“I understand,” I said. But I didn’t believe him. Not fully. There was something tugging at him underneath the surface and I knew this man well enough to feel it even if I couldn’t name it. After three weeks on an island together I could read Quest the way he read financial reports, line by line, looking for discrepancies. And something in him wasn’t adding up.
But I let it go because pushing Quest when he wasn’t ready to talk was like pushing a wall. You’d exhaust yourself before it moved.
“I’ll be right back. Gonna hit the bathroom.” He stood up and stretched. “You want anything? I know you’re done with hospital food.”
“A crab cake sandwich and a caesar salad from Miss Shirley’s.”
“Miss Shirley’s? You getting bougie on me?”
“I just had a whole baby cut out of me on a Caribbean island, Quest. I deserve bougie.”
He gave me his best smile but it didn’t reach his eyes the way it usually did. “Say less. I’ll have it delivered. Gonna make a few phone calls too.”
He kissed my forehead and walked out. I stared at the door for a minute after it closed, trying to decode what I was feeling. Something was wrong. I didn’t know what, couldn’t prove it, couldn’t articulate it beyond a gnawing sensation in my gut thattold me Quest was holding something back. But my gut had kept me alive through Ahmad, through Janelle, through a plane crash and an island and a hurricane. I trusted it more than I trusted words.
• • •
I picked up my phone and FaceTimed Zainab because I needed to hear a voice that wasn’t attached to a monitor or a medical chart or a man who was lying to me about something I couldn’t identify.
“Zainy!” I screeched when her face popped up on the screen. God, it felt good to see her. A glimpse of normal life in the middle of all this chaos.
“Girllll,” she said, adjusting the phone. She was in a kitchen I didn’t recognize, which meant the safe house, wearing a bonnet and a Living Single sweatshirt with what looked like baby food on the collar. “How you feeling? You look better.”
“I’m healing. Slowly. The stitches itch like crazy and these pain meds have me constipated, which is a conversation I wish I wasn’t having but here we are.”
“Welcome to motherhood, sis. Say hi, Yusef!”
Yusef appeared behind her looking like he’d grown three inches since the last time I’d seen him. His voice had dropped and his face was thinning out and he was starting to look less like a kid and more like the man he was becoming.
“Hey Aunt MiMi,” he said with that shy half smile that always got me.
“Hey Yu! Boy, what are they feeding you up there? You look like you grew a whole foot.”
“Just eating, Auntie. Tell Uncle Quest I said what’s up.”
He disappeared back to whatever teenage thing he was doing and Zainab tilted the phone to show me the twins in their highchairs. Kheris was eating Cheerios one at a time with intense focus. Idris was asleep in his high chair with his face in a bowl of applesauce.
“Idris is literally sleeping in his food,” I laughed.
“That boy can sleep through anything. Gets it from his daddy. Prime could sleep through a hurricane.” She paused and her face shifted when she realized what she’d said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
“Girl, stop. I survived a real one. I can handle a figure of speech.”
We caught up for a while. She told me about being stuck in the safe house with Riot’s security guys who apparently ate everything in the fridge within two days. I gave her updates on Aziza. Her oxygen levels were improving. The nurses were talking about possibly transitioning her from the ventilator to CPAP soon. She was gaining weight, slowly, fraction of an ounce at a time, but gaining.
“And Serenity?” Zainab asked. “I talked to her yesterday. Sarai is getting so big already.”
“I know. She’s thriving.” I said it with a smile and meant it. Serenity deserved every bit of joy that baby was bringing her. But for a split second before the smile there was something else, something I didn’t want to name because naming it would make me a terrible person. My niece was healthy and growing and breathing on her own in a bassinet next to her mother while my daughter was three pounds in a plastic box with a tube down her throat. I was happy for Serenity. I was. But the jealousy came first, just for a flash, and I hated myself for it.
Kheris chose that moment to launch her Cheerios bowl off the high chair tray and scream at a pitch that made my stitches hurt through the phone.
“Lord, let me go deal with this. I love you, sis. Kiss my niece for me.”
“Love you too. Hug the twins and Yu.”
The screen went dark, the room went quiet. I was alone again with the monitors, the IV drip, and the feeling in my gut that wouldn’t quit.
• • •
