Aftermath (11 page)

Her hands were shaking involuntarily and both Frankie and Gillian noticed. They exchanged glances and Gillian nodded at him, encouraging him to keep going. There was no way around it. Mary had to know what happened.

“How is he?” she asked, softly, her eyes focused on the napkin in her hands instead of looking at Frankie.

He took a deep breath.

“You know he's been staying with me out on Staten Island.”

Mary nodded, looked at him expectantly.

“He's been staying in the guesthouse and I look out for him. He keeps to himself most of the time, but sometimes he comes over to the house and watches TV. Camille's nephew has been staying with us a lot lately…” Frankie's voice trailed off and he looked at Gillian for help. There was no easy way to tell his mother this story. The look on Gillian's face was reassuring and he continued.

“Anyway, me and Camille have been having problems lately. We're gonna be getting a divorce soon. Well, for the past few weeks, both of us have been away from home a lot and so Steven babysat for Camille's nephew a few times. Misa—that's Camille's sister—was never around so someone had to look out for her kid.”

Mary was frowning a little and twisting the napkin in her hand absentmindedly. “
Steven
was babysitting for her?”

Frankie nodded, gulped as he went on to the hard part. “She picked him up a few days ago and took him home. And then she came back last night and…” Frankie saw that his mother was staring right at him, waiting for him to finish. But he had a hard time continuing.

Gillian watched him struggling and her heart went out to him. She sipped her water, since her mouth was suddenly dry, and watched Mary's reaction as Frankie spoke.

“Misa came back and accused Steven of touching her son. And she shot him.”

Mary gasped and dropped the napkin on the floor. Her hands covering her mouth, her eyes began to fill with tears. “Steven?”

Frankie nodded, while Gillian moved closer to where Mary sat in case she needed comforting. Right now, the woman sat frozen in shock, her hands cupped over her mouth. She began rocking back and forth in her seat. Tears streamed down her face and her voice cracked as she responded.

“Where is he? Can I see him?”

Frankie wanted to disappear. He wanted to be anywhere else but here delivering this blow to his mother.

He shook his head. “He died, Ma.” He sat forward in his seat as if he expected her to fall and would need to catch her. “He's gone.”

Tears poured from Mary's eyes and down her cheeks as she sobbed. Gillian rushed to her side with tissues in hand and stroked the older woman's back lovingly as she cried.

Frankie watched his mother cry and his own heart broke all over again—not just for Steven, but for Mary, as well. She had endured years of abuse at the hands of her husband, had been the one to discover his lifeless body when he killed himself. And now she was going to have to bury her youngest child. She didn't speak another word that afternoon. Instead, her cries were the only sounds she made as Frankie and Gillian tried in vain to comfort her.

Lost and Turned Out

Lying on her cot, Misa stared directly into the bright light above her, hoping to make herself go blind. The light remained on twenty-four hours a day in her solitary confinement cell on New York's notorious Rikers Island where she'd been held for the past two days. She was on suicide watch, requiring that her tiny private quarters be lit around the clock and that guards monitor her every movement to ensure that she didn't take the easy way out. During the psychological evaluation portion of her intake interview, Misa had expressed how badly she wanted to die. She told the psychologist she had seriously considered killing herself before going to confront Steven on the night she killed him. She also told them she was still contemplating it. Death might bring her some relief from the guilt she was now drowning in. They had her on surveillance cameras as well as under the watchful eye of guards on foot patrol pacing outside the iron door. Staring into the severe light, she figured blindness would be a decent start in her determination to punish herself for what had happened to Shane. Blindness was the least of what she deserved.

Her mind drifted to Baron, wondering how he was, what he'd been told about her. An almost sinister laugh escaped her then. At that moment, Baron was probably not even thinking about Misa, and here she was wasting time thinking about him. She pushed him to the back of her mind then, tried to focus on her own issues, focus on Shane. And then it dawned on her.

That
was her problem. She always had to push some nigga to the back of her mind in order to concentrate on her child. It was as if the men in her life—first Louis, then some nigga named Cyrus, and now Baron—were all at the top of her list of priorities, ahead of Shane and even ahead of herself. Misa sat up and closed her eyes, which stung from the glare of the light. She pictured Shane's face in her mind and smiled to herself when she recalled his laughter. He was such a beautiful little boy and she loved to see him smile. For so many years she had searched for a man who would complete their lives. And it had only now dawned on her how perfectly complete their lives could have been without any man.

Her heart had been in the right place. She had always wanted Shane to have the father that Louis had failed to be. She wanted to have a man to snuggle up to at night, someone to toss a ball around with her son and protect them both. And she had tried to force it, again and again with man after man. After a few sexual encounters, Misa would begin to envision the fairy-tale ending with the man she'd set her sights on and the rest played out the same way over and over. Inevitably, Misa and Shane wound up right back where they started out—just the two of them.

She wished she could end it all. After court, she'd been told that her case was being elevated to the State Supreme Court and she'd be facing a whole new judge the next time she went to court. Since Camille hadn't gotten her out, Misa assumed that her sister was fucked up financially. Everyone knew that the money was Frankie's, after all. Misa knew she could be sitting in this hell for months while she awaited trial. More than ever she wanted to take one last breath and let go of all the anguish in her heart over what had been done to Shane. She wanted to die and escape the prying eyes of the media and the questions from her family. Over and over she recalled the look of utter disgust Louis had given her as she walked into the courtroom. She hadn't missed the sneer on that bitch Nahla's face, either. Still, Misa had absolutely no regrets about what she had done. Steven had deserved to die.

But she did long for Shane. She did regret having abandoned him while she searched for a fairy tale that never existed to begin with. She remembered him yelling that he hated her, thought about what he must have endured, how scared he must have been. And she was consumed with guilt.

Throughout the night, the guards heard Misa crying herself to sleep, chanting “Shane” again and again, each gut-wrenching wail slicing the air around her like a sword.

*   *   *

Camille sat perched
in the window seat in her upstairs bedroom, gazing out at the softly falling snow. She loved snowy days, loved the silent calm that accompanied the icy flakes as they drifted from the sky. There was a need for that kind of peace in her life these days. Everything in her world had gone horribly wrong.

Camille had been unable to come up with the money to bail her sister out, and she felt helpless. Everything of intrinsic value—the house, the cars, the artwork, their stock portfolio—was all in Frankie's name. Camille owned nothing but the clothes on her back and those items hanging in her massive closet. Even the jewelry she thought she owned had been insured in Frankie's name. Once again, her husband wasn't taking her calls, and what little money remained in their joint accounts was barely enough to cover the bills. Frankie had withdrawn the bulk of the funds the morning of Misa's arrest.

In the three days since then, the public scrutiny had been nonstop. Neighbors drove by Camille's home at all hours of the day and night. News crews returned nightly to the scene of Staten Island's most scandalous crime in years, leaving Camille a virtual prisoner in her opulent home. Still too spooked to venture into her kitchen, she had been ordering food from local eateries and relying on Toya to swing by each night and bring in her mail and drop off incidentals. Camille had been holed up in her huge bedroom day after day, trying to come up with a mere hundred thousand dollars in assets to get her sister out on bail.

After Misa's court appearance, their mother Lily had visited with Shane and found him to be withdrawn, but still happy to see his “Gamma.” She had noticed that he was sucking his thumb now and seemed less energetic than usual. But he was being well taken care of, and for that Lily was grateful. Louis had shared with her the physician's report he'd been given after having Shane examined. The doctor had confirmed that Shane had been sodomized, and the department of social services had been called. Lily had been dismayed to learn that Misa had been too preoccupied with Baron in the days that Shane was left in Steven's care to notice something was amiss. Reading the doctor's report, it had broken Lily's heart to imagine Shane being abused. The precious three-year-old fell asleep on her lap toward the end of her visit and she laid him down in his bed before going home for the night. Lily had thanked Louis for stepping up and taking good care of his son when Shane needed him most, and asked him to try to understand that Misa wasn't the only one at fault for what had taken place. Surely, she had never expected anything like this would ever happen to her child.

Camille hated thinking of her sister left to languish on Rikers Island. Even harder to accept was the fact that the only thing standing between Misa and her freedom was money. Five hundred thousand dollars in cash or one hundred thousand in assets—Camille couldn't believe that she was having such a hard time coming up with that. The trouble was, she'd been blind enough to think that Frankie would never abandon her this way. All but one of her credit cards had been suspended. Their joint accounts had been wiped nearly clean, leaving her with a little over seven thousand dollars in liquidity.

She was embarrassed. During the course of their marriage, Camille and Frankie had blown a hundred grand like it was nothing on countless occasions over the years. Frankie loved to gamble and Camille loved to shop. So, she knew that it wasn't about the money. Frankie was holding out on her on purpose. Camille understood Frankie's stance. Part of her didn't blame her husband for what he was doing. She was only angry with herself for never listening to Toya or to her own intuition telling her to put away money for a rainy day. She had never anticipated this, though. Never in her wildest dreams.

Her telephone rang and she didn't even bother to glance in its direction. She knew that it was some reporter wanting an exclusive. She cracked the window open and caught a few snowflakes in the palm of her hand, watching them disappear into her skin, and wishing she could disappear just that easily.

*   *   *

Toya stared at
the
computer screen absentmindedly. She had been working harder than usual lately. But working in real estate during what was beginning to look like a recession was proving to be a challenge for her financially. In an attempt to turn a greater profit, she was putting in longer hours and doing her best to bring in new clients. Her long hours were also a thinly veiled attempt to avoid talking to either one of her parents.

Toya's father had apparently made amends with all the members of her family except for her. Over the course of the past several weeks, Nate had reached out to her siblings one by one and apologized sincerely for the pain he'd caused them. It had been her mother, Jeanie, who had given Toya's contact information to her father. That was an unforgivable offense in Toya's opinion, and she hadn't spoken to her mother in days. Her brothers had called and admitted to Toya that they'd been reluctant to reconcile with Nate, as well. He had, after all, been a terrible father to all of them.

“But, he's dying, Toya,” her favorite brother Derrick had said. “It don't make no sense being mad at a ghost.”

“I shouldn't have to let him off the hook for all the shit he did just because he's on his deathbed. You reap what you sow. Whatever happened to that?”

Derrick had sighed then. “Toya, I know he was a fucked-up father,” he said. “But he wasn't always that way. He wasn't always a bully. Don't just think about the bad things. You have to remember the good stuff, too. He used to take us to Coney Island every summer … before he got strung out. We would ride the Cyclone, eat cotton candy, play games. Remember that? He used to play with us, laugh with us and he was fun. We used to love him once upon a time. Don't forget that.”

Toya was thinking about that now as she stared blankly at her computer. She blinked finally, then ran her hand lightly across her face. She picked up her purse and opened up her wallet. There, she found the piece of paper on which Derrick had scribbled her father's cell phone number when he met her for breakfast a few days earlier. She snickered at the notion that Nate's bitch ass had a cell phone. He had come a long way.

She dialed the number, and took a deep breath as she listened to the ringing. She heard Nate answer, “Hello?” His raspy voice made her skin crawl, and she hung up, tossing her phone aside as if it were contaminated.

“Fuck that nigga,” she said aloud to herself. She wasn't scared of ghosts anyway.

*   *   *

Baron was having
his bed linens changed when Gillian arrived to visit him. The nurses had assembled at his bedside and drawn the curtain closed around them as they bathed him and changed his dressings and bedsheets. As Gillian peered into the room, his mother, Celia Parker-Nobles, approached and greeted Gillian with a smile.