Page 76 of Justice

“Lil girl. Take that bass out your voice,” I growled as I stepped aside so she could see all of it, every drawer, every private little thing I’d turned over. “You don’t pay not one motherfuckin’ bill under this roof. Not the light you leave on. Not the water you waste. Not the phone I’m holding in my hand. Not one nail in one wall of the room you’re standing there calling yours. It’s mine. All of it is mine. So don’t you ever in your life stand in my face and tell me where I can and can’t go in my own house.”

Her mouth closed and she backed away from me as if she were afraid I was going to hit her.

I held up the pink case.

The color went right out of her face.

“Where did you get this.”

“It’s not a big deal.” But her voice had lost its edge. “It’s not even what you think.”

“Where. Did you get birth control.” Each word its own sentence, because if I said them any faster I did not trust what would come after them. “You are fifteen years old. Who helped you get it. This shit isn’t your choice to make without my consent.”

She looked at the floor. Looked at the wall. Looked anywhere but at me. I watched her weigh her options in the cold, calculating way she weighs everything, and then she gave up the name because she had nothing left to trade.

“Kira,” she said. “Kira took me.”

I don’t remember walking to the study. I don’t remember the stairs or the door.

What I remember is standing at my own desk with my phone in my hand and Kira’s name on the screen, and a stillness in me so complete it should have scared me a lot more than it did.

She picked up on the second ring, careful, already knowing.

“Hey Justice, I’ve missed you.”

“You took my daughter to get birth control.”

Silence. Then the words came tumbling. “Justice, let me explain. She came to me. She was crying, she was embarrassed to go to you about it, I promise you it was not what you’re thinking, it was for her skin. Her hormonal acne.”

“You took my fifteen-year-old. To a doctor. And you put her on a prescription. And you did not tell me.”

“She made me promise not to tell you!” Her voice cracked high. “She said she’d never speak to me again if I said one word to you. I was just trying to be there for her like Monica would have wanted.”

“Don’t.” It came out like a blade. “Don’t you put my dead wife’s name in your mouth. Don’t you dare.”

She went quiet.

“You knew,” I said. “You sat at my table and knew my child was sneaking around. You took her to a doctor. You kept it from her own father because a fifteen-year-old asked you to. You picked her secret over her safety. Over me.”

“I was trying to protect her.”

“You were trying to be liked.” I heard it land on her, that little sharp intake of breath. “That was always your problem, Kira.”

“That is not fair.”

“You will never see my girls again.”

The line went dead silent.

“You don’t mean that.” Her voice had gone thin and scared. “Justice, those are my goddaughters. I have been there since they were babies. You cannot just do this.”

“I can. It’s done. You come near my house, my kids, or my grandmother, and me and you gonna have a different conversation. You’ve known me almost as long as you knew Monica. You know exactly what I am when somebody puts my children in danger.”

“She needed a woman in her corner!” Kira was crying now. “You got that nanny playing house in Monica’s kitchen and you’re gonna cut ME off? After all these years? You don’t know what you’re doing, Justice. You have no idea what you’re throwing away right now. None.”

Something under those words snagged at me. Some weight to them I couldn’t place.

I was too far gone to care.