If you sit down and take a breath, you could calm your own nerves.” Rita went to the sink and dropped the eggshells into the garbage disposal.
