Page 9 of Butterfly 6, Phase 1

“They think she has cancer. She’s at the hospital as we speak.” Ethic wanted to fill her in on everything. On Bash. On the police. He couldn’t justify overloading her. She didn’t even remember the illicit parts of him. He wasn’t looking forward to reintroducing that part of himself to her.

“Oh, Ethic, I’m sorry,” Alani whispered.

Her response lacked true attachment. She felt sorrow because there was a child involved, but she couldn’t remember the personal connection. She couldn’t recall Yara sleeping on his chest as an infant. She couldn’t recall being there when the twins were born. She couldn’t flash back to all the time she had spent with the twins in her garden, planting tomatoes, or the days they spent lounging by the pool. She couldn’t recall how they raced through the Okafor estate searching for their La La until they found her. “Does Morgan need anything?” Alani asked.

“We all just need for you to get better. That’s your only job right now. The version of you she needs, you can’t be right now,” Ethic said, continuing to massage her back as she snuggled beside him. “I’m going to have you, Nannie, and the kids taken to our home in the morning. Mara will provide live-in care until you’re back on your feet,” Ethic concluded.

“I don’t like her. She doesn’t have a gentle touch with me when you’re not around, and I feel like she goes through drawers and shit. She just gives me bad vibes. I don’t want her there,” Alani protested.

“Try to give her an easier time, Lenika. Her presence is necessary for your healing, and she was very hands-on and available when you were unconscious. If she can get you back on your feet, we need her. For now, at least.” Ethic was gentle with his assertion, but Alani knew protesting would be futile. “I’ll bring Lily, my house manager, back as well. She practically helped raise Mo, Bella, and Eazy before I met you, so she knows what to do. She’ll cook, clean, prepare True’s bottles, and get the kids wherever they need to be. Whatever we need.”

“Wow, yeah, that would be great.” Alani sighed in relief, and it was a silent jab at Ethic’s soul. The Alani he knew would have never welcomed the idea of another woman running her house.

“All I need from you is grace for having to split my presence between you and the hospital for a little while,” Ethic said.

“You say it like you’re going away for a long time,” Alani replied. Ethic stilled, and she lifted her head off his chest and looked into his eyes. “Why does it feel like you’re preparing to leave us alone?”

“I’ma get back to you as quickly as I can, Lenika. There’s no other place I want to be than by your side, but this can’t wait,” Ethic explained.

“You don’t have to explain. You should be with Mo,” Alani complied. She could hear his apprehension. He was trying to figure out how to be everywhere and take care of everybody all at once. “We’ll all be home, waiting for you. It feels like there’s more that you aren’t saying, but just know we’re waiting, so you have to make it back home. No rush. We’re on your time. Take care of Mo and Yara, then all three of you come back home.” She turned into his body more, looking up at him and placing her hand on his face.

“Everything will be okay,” she assured. “I’ll call Ny. It sounds like the kids and I need to be at altar call on Sunday. Nannie will help me get everyone there. We’ll take the kids and pray for Mo and Yara.”

The kids, he thought, instantly soothed. She’s in there somewhere.

Stress pushed out of him as he exhaled.

“You’re my church, Lenika. You don’t even know. Shit gets heavy, and I come to you to kneel. You think I’m praying with you, but I’m praying to you, baby.”

“That’s a sin,” she whispered. “Of the greatest proportions. Don’t talk like that.”

“It’s the only language I speak. God knows. The only way He’s ever been able to reach me is through you.”

Alani was captured by his devotion to a love they shared. He knew it intimately. The intricacy of their history was evident, and it frustrated her that she was dissociated from all the moments that had led them here. “I want to remember every detail of this love,” she said sadly. “You believe in it so much that it makes me want to remember. I’m afraid once we’re back under the same roof, I won’t show up for you in the way you’re used to. I don’t want to disappoint you.”

“You never could, baby.” Ethic kissed the top of her head, and she held him tighter. “I almost lost you. The gift of seeing your chest rise and fall fills me with a gratitude I can’t explain. I want you to show up in the way that makes you comfortable. You don’t have to overplay a role you don’t know. Learn your place in our lives. It’ll take time. I’m aware you might not be the same as you were before, but you’re here, and that’s enough. We’re going to figure this thing out,” he reassured. The uncertainty of their future was terrifying, and a silence fell over the room. The sound of True’s cries abruptly rang out through the still house, and Ethic lifted from the bed.

“I got her. Get some sleep,” he said.

“I thought we were going home,” she replied.

“I don’t want to take y’all out of here in the middle of the night. We’ll go home in the morning,” Ethic concluded. “Rest.”

“I Remember” by Keyshia Cole

“Shhh,” Bella whispered as she picked her baby sister up from her bassinet. “You’re going to wake everyone up, True.” Bella felt like she weighed a thousand pounds as she groggily put her baby sister over her shoulder. She needed Alani to recover, and she knew that helping with True would ease the burden, so she stepped up so that Alani could rest. Bella bounced softly and rubbed True’s back. “You’re going to wake everybody up.”

The soft rapping at the door caught her attention, and she spun to find her father standing there. Only a hint of him was detectable. He was a shadow in the room, but she knew his stature like the back of her hand, and his scent was recognizable from a mile away. Bella would always know when Ethic had been in her room because his cologne was so expensive that it lingered forever. It clung to blankets and sweaters even after they were washed. All it took was for her to get a waft of that smell to make her breathe a sigh of relief.

“Let me see her,” he said as he stepped further into the room. He relieved Bella of her sisterly duties and then clicked on the lamp before taking a seat in the rocker in the corner of the room. The glow of the lightbulb shone softly, casting a golden hue over Bella’s rich skin. “I remember when you were this small.”

Bella scoffed and sat on the edge of the bed.

“I was so scared. I had no idea what it meant to be somebody’s daddy,” Ethic recalled. His voice seemed to calm True as he propped her gently in the crook of his elbow and offered her the bottle of breast milk he had retrieved from the kitchen. She whimpered as she closed her dreamy eyes and savored the milk. Such a perfect baby. She reminded him how beautiful life could be.

“I didn’t think you were afraid of anything,” Bella teased. She was a teenage girl who idolized her father. Even after discovering the monster within Ethic, she loved him without conditions because she had come to understand that his layers were necessary. It was how he kept her and everyone she loved safe.

“I wasn’t before you,” Ethic said with a lazy smile. “I was wild and reckless. Ambitious.” There was a whimsical tone to his reminiscing. “When I had you, everything changed for me. I had to figure out how to protect you, and everything in the world looked like a threat. I was even a threat. I had to change and move differently for you. I knew you only had one parent, so I had to be around for you. I just wanted to be a good father.”