Page 17 of Justice

NOW

Rita Banks pushed a grocery cart through the Whole Foods on P Street like a woman on a parade float, waving her brand-new eyes over every display like the good Lord had put it there special for her that morning.

“Would you look at these tomatoes.” She stopped dead in the produce section and picked one up, turning it in the light. “You know I couldn’t see a tomato for what it was for near about ten years? Everything was just a red blur I had to squeeze and pray on. Now look. I can see the little wrinkles by the stem. That’s how you know it’s sweet, baby, the wrinkles.” She put it in the cart with real ceremony. “Cataracts had everything looking blurry for so long, I forgot some people were just plain ugly. Now I can see again? Baby, some of y’all should’ve stayed fuzzy.”

“You are terrible, Ms. Rita. But we’re getting every good tomato in here,” I said. “Point them out. I’m your eyes’ assistant today.”

She laughed, delighted, and off we went.

It was a good day. I’d learned by then that Rita had good days and bad ones. This was a good one. Sharp, bright, running her mouth down every aisle. She told a young stock boy his line-up needed edging and asked him did his mama know he left the house like that. She told me which of her church members were sneaking to the casino and which of them were sneaking worse. Which of her church members were sneaking to the casino and which of them were sneaking worse. She held up a bottle of some overpriced Pinot with a fancy French name, read the label out loud slow, said “amateurs,” and set it back down like it had personally disrespected her.

In the wine aisle she picked up a bottle of Cabernet, squinted at the price, and set it back down like it had insulted her mother.

“Forty-two dollars. For this.” She shook her head at the display. “Baby, let me tell you something about liquor, since these people clearly don’t know. My husband’s family ran a still out in Southern Maryland could’ve stripped the paint off a church van. Meanest, sweetest shine in three counties, and them men were content to sell it out the back of a truck for the rest of they natural lives.” She tapped her temple, that old sharp light coming up in her brand-new eyes. “I married in, took one look at that recipe, and saw the thing not a one of them could see. I saw an empire. And now it sits on shelves internationally.

“Everything respectable started out as something that wasn’t, baby. Every last thing. Don’t you let nobody on this earth tell you different. You hear me? You remember that.”

Everything in me stopped.

Because she was reading my life back to me over a bottle of overpriced wine and she didn’t have the first idea she was doing it. I was a woman who had started out as something else. I was betting everything I had left on respectable being a thing you could build out of what you used to be.

“I’ll remember,” I told her. And Lord help me, I meant it more than she would ever know.

I stayed guarded. That never turned off, not for anybody. I clocked the exits out of habit, kept my back to the endcaps, ran my quiet inventory of every face that lingered too long. But somewhere between the tomatoes and the checkout line, listening to an eighty-five-year-old woman narrate her entire history over a shopping cart, I caught myself doing a thing I hadn’t done on purpose in years.

I was enjoying myself.

Serenity’s car was in the driveway when we got back, and I felt Rita perk up beside me before I even parked.

Inside, Serenity was waiting in the front room with a look on her face that told me something had shifted while we were out choosing tomatoes. She helped me get the bags to the kitchen, then sat her grandmother down and took both her hands.

“Grandma. I’ve got news, and I need you to be happy for me.” She pulled in a breath. “The Kings offered me a real position for a while. They need help with some forensic accounting. And I think it would be good for me.” Her voice wobbled and steadied. “It’s a year, to start. I already talked to Justice. I need this, Grandma. I need a change of scenery.”

Rita was quiet a long moment, studying her granddaughter with those clear eyes. Then she reached up and put a hand to Serenity’s cheek.

“What about Xander?” Rita asked.

“Things aren’t that serious and I don’t want to slow down for a man. I’ve already done that. I think I want to live in New York for a while.”

“Well, if that’s what you want then I’m proud of you. Now go on to New York and make them Kings richer and don’t you dare feel one ounce of guilt about it.”

Serenity broke a little then, laughing and crying at once. I stepped back toward the kitchen to give them the moment, and that was when Justice came through the door.

He caught the tail of it, his sister wiping her eyes, his grandmother beaming. He already knew, I could tell. They must’ve talked earlier. He crossed the room and pulled Serenity into a hug and told her he was proud of her, that the Kings were lucky, that she’d earned every bit of it. He said all the right things in all the right places, warm and sure, a big brother sending his baby sister off to fly.

But I was watching his face over the top of Serenity’s head, because watching faces was the one skill that had never once failed me. And for just a second, before he tucked it away, I saw the other thing move through him. Not resentment. Nothing so small as that. Something closer to a man doing math in his head and not liking the total. His jaw tensed for a moment. His eyes went somewhere far off.

He was running out of people he trusted with the ones he loved. And he wasn’t going to say that out loud, not to Serenity, not on the day she got her wings.

Then his eyes found me across the room, and I watched him settle into a decision.

He found me in the kitchen a little later, putting the last of the groceries away while Rita and Serenity talked in the front room.

“Miss Skye. Can I talk to you a minute.”

“Course.” I closed the cabinet and turned, keeping my hands busy with a dish towel so they’d have something to do that wasn’t fidgeting.

“With Serenity leaving, some things are gonna change around here.” He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, unhurried. “I’m moving Rita into my place. It’s bigger, it’s got the room, and I’d rather have her under my roof where I can have eyes on her rather than have everybody driving across town every day worrying. She’ll fuss about it but she’s already agreed. She’s been living here for decades but she really can’t live on her own anymore, not with Serenity leaving.” A flicker of a smile. “So here’s what I’m asking. I want you to come on full-time as house manager. Live in. You’d run the household, you’d be with Rita during the day, and there’d be some hours with my youngest, Dream, in the afternoons. I’ll double what the agency’s paying you.”