I picked up my phone and found Sandra’s number. She had given it to me the day I let her go. Said she would make her husband get her a new phone the next day since I had destroyed her old one. She said that she’s had that number for years and that she’d never change it. I had kept it for four years without using it and without deleting it and now I finally understood why.
I went to her number that I had saved, and I sent a text.
Me: You know who this is. We need to talk. About the little girl you had with you in the grocery store. She looked too familiar for me to just let slide. I know what I saw. You know what I saw, and we need to get to the bottom of a three year secret.
I sent it before I could talk myself out of it and put the phone down on the cushion beside me. It was late, so I wasn’t expecting a message back tonight.
Three minutes passed.
Then my phone buzzed.
Sandra: You have the wrong number.
I stared at that for a second, then I typed back.
Me: Nah. I have the right one. If you wanna keep shit cool between us, please don’t play with me about something so serious. I’d hate to have to blow up yo spot.
She left me on read for two full minutes and then she texted me back. She knew what kind of nigga I was, just from our short encounter. I could be dangerous, or I could be a nice nigga. She knew first hand that it depended on the way she’d act.
Sandra: There is no truth to know. My daughter is my husband’s child. Don’t contact me again. Ever. If you do I will tell my husband somebody has been harassing me and I will let him handle it. Do not reach out to me again. Especially not now. Live your life Gutta. And yes, I’ve done my digging too.
I read it three times.
Then I put the phone face down on the couch cushion. I leaned back and looked at the ceiling.
She had shut it down so fast and so hard that it almost felt rehearsed. Like she had been waiting for this moment and had her response ready before I even sent the message. She wasn’t about to keep me from what was mine.
—
She was going to protect her life that she’s built with that nigga, and as much as I understood that, I still had to be real with myself.
I couldn’t even be mad at her for it, but again, she wasn’t about to deprive me from knowing the truth and letting me decide what was next. Sandra had a husband, a home, a daughter she was raising and a marriage she had decided was worth keeping. What I was offering her was chaos. A conversation that blew everything up. Her whole life that was built on a lie.
A man from her past who had no place in her present coming back around asking questions that had no easy answers. Hell, what we had was brief and never should have happened, but since it did, we both had to face the music.
She had made her choice. I did too.
The problem was that her choice left me sitting on this couch at four in the morning with a baby face burned into my memory and I couldn’t stop thinking about. My heart beat differently now, and I couldn’t explain this shit. Yesterday, being a father never crossed my mind. Since I’ve seen that little girl, I didn’t want to go on without knowing if she was mine. I knew that if she was, I was at risk of losing a lot, but I would gain a daughter.
I couldn’t claim what I couldn’t prove. I couldn’t prove anything without Sandra and Sandra had just made it crystal clear she wasn’t going to cooperate.
The hardest pill to swallow was that little girl who looked exactly like me, she was being raised by a man who probably wasn’t her father.
In a house I had no access to.
I picked up my phone one more time.
Opened a thread to a number I hadn’t used in almost two years. Somebody who specialized in finding things people didn’t want found. No trail, no questions, just results. I knew exactly how I was going to handle Sandra. I just needed to handle the threat on my life first.
Me: Need you to run a private number for me. This shit is life or death type urgent. I’ll make it worth your while, especially if you get me the info in a timely manner.
After the message was sent, I sat back on the couch listening to the sound of my clock on the wall tick.
Two things were sitting on me that I couldn’t put down no matter how hard I tried. Somebody wanted me dead and I didn’t know who. And I had a child I couldn’t claim and didn’t know how.
Either one of those alone was enough to keep a man up all night.
Both of them together at the same time with Simone sleeping twenty feet away thinking everything was fine — that was a different kind of weight. The kind that settled into your chest and tugged at a nigga heart.
