“Ask away.”
“I’m not close with my mother,” she said, “and my father’s dead. Your mother passed away seven years ago.”
“That’s right.”
“What happened to her?”
More sharing. This was so new to Harrison that he thought it would be most uncomfortable. But it wasn’t. “She and my father divorced, and she went from man to man and love affair to love affair, which meant broken heart to broken heart until her heart just had enough. She had a heart attack and died.”
Jayda found his reasoning odd. “You sound as if you think love broke her heart.”
Harrison looked at her. He couldn’t get over how perceptive she was. “Yes,” he said. “That’s what I believe.”
Although it was odd to Jayda, she didn’t judge it. “What about your father and brother. Are you close to them?”
“No,” he said.
“Why not?”
“My brother and I are just too dissimilar to ever be close. As for my father, we were once close. But . . .”
Jayda stared at him. “But what?”
“About four years ago when his new wife, who was around my age, decided Dad was too old for her and she wanted to go out partying with people her age. Namely me and my girlfriend at the time. We all got drunk, although my so-called stepmother was apparently less drunk than my girlfriend and I, so she decided she would take my car and drive us back to father’s house. But she apparently was just as hammered as we were and she merged into oncoming traffic and had a head-on collision.”
Jayda’s heart squeezed. “Was she killed?”
He nodded. “Her and my girlfriend. Both of them died. I got out without a scratch.”
It was athank Godand anoh nomoment at the same time. “Don’t tell me your father blamed you?”
He nodded. “Everybody did. There were rumors that I paid off the authorities to declare that my stepmother was the driver, so that I would avoid prison, when it was me driving all along.”
“But that wasn’t true.”
“No, it wasn’t. But Father was hurt, and rightfully so, and for a long time he believed those lies. He just needed somebody other than his wife to blame. It nearly crippled our relationship. He didn’t want to have anything more to do with me.”
“Why would he even consider giving you his company if that was the case?”
“Bainbridge Oil was passed down to him from his father and to his father from his father and so on. He doesn’t want to be the one to destroy that legacy.”
“And he figures you would be the better son to carry it on?”
“He used to feel that way hands down. But now it’s more of a coin toss. And my brother, because of his marital status I’m told, has the upper hand.”
Jayda exhaled. “Visiting your father again won’t be easy for you.”
“It never was,” he said. “But especially now.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be there,” she said with a smile. But it touched Harrison deeply. And he pulled her into his arms. Oddly enough, he felt more at home with her than he’d ever felt with anyone else. Including his own family.
But they didn’t discuss it any further. That was enough for them.
They, instead, watched Tyler Perry movies on Netflix. It would show up on the bill as extra, Jayda reminded him, but Harrison smiled and said he could handle it. She laughed and they settled in.
Remarkable to her was that Harrison had never seen not one Tyler Perry movie before. According to him, he never bothered watching because so many critics gave them such low marks, but he enjoyed the two movies they saw. And commented more than Jayda did.
He laughed just as hard as Jayda did as they watchedMadea’s Destination Wedding. “They think all that shit’s for free?” he asked between laughs.
