“Fire serves three purposes,” he said, feeding another branch into it. “Warmth tonight. Signal for rescue. And it keeps the boar away. They don’t like fire.”
I sat next to the fire, watched the smoke curl up into the sky, and wondered if anybody out there could see it. A passing boat. A plane overhead. Anybody. The smoke rose, thinned, and disappeared into the blue like it was never there. I felt the hope that had been building since the waterfall deflate a little.
The sun was going down. Our first sunset on this island, and it was painting the sky in colors that had no business being that beautiful when everything about our situation was ugly. Orange and gold and pink and purple and the ocean reflecting all of it back like a mirror. I put my hand on my belly and felt the baby shift and tried to imagine explaining this to her one day.You were conceived in a penthouse and born on an island and in between your daddy killed a man in his living room and your mama killed one in a warehouse and we survived a plane crash because your father refused to let the ocean win.
That was one hell of a baby book.
“I’m scared,” I said. It came out quieter than I intended.
Quest sat down beside me and put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me into him. His body was warm from the fire, solid against mine. For a moment, just a moment, I let myself believe that being next to him was enough to make this survivable.
“I know,” he said. “I know you’re scared. I’d be worried if you weren’t. But we’re alive, Mehar. We’re alive and the baby is alive and we have water and food and fire and we have each other. And I’m going to get us off this island. I don’t know how yet andI don’t know when but I’m going to do it. Because I didn’t fight this hard to build a life with you just to lose it on a beach.”
I leaned into him and closed my eyes, listening to the fire crack and the waves pull at the sand. Somewhere in the trees behind us, something heavy moved through the brush. I felt Quest’s body tense against mine. His arm tightened around my shoulders and his other hand went to his knife.
We sat like that for a long time. All we had was each other and hope. What I wouldn’t give to be laid in a bed, scrolling the ‘Gram, eating a slice of pizza right now. I thought about my sister and my brother. Were they concerned that they hadn’t heard from us yet?
Fruit and water wasn’t going to be enough. I could hear my belly growl. But I had Quest and I knew we could make it through anything.
4
Justice
Every time one fire was put out in this family, another one sparked just to remind us we weren’t allowed to rest. A nigga like me just wanted one regular Saturday. One. Wake up, drop my kids off, maybe hit the office for a few hours, grab some food, watch the game. That’s it. That’s the whole list. But being a Banks meant your Saturdays came with warrants and phone calls from your grandmother at eight in the morning telling you your pregnant sister just got dragged out of her kitchen in handcuffs.
Who in the fuck did the cops think Serenity killed?
I knew my little sister and she was soft. Serenity couldn’t even watch scary movies without covering her eyes. The only person I knew she’d ever killed was Mega, and that nigga deserved every bullet he caught. But even that was hard for her. She cried about it afterward. She cried about killing a man who kidnapped her and held her at gunpoint while she was carrying his baby. That’s how soft Serenity was. So the idea that she had a murder warrant from Connecticut for some teacher she allegedly killed over a decade ago wasn’t making sense to me. Not yet. But I was gonna find out.
“Does this mean we ain’t gotta go to Pittsburgh?” Storie asked from the backseat. Attitude fully intact. Crisis or no crisis, this girl was still lobbying for her summer.
“Noooo! I wanna see Grammy!” Dream whined.
“Chill. You’re both still going to Pittsburgh. I just need to handle something first,” I said, pulling into Rita’s driveway.
Rita was standing in the doorway when we got out of the car. She wasn’t crying. Rita didn’t cry in front of people. But her jaw was set tight, her hands gripping the doorframe. She looked like a woman who had been holding herself together by sheer will since the cops left. And she was running low.
Dream ran up the steps and hugged her around the waist. Rita’s face softened for half a second. She put her hand on Dream’s head and said, “Hey, sugar. Go on downstairs and find something to watch on TV.”
Storie walked up the steps with her phone in her hand, barely looking up. “Hey, Grandma Rita. Can I have the wifi pass?—”
“Storie Monique Banks.” Rita’s voice dropped to a register that could crack concrete. She couldn’t see Storie’s face, but she didn’t need to. Rita could hear disrespect in a heartbeat from across a room. “Your auntie just got taken out of my house in handcuffs and you walkin’ up in here asking me about wifi? Put that phone in your pocket, fix your face, and take yourself downstairs before I fix it for you. And I promise you, baby, you will not like my version.”
Storie’s mouth opened. Then closed. The phone disappeared into her pocket so fast you would’ve thought it was on fire. She walked past Rita with her eyes on the floor and headed downstairs without another word.
I almost laughed. Almost. Rita had a gift. The woman could barely see but she could shut down a teenager with the precision of a surgeon. I’d been battling Storie all morning and gotnowhere. Rita ended it in three sentences. If I could, I’d send her bad ass to live with Rita.
But if I can handle the most dangerous thugs, then I can handle this little girl. It’s just a nigga needed a lil help.
I followed Rita inside and she closed the door behind us and the house was quiet in that heavy way a house gets when something bad has happened in it recently.
“Y’all can go down and watch TV,” Rita called out toward the stairs, making sure both girls were settled. Then she turned to me. “Sit down, baby.”
I plopped down on the sofa. Rita shuffled to the cabinet, poured two fingers of Banks Reserve into a tumbler, and handed it to me. Nine-thirty in the morning and my grandmother was serving me whiskey. That told me everything about where her head was at.
“Tell me exactly what happened,” I said. “From the beginning.”
Rita sat down in her chair, the one by the window where she always sat. “We were in the kitchen. Somebody knocked…” She began to explain.
