Troublemaker (28 page)

Dawn narrowed her eyes at the mention of her mother. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Excuse me?”

“Look, all that it'll take is ten minutes of your time. He came all this way. Just . . . just let him explain himself. Please? He has a lot that he would like to get off his chest and he doesn't have much time left to do it.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Your father is sick, Dawn. He has cancer . . . and the prognosis isn't good.”

Dawn's arms dropped to her sides. She stared at him in disbelief.

God, this was a lot to take in! Here she was in the middle of an exhibition and her apparent long-lost father had suddenly popped up out of nowhere, and now she had the added shock of finding out he was dying from cancer. What was she going to find out next? That a spaceship had landed outside the gallery? Dawn closed her eyes and raised her hands to her now-throbbing temples. She desperately wished her sisters were here. She could use one of their shoulders to lean on right now.

“Will you give him a chance?” wannabe actuary asked quietly. “Hear what he has to say?”

Dawn opened her eyes. She was still furious, but part of her worried that she would regret this moment if she walked out of the gallery and didn't come back.

“Fine.”

She then walked back across the gallery with wannabe actuary trailing behind her.

As she crossed the room, she examined the older man more closely. He had skin the same shade as her own and large dark eyes she could have easily inherited. Those dark eyes now gazed at her worriedly.

Her mother had never talked about her father—or any of Dawn's sisters' fathers, for that matter.

“As long as he takes care of his financial obligations to you, what difference does it make whether you see him?” Yolanda Gibbons would ask when her daughters were younger and they openly wondered why they had not received so much as a birthday card or telephone call from any their fathers. “
We're
important,” Yolanda would insist. “Not a man who knows absolutely nothing about you.”

Though Dawn had longed for her father in her younger years, she had gradually accepted her mother's opinion on the issue as she got older. If Dawn's father really had cared, he would have tried to contact her. He would have moved heaven and earth to let her know he wanted her and loved her. Now as she watched the man claiming to be her father take uncertain steps toward her, she knew there was no real explanation he could offer for his absence all these years. But she would listen. She would give him his ten minutes, then send him on his way.

“Thank you for coming back,” he said gently. He leaned most of his weight on his cane. “I apologize for how I did this. I didn't want to tell you this over the phone, and I didn't know how to—”

“Not here,” she said firmly, cutting him off. “We can talk in my office.”

She walked around him and led him toward a corridor filled with a series of rooms at the back of the gallery. She paused at her office door and turned. “In here,” she said, motioning toward the doorway.

He glanced up at the younger man.

“I'll take it from here, Xavier,” he said. “Thank you.”

Xavier looked at Herbert, then at Dawn. Their eyes met. She cocked her eyebrow in challenge. Was he going to insist he come along?

After some time, Xavier finally nodded. “Okay, I'll . . . I'll wait here.”

Herbert continued down the corridor.

“But call me if you need me!” Xavier shouted out to him.

Herbert nodded and waved him away. “Don't worry. I'll be fine.”

“Is he your bodyguard or something?” she whispered when Herbert stood next to her.

She still eyed the actuary guardedly. He equally scrutinized her from the other end of the hall.

“Close,” Herbert said with a soft chuckle. “He's my lawyer . . . well, corporate counsel for my company.”

Lawyer, huh?

Well, she guessed he wasn't an actuary after all.

Dawn ushered Herbert into her small eight-by-eight-foot office and shut the door behind him. She had kept the space simple in its décor with an industrial design desk and leather chairs. A bookshelf was on the right wall. The only adornment in the office was the several paintings by the gallery's many artists and a few works of hers.

“Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to one of the chairs opposite her desk.

She sat down in her rollaway desk chair and watched as he carefully lowered himself into his. When he sat down, he let out a barely stifled groan.

He does look sick,
she thought as she looked at his slightly ashen face.

“Dawn,” he began, “I understand that you're angry with me, but I didn't want to put this off another day. I've been putting off coming to see you for weeks now.”

“Why?”

He lowered his eyes. “Because I know it's something I should have done years ago and I feel like such a . . . such a bastard for taking so long to do it, sweetheart.”

Sweetheart?
It was odd hearing a stranger call her that.

He hesitated. “When you were a little girl, I had thought about seeing you. But your mother and I did not part amicably, to be honest. I allowed my feelings toward your mother to taint whatever possibility we had of developing a relationship. I was . . . I was wrong for doing that.”

Dawn didn't say anything in response. What was there to say?

“I didn't find out about you until after you were born,” he continued. “My lawyer at the time got a letter from your mother stating that she had a baby and that she was seeking child support. I was . . .” He paused again. “I was very shocked . . . and angry. You see, Yolanda and I hadn't dated for very long.”

“Long enough to make a baby, though,” Dawn interjected, leaning back in her chair.

“That is true. I'm not denying that. But again, we had dated only briefly. We were together for only a month or so and then I was transferred to my company's satellite office in Europe. I never got the chance to really know her. Then my lawyer found out a bit more about her . . . her background. The marriages . . . How she dated wealthy men almost exclusively. When I found out, I felt . . . manipulated . . .
duped,
in a way. Like she had used my affections and—”

“Trapped you?”
Dawn finished for him. She rolled her eyes. “Look, if you're here to talk shit about my mom, we can end this conversation right now.” She began to rise from her chair. “Thank you, Mr. Allen, for your visit, but—”

“No, no! That's not what I intended. I just . . .” He took a deep breath. “I just wanted you to know why I did what I did. There's no excuse for it, but that was my thinking at the time. Please, Dawn. Please sit down.”

Her nostrils flared. She slowly lowered herself to her seat, crossed her legs, and adjusted the hem of her skirt.

“Sweetheart, I didn't come here to insult your mother or to make you angry. I came here to try to make amends. I'm not well. I have . . . I have prostate cancer, and despite my doctors' best efforts, it's . . . it's spread.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” she said quietly, and she meant it.

He cleared his throat. “When you're faced with an illness, you start to reexamine your life and the mistakes you've made. Not building a relationship with you was one of my biggest mistakes, and I would like to rectify that if I can.”

“How?”

“I'd like to get to know you, Dawn, and to spend time with you, if you will allow it. Maybe we can have dinner together or spend a day or two together. Whatever you would like to do, I'm willing to do it.”

Dawn closed her eyes again. She didn't want to be cruel, but this was too much,
way
too much. She hadn't even known this man existed until fifteen minutes ago. Now he wanted to build a relationship. She opened her eyes.

“Maybe. But can I . . . can I take some time to think about this?”

He gazed at her for a long time then finally nodded. “Sure, I understand.”

But he didn't look like he understood. He looked disappointed.

Dawn rose from her chair and he followed suit. She walked him to her office door. When she opened the door, he turned and looked at her.

“Even . . . even if we don't see one another again, Dawn, it was a pleasure to finally meet you,” he said, offering her his hand.

She shook it. “It was a pleasure to meet you too, Mr. Allen.”

He gave a small smile. “Please, you don't have to call me Dad, but at least call me Herb.”

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Herb.”

He opened his jacket and handed her a business card. “If you do wish to meet again, here is my number. I do hope . . . I do hope to hear from you, Dawn. I sincerely do.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking his card.

She watched as he stepped into the corridor. He was still gazing at her as she shut the door behind him. When the lock clicked, she fell against the wooden slab and let out a pent-up breath she didn't know she had been holding all this time.

What My Heart Desired

W
hat do you do when you know right from wrong, and you know that what you're about to do is dead wrong, but you decide to do it anyway?

That was my predicament. My name is Emily Eloise Snow. It's an old-fashioned name for a young woman, and I guess that's the way my life had always been . . . something that wasn't quite what it seemed.

Actually, I wasn't surprised that I was stuck in this conundrum because Ms. Marabelle had predicted it several months ago, before I set out on this journey.

“Emily, you been waitin' a mighty long spell, and now it's time fo' you to follow yo heart,” Ms. Marabelle had said to me in her low, raspy voice. “It ain't gon' be easy, and the road ahead's gon' be rough in some spots, but you got to ride it out 'cause love is waitin' on you. You finally gon' be happy, chile.”

Marabelle Jackson, by my estimation, was at least ninety years old, and the tiny, gray-haired woman's mystical powers were well known and trusted in my small, tight-knit community. Ms. Marabelle had what people called
the gift.
She foretold things that eventually would come to pass. She forecasted floods, tornados, and other natural disasters months and sometimes years before they happened, and accurately predicted prosperity as well as devastation for those who sought her out for personal readings. I had always tried to stay as far away from Ms. Marabelle as was humanly possible. She scared me with her haunting prophecies and cryptic visions, not because they were astonishingly accurate, but more so because they were usually full of gloom and doom—at least for me.

Now that Ms. Marabelle had finally told me that something good would unfold in my life, her prediction was tainted by the promise of hardship on the horizon, a rough road ahead, and I knew exactly what that meant. Her words sent me into a free fall of emotions that haven't stopped since they rang in my ears.

As I pondered my fate, I tried to concentrate on the road ahead because I was driving in unfamiliar territory, knowing that my final destination could very well be a place somewhere between virtual happiness and a living hell.

All my life, I had always tried to do the right things.

She's so nice. You can always count on Emily. She's a good girl.
That was how people in my neighborhood, school, church, and hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, described me. Growing up, my mother used to say I was the kind of child that every parent wished for, smart, kind, obedient, and loving. As I matured, I grew into the kind of young woman who men wanted to take home to meet their mothers, and who mothers wanted their sons to marry. And as more years passed I became a responsible, levelheaded adult, dependable and solid in character—qualities that had been part blessing, part curse.

I tried to treat people with the same respect and courtesy I'd want in return because that was how I was raised. I put careful thought and consideration into my choices before I made them, and I pretty much played by the rules. But therein was my problem, presenting the troubling quandary that held me in its grip for the last few months. It was the delicate balance between exercising good judgment and throwing caution to the wind so I could finally have what I wanted, however risky it might be.

As I eased off the gas pedal, making a sharp right turn onto another busy street, my car sputtered and ambled along, just like my state of mind. I wasn't good at city driving, but like many things in my life, it was something I'd have to get used to. So I continued my course, navigating through the congested streets of northwest Washington, DC, my stomach rumbling and turning with the thought of what awaited me once I reached the red brick colonial on Sixteenth Street.

I kept telling myself that I couldn't give in to the warm sensation that had been keeping me up late at night because it was much too dangerous a proposition. But I couldn't help it. With each mile I traveled, I inched closer and closer to the man who'd been holding my heart hostage for the past eleven years. He was what I both passionately loved and desperately feared.

It had been seven months since I'd last seen him, and unfortunately, that occasion had been one of great sorrow. I'd been in a haze, barely able to enjoy the sweetness his presence usually brought when he was near. I had searched for him among the small gathering of friends and visitors who surrounded me that sad, dreary weekend.

“God will see you through this, Emily,” mourners whispered to me in somber tones, offering hugs of condolence for the loss of my mother. I appreciated the kind words and genuine show of affection that friends and church members had offered, but I'd been much too numb to really absorb them. Those days whizzed by like blank flash cards. But when I looked up and saw him through the sea of faces gathered at the church, it was the first time in a week that I hadn't felt dead, too. And even though our encounter was brief, as most of them had been over the years, it was, as always, meaningful.

After my mother's funeral, my world moved slowly, limping along in a crooked groove. Losing her devastated me. I lost my father when I was ten years old. One evening he went to the corner store for a carton of milk, despite my mother repeatedly urging him not to go. “It's too late to be out this time of night,” she had said. She told him that she and I could have toast and fruit for breakfast instead of the corn flakes we both loved to eat every morning.

But my father wouldn't hear of it. “I'm gonna get my two favorite girls what they want,” he told my mother before heading out the door. He was standing at the counter, ready to make his purchase when two thugs shot and killed him for the $21.34 in his pocket. It was my indoctrination into shattered hopes and stolen dreams.

I was an only child, and both my parents had been as well. Mom and I were all each other had left. Even though I was blessed with a small but close circle of friends, nothing could replace the inviolable bond of maternal flesh and blood. To lose your mother, your first connection to the world, is a hard thing to wrap your mind around.

I thought about Mom and sighed as I came to a stoplight at yet another confusing intersection. “Where in the world am I?” I mumbled aloud, glancing down at my iPhone's screen. The GPS app I'd downloaded had frozen yet again. I tried to gather my bearings as I recalled what my mother used to say whenever she got turned around in an unfamiliar part of town. “I'm not lost, I'm just exploring,” she would announce with conviction. I smiled, remembering her remarkable optimism. I could really use her help right now.

Although it had been seven months since I buried my mother, I still couldn't believe she was gone. I had braced myself for her death because she'd been sick for so long, and because like other sad things in my life, Ms. Marabelle had predicted it. Mom battled multiple sclerosis until the degenerative disease eventually won the long war it had raged against her body. But when death finally came to claim her, I hadn't expected the magnitude of grief and emptiness that followed.

Thank goodness I had my ace, my best friend, Samantha Baldwin. Samantha was the sister I'd never had, and she was a lifesaver. She comforted me and helped me to cope with the heartache and pain I suffered after Mom's funeral. Samantha was also part of the reason why I was driving through a maze of Friday-afternoon rush-hour traffic, headed straight toward what could either make me whole or tear me into tiny pieces.

Samantha had talked me into moving here to DC, which was her hometown; Chocolate City, as she affectionately called it. She said that DC would be good for me, that it was the perfect elixir I needed to help me get on with my life and make a new start. “DC will bring you your heart's desires,” she told me just a week ago when I was packing boxes.

I literally shook in my sandals when I heard my best friend's words. I was petrified of what my new start could possibly bring, and I felt that way because I knew what Samantha didn't. I knew deep down that if I got what I wanted, what my heart truly desired, it could not only change the course of my life as I had known it, it stood to disrupt the foundation of loyalty and trust on which we had built our rock-solid friendship and sisterhood.

The raw, naked truth was simple. What my heart truly desired was the man I had been in love with for the better part of my adult life—and that man just happened to be Samantha's father.