Page 51 of Justice

26

SKYE

By nine o’clock that night the house had gone quiet. Rita was down. Dream had passed out mid-sentence about that horse. Storie had shut herself in her room the second she got back from Kira’s, same as always.

I should have gone to bed. Instead I poured myself a glass of wine and went wandering, and that’s how I ended up on the lower level, standing in the doorway of the theater Justice had built, watching the back of his head in the dark.

He had a drink in his hand and some movie going that he clearly wasn’t watching.

“You gon’ come in, or you gon’ stand in the door being nervous?” he asked, without turning around.

“I’m not nervous.”

“Mm.”

I sat down. Not right beside him. One seat over, which felt like a decision I’d made for both of us. He tipped his glass at mine without a word, and we watched about twenty minutes of a movie neither of us could have summarized at gunpoint.

Then I opened my mouth and let out the thing that had been sitting in me all afternoon.

“Can I ask you something? And you can tell me to mind my business.”

“Ain’t that my line?”

“I’m stealing it.” I turned my glass by the stem. “What happened out there today. With Kira.” I felt him go still beside me. “The way she looked at me… I’ve been trying all day to figure out what I did to that woman.”

He was quiet long enough that I almost took it back.

“You ain’t do nothing to her,” he said finally.

“Then what is it?”

He set his glass down, then rubbed his hand down over his mouth. I could feel him thinking about how honest he wanted to be with me.

“Kira was my wife’s best friend,” he said. “Twenty-something years. Godmother to both my girls. She was at the hospital every day at the end. She’s the one who held Dream at the funeral so I could carry the casket.”

“Okay.”

“And I slept with her.”

I kept my face exactly where it was.

“Not back then,” he said. “Nothing like that, not when Monica was alive, I need you to know that first. This was recent. Last few months. Few times.” He shook his head slow. “We usually met at hotels. That’s the ugly truth of it all. I feel a lil guilty about it because it’s a messy situation.”

“Was it serious?”

“Not for me.” He looked over at me then. “And that’s the part I feel bad about. Because I knew it was for her. Knew it and let it keep happening anyway. Then I ended it, and she ain’t take it well.” He picked his glass back up. “She been finding reasons to be around ever since. Today when we talked, I told her that we needed a break from her. She can’t see the kids right now.”

The screen threw blue light across his face. He was looking straight ahead again.

“You judging me?” he asked.

“This is a judgment-free zone.”

He let out a laugh, exposing his Colgate smile. Some of the tightness went out of his shoulders.

“Alright then.” He shifted in that big seat to face me. “Since it’s judgment-free. Where your man at, Skye?”

Two glasses of wine had my mouth looser than it had been in five years. That’s the only excuse I’ve got. Because the truth was sitting right there behind my teeth, the terrible weight of it, and for one insane second I felt it try to come up.