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But then he stopped and looked at her. “I’ll handle it, Diana. You go about your normal affairs and let me worry about it. I’ll take care of it.”
She smiled. She trusted William with her life too. “Thank you,” she said heartfelt. But then her look lingered. “May I ask you a question?”
William never liked when somebody asked him that. He knew it was going to be an intrusive question. “You can ask certainly.”
“Why would you marry someone so young? I thought you despised being someone’s sugar daddy. I thought you found young girls insufferable because of their lack of maturity.”
“All of that is true and more,” he said.
“Then why would you marry a twenty-five-year-old?”
He wanted to say actually she’s twenty-six now, but he held his tongue. That would be a defensive retort. And what would it matter anyway? Twenty-five, twenty-six: still young.
“And please don’t say she’s mature for her age,” Diana added.
William wasn’t going to say that.
“Why did you marry such a young thang?”
“The short answer is that I don’t know,” he replied honestly. “The deeper answer is that she touched my heart in ways nobody else ever could.”
Diana stared at him. “Including me?”
She and William exchanged a long, regretful glance. But William was not the kind of man to live in the lane of what if. He met her too late. “Send me what you have,” he said to her, and got out of her SUV.
He made his way across the tarmac, up the airstairs, and back on his plane. A two-hour flight for a ten minute meeting. But she was a historic candidate for the highest governmental office in Canada. She couldn’t come to him.
He got on his plane without ever looking back.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“How many times I got to tell you? I’m not going to no daggone hospital!”
It was Gramps being his usual grumpy self, and Joy was at her wits end as she stood beside his recliner in his living room. He had a bump on the side of his forehead the size of a fat grape already. It was only going to get larger. And no telling what was going on internally. She wasn’t backing down.
“And now I got to deal with them white folks all over again.”
“When that ambulance gets here, Gramps, you’re going with those paramedics. I mean it. I told you I’ll drive you to the hospital. But you won’t let me So this is the only way I can get you there. You are going to get in that ambulance as soon as it comes.”
“Uh-hun, watch me,” Gramps said as he folded his arms.
Gramps was no blood kin to Joy. He was a kindly neighbor who looked out for her when she was a little girl who was forced to raise herself. Her mother preferred the streets and her men friends over taking care of a child. He was poor as dirt too, back then, but he looked out for Joy.
“Now hand me my remote and get out of house,” Gramps said as he snatched his TV remote from Joy’s hand and turned back on his TV. “It’s time for the stories.”
The “stories” were his soap operas that he looked at faithfully. He even recorded them! Joy shook her head and went out on the front porch.
Her mother, Juanita Lacey, was out there with Cory and Gramps’ biological granddaughter Elise Chamberlain, who was around William’s age. But she was a wonderful, caring person. Joy and William paid her to be Gramps’ full-time caretaker, and gave her extra money for Gramps himself because he wouldn’t take a dime more from Joy. And Gramps refused to leave his childhood home no matter how much Joy or William or even his granddaughter wanted him to. He was staying put.
The tension between Joy and her mother was thick. Joy refused to engage her in conversation, especially when her mother tried to act as if nothing happened. As if she didn’t stand in those rich white folks’ parlor room a month ago and claim her own daughter wasn’t worth a damn. After that day, Joy was done with her mother. She was tired of hoping she’d change. She was over it. She was done.
And then a police car showed up.
Cory frowned. “Who called the cops?”
“That’s what I wanna know,” said Juanita.
“I think they show up when an ambulance is called,” said Elise. “That’s regular around here.”
