Thin Love (47 page)

“You only care that I’m pretty and all I’ve ever,
ever
wanted for you to say to me is that I was pretty smart, pretty talented, pretty kind, anything, Mother, anything than just plain pretty. But you can’t do that. You don’t know how. You live inside your little box where everything is white and traditional and frozen in a time that died a long time ago.” Tears streaming over her cheeks, Keira wiped them away, annoyed. “You don’t struggle, you don’t need, you don’t want and all you care about is that I become a carbon copy of you. But I won’t be. I can’t be. There is too much of my father in me and he taught me something you could never beat out of me; he taught me to love blindly. He taught me that there is magic in music, that every single important purpose in life is about finding that magic and holding it inside you. And I took that magic and embraced it and it led me to a boy who is nothing like you; who is loud and large and beautiful. I love him. I love him more than breath and I will not walk away from him and there is no way in hell I will kill his baby.”

Her mother kicked up from the chair, sending it sliding behind her. “You’re being irrational, Keira, just like your father. I knew this would happen. I knew it the second that boy walked into my house. That’s why I did what had to be done.”

The ache in Keira’s chest shifted, dropped like a stone into her stomach. “What are you talking about?” Her mother looked over her head, to the I.V., over at the monitor that timed Keira’s heartbeat and she knew, just by the way her mother avoided her glare, how she rubbed her fingers on the bedrail, that the woman had somehow set the entire mess at North Rampart in motion. “What did you do?”

Shoulders lowering, her mother still refused to look at Keira. “I heard you talking about North Rampart and I knew what he was doing.” A small glance at Keira’s face and then her mother’s voice rushed out, full of excuses, rationale that probably sounded sensible in her mind. “I knew it was something you didn’t need to be around so I left a message with Steven’s golf buddy Detective Wilson. He took care of everything else.”

Keira let her eyes dip closed, unable to look at the woman for another second. “You called the cops.”

“I was protecting you.”

Her mother’s protection had cost them all, Kona’s twin most of all. When she opened her eyes and spoke, Keira’s voice sounded flat, resigned. “You killed Luka.”

“I didn’t do a damn thing to that boy.” The bedrail raddled against the mattress when her mother hit it. “Kona killed Luka the moment he decided to be a thug.”

“Get out.”

“I most certainly will not…”

“Get out of my room,” she told her, voice even, steady, brimming with a threat. Keira watched her fingers, the rough musician’s calluses on the tips and she wished she had her Gibson. She needed the calm it brought her. Her mind was set and she promised herself she wouldn’t look at her mother again. The lies, the betrayal, the smothering dominance the woman had always settled over Keira felt too full. “Get out. Now.”

She didn’t rage at her mother liked she wanted. Keira didn’t even enjoy the way the woman’s chin wobbled or how she visibly released her fight. Cora Michaels didn’t move, seemed incapable of doing anything more than stare at her daughter as though she was finally seeing her clearly for the first time. But it was a reaction that had come too late for Keira; an honest expression of respect she no longer needed.

Three slow pumps onto the call button and Keira’s nurse entered the room, that bright smile vanishing when she watched Keira and her mother staring back and forth. “I want her out,” she told the nurse. “I don’t want to see her anymore and I damn sure do not want an abortion.”

“She’s your mama…”

“I don’t care.” Again, Keira closed her eyes, moving her fingers to her temples, trying to ease the pounding there. “I’m legally responsible for myself and I don’t want this woman or her husband anywhere near me.”

Two small steps and her mother reached for her. “Keira…”

“Get. Out.”

And for once, the woman listened. For once, she didn’t exhaust herself exerting her will over her daughter, and when she walked out of that hospital room, Keira felt the heavy weight of her mother’s presence leave with her. It moved from her shoulders, from her chest and
finally
Keira could breathe.

A yellow brick wall greeted Keira as she waited in the Orleans Parish Prison lobby. The clerk copying her driver’s license moved the card between her plump fingers as though she was looking for a flaw, some small indication that Keira’s I.D. was a fake.

She still felt sore, achy and the fresh bout of morning sickness that Leann was convinced was psychosomatic had Keira feeling woozy and uncomfortable, like her skin had been pulled taut over her bones. Only three days out of the hospital, three days since she’d determined never to see her mother again, and Keira sat waiting for a suspicious jail clerk to tell her it was okay to walk through those heavy metal doors to speak with Kona. Keira didn’t know what she’d do or where she’d go the next day. She only knew she had to see Kona. She had to tell him about the hope growing inside her.

“Miss?” the clerk called and Keira jumped to her feet, pulling her I.D. and a Visitor’s badge under the glass in the metal dip of the desk. “Ten minutes until the end of the last visiting period. You’ll have a half hour with the inmate and then I need that badge back.”

She’d arrived twenty minutes earlier, scribbled her name on a faded form attached to a clip board. Keira glanced at that list, spotting a name that filled her with unease and the rumble in her stomach only got worse. “Lalei Alana.” Kona’s mother, and then, under that name, “Koa Hale,” his grandfather.

Keira closed her eyes, not eager to see either of them. It wasn’t fear of what they’d say to her that had her ready to bolt from the room, but the heavy weight of guilt she felt. Luka had gone with her to rescue Kona. He’d gone willingly, eagerly, but he’d gone because Keira had called him. He’d gone because, like Keira, he wanted to rescue Kona. That wasn’t an excuse. Luka had still ended up dead and Keira didn’t think Kona’s family would thank her for leading Luka to that death.

A screech from the large metal door that opened to the visitor’s area brought Keira’s attention away from the Admin desk and when she saw Professor Alana walking towards her, several thoughts came at once. The first was that the woman looked older. The death, the burden of burying your own child and the empty future of another seemed to wear on her; it was written in the unkempt wrinkles on her linen shirt and the loose fitting hang of her worn jeans. She had always walked with her chin uplifted, shoulders back and her stance elegant, but the woman who caught her eyes, who slammed the door shut behind her, slumped her shoulders, took sloppy steps toward Keira.

“You have a lot of nerve coming here.” Professor Alana swatted at her eyes, brushing back the hair falling from her loose bun. Keira didn’t jerk away from her when the older woman gripped her elbow, or when she pulled her toward the back of the lobby. “He doesn’t want to see you.”

She wouldn’t believe it. In all honesty, Keira didn’t care if Kona hated her right then. She knew telling him about the baby would change things. She knew him; she knew how he’d blame himself for Luka’s death. He needed a glimmer of hope and Kiera wanted to give him that. “I don’t care, Professor Alana.” She twisted out of the woman’s grip and stepped away from her. “I need to talk to him.”

The woman lifted her eyebrows, her gaze working over Keira’s face and then she sighed, sitting on the plastic chair to her left before she opened the purse on her lap. “This is about that baby.” She kept her eyes downcast, her fingers rustling through her purse until she withdrew her checkbook. A swipe of her pen and the woman tore out a check, shoving it at Keira without a word.

Five hundred dollars. Alana thought her grandchild’s life was worth five hundred dollars. She spotted the Memo and Keira crumbled the check between her fingers.

“To fix Kona’s lapse in judgment?”

“What else would I call this?”

Keira’s heart would not soften, despite the bags under the professor’s eyes or the dark circles that told her sleep had not been easy for her. She understood the heartache, felt echoes of her own father’s death in the shadows beneath Professor Alana’s eyes, but she wouldn’t be written off. She would not let her mother or Kona’s decide the course of their lives. He had a right to know about their baby. Despite his possible anger at her, despite the gut-wrenching loss she knew he must be feeling, he still had to know that hope would come to them.

“I don’t want your money. Take this.” She waved the wrinkled check back at the professor, then slipped it in her back pocket when the woman only glared at her, top lip twitching.

Suddenly Professor Alana grabbed Keira’s arms and shook her twice. “I will not let some stupid bitch ruin my son’s future. You say a word to him about that damn baby and I will destroy you, little girl. I promise you that.” Her fingernails bit into Keira’s skin and she tried to break away, to pull out of the woman’s touch. “You’ve already taken one son from me, you will not take Kona!”

“Kaikamahine, enough.” Koa came behind Professor Alana, pulled her away from Keira and as he held his daughter against his chest, patted her back, the old man’s kind eyes went glassy and soft. He gave Keira a weak smile, an expression Keira thought was forced, but sincere. “Kona’s waiting, little one, go see him. He needs to see a friendly face.”

Keira walked away from Kona’s family, then, from the small sobs working out of his mother’s chest and the gentle kindness softening his grandfather’s features. But she couldn’t help thinking, as she walked through that metal door that the guilt she felt would swallow her whole.

Three a.m. that morning a wiry Dominican kid from the Seventh Ward decided Kona had a softer pillow than him. He knew the score. At age fifteen, he’d landed in juvie, after a couple of scrapes that had him at the wrong in of the NOPD’s knuckles. So when the kid jerked Kona’s pillow out from under him as he slept, Kona took it back. He took it back after he broke the kid’s nose and fractured his jawbone.

His lawyer mentioned “five years” in passing, like it was a small bit of time that Kona could handle without problem. Five years for standing there while Ricky killed two people. Five years, maybe more if he didn’t turn into a rat. They lawyer said the phrase like is was nothing, like it wasn’t the end of everything Kona had wanted for himself. Five years and his team would forget about him. Five years on the inside and his coaches would pretend they’d never heard his name. Five years would destroy him.

When the metal door opened, that awful creak whining in the large room as visitors waited their turn to see whatever brother, cousin, son or father they had to speak to through plate-glass, Kona held his breath. It wasn’t his mother coming back in to tell him what the lawyer heard about the deal the D.A. offered. It wasn’t his tutu kane returning to make more half-hearted efforts at pulling a smile from Kona. It was her. Keira.

She stepped nervously into the room and Kona had fleeting thoughts that the introvert had returned. She held herself, arms circling her waist and her shoulders slumped as she peeked around the room.

Kona hadn’t seen that pretty flush on her skin in months, but it was there now, coloring her pale cheeks, warming her dull blue eyes. Keira looked thinner somehow, younger to him, but Kona thought that might have to do with spending the past week in a huge room full of convicts. It had aged him, those men and the preview of what his life would be like if he refused to cooperate with the D.A.