They don’t have to know I’m his son.
Our worlds couldn’t be further apart.
I’m going to make sure they stay that way.
My doorbells rings. I take another swig of whiskey and run down to answer it.
Chapter Nineteen
Sin
Interrupted
I hurry to my car. A sudden rain shower and wind whips into every piece of exposed skin. I turn on the seat and steering wheel warmer and rub my frozen hands together while I thaw out. I throw that idea out of the window after ten seconds. I am so excited about seeing Kwame I’d be happy to drive wet and hot.
I didn’t expect to enjoy living here so much when I arrived last year.
Maybe because I grew up so close to it, but when I left the DMV at the tender age of eighteen, I didn’t appreciate any of the things that make it a fantastic place to live. Now that I’m back, I see it for what it is and can’t imagine living anywhere else.
When interest rates and the housing market calm down, I’m going to buy a place and Georgetown is the neighborhood that’s number one on my list.
I run across the street to Pho Mai, place the order for Kwame’s pho, and plug his address into my phone’s GPS while I wait.
I frown, surprised when the route calculates that his house is a twenty-five-minute walk away. If it wasn’t so cold, and I wasn’t delivering hot soup, I’d be up for it.
I crank up my car and follow my GPS. As I amble through traffic on M Street, I let myself imagine a life where I lived in this neighborhood.Where the perks of being home to a major university are amplified by the upscale stylish residential areas that bustle with great restaurants, boutiques, and bookstores, not to mention its proximity to the river.
The redbrick pavements and the uneven colonial-era cement block streets that remain are reminders of their place in America’s infancy.
I loved spending my weekends exploring here when I was in high school. My dream of affording something in the area seems further away now than it did then.
I turn onto Volta Pl NW and roll to a stop when all I see on the street are palatial estates owned by hedge fund managers and lobbyists.
I check the address in my contacts against the address in my Maps app. Maybe my mother had the address down wrong. I pull my phone out to call her as I approach the house. I gape at the palatial three-story, dark-red-brick colonial complete with a verandah on the second level.
Certain I’m in the wrong place, I turn to leave when I spy the rusty bike he rides to my parents’ every Sunday parked under a small brick porte cochere.
Working the style beat has made me an amateur expert on the hierarchy of property in any major city. There are three tests: proximity to power, wealth, or part of a family with historical significance. In a game of rock, paper, scissors, power crushes family ties, family ties will make up for a lack of wealth, and wealth will buy you proximity to power. And you can tell which hand a person has been dealt by where they live and the size of their yard.
The District of Columbia is a ten-by-ten-mile square with nearly three quarters of a million people living on the thirty percent of that square that’s available for residential development. That makes space the most expensive commodity in DC. And whoever owns this house is insanely wealthy and a perfect Venn diagram of wealth, power, and family ties. This house has a history as old as this country.
That’s his bike, but thiscan’tbe Kwame’s house.
He told us he just made partner at a boutique law firm in DC. Even then, he couldn’t afford a ten-million-dollar home.
Maybe he’s renting a room?
From the street, all the lights appear to be off. If he was too sick to come to Sunday dinner, then he’s probably asleep. I walk to the front door not sure what I’ll do when I get there. As I get closer, I hear the strain of music coming from the back of the house.
It’s one of Kwame’s favorite songs, “Abiba” by Rex Omar.
He’s here and awake. Feeling a little less apprehensive but still on my guard, I follow the sound around the back of the house and come to a wrought iron gate framed by tall boxwoods that double as privacy screen.
I think I hear the murmur of a male voice, but the music is so loud now I can’t be sure.
I wrestle with whether or not I should just drop the soup and leave. The excitement I had about coming to see him is a distant memory.
This was a bad idea. The hairs on the back of my neck are standing up. I should leave, but I can’t make myself. I need to see whatever is behind this gate.
