Page 27 of Justice

Skye broke first. She set the glass down, soft, and slid off the stool, and put the island back between us like she needed the furniture.

“I should get back to bed,” she said.

“Yeah.” My voice came out rougher than I meant it. “You should.”

She went. I stood in my kitchen and listened to her bare feet go down the hall. I didn’t allow myself to follow the sound. One weight down tonight. I had no business picking up another.

I poured myself the last of the wine she’d left in the bottle and drank it standing up, alone, in the dark.

15

SKYE

Aubrey’s house smelled like somebody loved it. Garlic, something sweet in the oven, a candle burning down on the counter. That good, full noise a home makes when it’s packed with people who belong to each other. I stepped through the door Friday evening and let it wrap around me. I had needed to be anywhere that wasn’t the Banks house tonight. I had needed to be a whole person for a couple hours instead of a performance, before I strapped the uniform back on in the morning.

“Auntie Skye!”

The twins rushed to me at the same exact time, talking clean over each other, neither one waiting on the other to finish.

Jodi and Chrissy. Ten years old, identical down to the natural arched eyebrows. They were pretty and growing so fast. I hugged them back and let them tell me everything at once. I smiled. I gasped in all the right spots. And I did not let one single thing show on my face.

Because they were ten. Exactly ten. And every time I laid eyes on those girls I did the math I kept swearing I’d quit doing. That ugly arithmetic that always landed on the same number. A birthday that should’ve been. A little girl who’d have been standing right at their height.

“They been counting down to Dreamgirls night all week.” Chase came out the kitchen wiping his hands on a dish towel. “I’ve watched this damn movie so much, I could play Jimmy.”

“Daddy. You can’t sing,” Jodi told him, flat, like she hated to be the one to break it to him.

“I most certainly can. And I will. Get downstairs before I change my mind about this popcorn.” He herded them toward the basement door and shot me a wink over their heads. “Good to see you, Skye. Don’t let my wife keep you up here scheming all night.”

“I’m not making any promises.”

He took his girls down to their movie. Through the floor I could already hear them fussing over who got to sit where. Then I heard that man launch into “And I Am Telling You” in a key the Lord never authorized, the twins screaming laughing, all that warm easy sound a family makes when it’s whole and it knows it.

I stood there and listened to it a second too long.

Then Aubrey pressed a glass of wine into my hand and walked me out to the back patio, where it was just us, the string lights, and the dark.

“Okay.” She folded up into her chair and aimed those eyes at me, the ones that had clocked my every lie for twenty years. “Talk to me. How’s it going over there in Banks land? Living in the big house now. Look at God.”

“It’s good.” Which was its own problem, honestly. “I gave up the apartment. He offered too much to turn down. Damn near double, plus room and board. Bree, I am saving almost every dime.” I turned the glass slow in my fingers. “One more year like this. Maybe less. Then I’ll have enough. Enough to get him back and get out of here.”

“And the old lady?” Aubrey asked. “Miss Rita?”

“Rita.” I couldn’t even help the smile. “Rita’s my homegirl for real. Funnier than anybody I ever met in my life. She decided I was family the very first day and did not once ask my permission about it.” I heard how reckless that sounded out loud and I said it anyway. “I love her, Bree. Like, actually. And the baby, Dream. She’s so sweet. She’s truly amazing.”

And there it went. My lip started going before I could get in front of it. The tears started to pour before I could stop them.

“She reminds me of Golden.” It came out barely above a whisper. “Every single day, Bree. Lights up the exact same way. And I go home to that little girl who isn’t mine. I love on her. I put her to bed. And it is like getting my baby handed back to me for one hour and then losing her all over again. Every night.”

Aubrey was up out her chair with both my hands in hers before the first tear even dropped.

“Skye. Baby. You have got to stop doing this to yourself.” She squeezed hard enough to hurt, and I needed it to. “It was not your fault. You hear me talking to you? It was never your fault. What that man did, what he took from you, not one piece of that was you.”

“I know it wasn’t. But knowing doesn’t fix how it feels, Bree. Seeing Dream every day cuts me to my core. And I can’t even stop, because I need the money her daddy is paying me. So I just keep on letting it cut me. Every single day.”

She held onto my hand until I got my breath back under me. She didn’t say another word, because there wasn’t one to say.

After a while Aubrey topped off both glasses and switched up the weather. She always knew when to move me off a thing before it swallowed me whole.