Mumbling in agreement, Corey was turning to go when someone exited the minimart. It was the dull-eyed giant who’d been ogling Jada. Corey’s chest tightened.
The giant tossed Leon a box of Newports and climbed in on the passenger side of the pickup.
Jesus. They’re partners?
Leon slid a cigarette out of the pack and fished a brushedchrome Zippo lighter out of his pocket. It was a vintage model, and it was the same one Corey had last seen fifteen years ago. He would never forget it; the image was firebranded in his brain.
That old box of memories opened wider.
Leon caught him looking at it, and winked. He struck a flame, lit his cigarette, and took a slow drag.
“Your lovelies are waiting on you,” Leon said, lips curved in a smug smile. “Adieu.”
3
Corey got behind the wheel and gunned the engine. Mashing the accelerator too aggressively for a parking lot, like a hot-rodding kid, he peeled away from the gas station.
In the rearview mirror, he spotted Leon waving at him. He exhaled through clenched teeth.
He still couldn’t believe he had run into Leon, of all people.
He felt Simone and Jada watching him, felt their questions. He tried to will his racing pulse to slow, but it was tough.
“Who were you talking to back there?” Simone finally asked.
“Who was that man, Daddy?” Jada said.
Ignoring their questions, as if by doing so they would go away, he rejoined the sluggish flow of traffic on Haynes Bridge.
That damn cigarette lighter. He couldn’t get it out of his head. What the hell kind of point had Leon been trying to make? Was he taunting him? Making a joke?
With that sick bastard, you never could tell.
He wished he hadn’t given Leon his business card. What had he been thinking? He had reacted to Leon’s request as automatically as he did when someone extended their hand to be shaken or asked how his day was going. Responding in kind was the ingrained, socially correct thing to do.
But he worried about it. If Leon decided to stop by his office. .
No, he won’t do that.
But it was an empty attempt at self-assurance. The truth was, he didn’t know what Leon might do-hell, from one moment to the next, Leon didn’t know what Leon might do. In the past, that was partly what had made being his friend so exhilarating. Leon might, literally, do anything.
He wished he had gone to a different gas station. Then none of this would have happened, and that Pandora’s box of old memories would still be buried in the cellar of his mind.
He took a slurp of coffee, and immediately wished he hadn’t. His stomach was cramped in such a tight bundle that the coffee was likely going to give him indigestion.
He felt both Simone and Jada observing him intently now, and he wished they hadn’t been with him that morning; he wished that he’d run into Leon on his own and they had no clue about any of it.
He took another sip of coffee, and grimaced. It seemed he was wishing for a lot of different things right then.
“Baby?” Simone asked.
“Daddy?” Jada said.
He blinked. “What?”
“We asked you a question,” Simone said.
“Oh, right,” he said. “That guy back there? Just an old friend from back home.”
“From Detroit?” Jada asked.
“Yes, from Detroit.”
“What’s his name?” Simone asked.
“Leon.”
“Leon who?” Jada asked.
Corey glanced at Jada in the mirror. Her eyes sparkled with curiosity. She’d inherited her inquisitiveness from her mother, and for her to have seen a man from her father’s fabled hometown was probably unbearably thrilling for her.
But he wished she would let it go.
“His name is Leon Sharpe,” he said.
“You grew up with him?” Simone asked, eyes as intrigued as Jada’s.
“He lived across the street from us, for a while anyway.”
“What’s a homeboy?” Jada asked.
“A homeboy is a good friend.”
“Oooh, oooh. Really? Was Leon your best friend, Daddy?”
“Mister Leon,” Simone said, gently correcting Jada. “We don’t call adults by their first names, honey.”
“Was Mr. Leon your best friend, Daddy?”
He shrugged. “I guess so.”
“Wow, is that so?” Simone asked. “You’ve never mentioned him before.”
“Well, I haven’t thought about him in years.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Simone asked.
He looked at her. Simone’s interest was innocent, not suspicious. If he’d seen her run in to a former, admitted best girlfriend who she hadn’t seen in a long time, he might have been asking her similar questions, too.
“Fifteen years ago, I guess,” he said.
Jada’s face bunched into a frown. “You haven’t talked to your best friend in fifteen years, Daddy?”
“He’s not my best friend any more.”
“Why not?” Jada asked.
“Because I moved away from Detroit and came here.”
“But you could have kept talking to him,” Jada said.
“I haven’t.”
“Why?”
Their turn was coming up. Corey took it too fast. Simone knocked against him, and Jada slewed sideways in her seat as if riding a roller coaster.
Simone lightly tapped his thigh. “Take it easy, Mario Andretti. We want to get there in one piece.”
He bit his lip. “Sorry.”
“Daddy?” Jada said.
“Yes?”
“Why didn’t you keep talking to Mr. Leon?”
“I told you, because I moved here.”
“But you never called him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Jesus, Jada.” He clenched the steering wheel. “Do you plan to be a prosecuting attorney when you grow up? Lay off with the questions, all right? I don’t want to talk about it any more. Period.”
Simone stared at him, lips parted in shock. In the mirror, Jada’s face crumbled.
“Sorry, Daddy,” she said softly. She wiped away tears.
Guilt punctured his heart. He rarely raised his voice with her, and she didn’t deserve to be rebuked. She was only a kid with a natural interest in his past.
“It’s okay, Pumpkin,” he said in a soothing tone. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
But Jada wouldn’t look at him. Simone looked away from him, too, jawline rigid.
They were quiet for the rest of the drive.
4
At the clinic in Marietta, after conducting a series of tests and speaking with them at length, the specialist, Dr. Kim, declared Jada a suitable candidate for a bilateral cochlear implant. They scheduled her surgery, an outpatient procedure, for the end of June, a week after Jada’s summer school program would conclude and two weeks before their family vacation to Disney World.
Corey’s attention had wandered continually during the appointment. Simone had picked up the slack, asking the important questions that were on both their minds, and Jada had come prepared with a handful of questions of her own, too, which the three of them had brainstormed ahead of time. Corey was left looking like the only unprepared member of the family, and he could sense the disdain in the physician’s gaze and an edge of irritation in Simone’s tone.
But he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t stop thinking about the possible ramifications of bumping into Leon. Not one of them was good. Not one.
Around eleven-thirty, he pulled into the driveway of their home in Alpharetta. Simone would drop off Jada with her mother in Roswell and then go on to her own job, a solo therapy practice she ran in nearby Sandy Springs. He was heading to his office a couple of miles away.
He kissed Jada on the cheek, and she bounded out of the car and raced across the walkway to the front door of their brick, two-story house. Simone started to get out, and then she paused, glanced at him.