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“Probably not, but maybe.”

Monica’s husband came to the door of their three-story whitestone. He was expecting my daughter to come alone.

“Joe,” he said.

“Coleman.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Daddy has to talk to Mom,” Aja said with authority in her tone.

“About what?” Coleman Tesserat addressed the question to me.

“Joe?” Monica called from the second-floor landing.

“Hey, Monica,” I said. “I have to talk to you about something.”

“Call me tomorrow.”

“Can’t,” I said. “It’s LAD.”

I managed not to smile at the frown that twisted into Coleman’s lips. He wanted Aja to call him Daddy and resented the fact that his wife and I had a secret abbreviation system to communicate with.

My ex-wife harrumphed and then said, “Let me put something on. I’ll meet you in the kitchen.”

“I’ll keep you company till she comes,” my daughter said.

“You will go to bed,” Coleman said.

He was a light-skinned Negro with handsome features. My height, he was ten years younger than my ex. Coleman was an investment banker and pretty well-off; the kind of man who liked owning things, or at least controlling them. I appreciated this quirk in his personality because it alienated my daughter.

The evil look she gave him was cute on a sheltered seventeen-year-old, but one day Coleman and Monica would experience the hatred seething underneath.

“Okay,” Aja said. Then she kissed me on the cheek and whispered, “Good night.”

I went through the first-floor sitting room to a smaller dining area and into the L-shaped kitchen. I sat at the small table where the family of three ate breakfast and sometimes dinner.

I was thinking of the best way to broach the serious talk that she and I needed to have. LAD meant life and death in our code system. Hearing that, she knew I meant business.

Maybe fifteen minutes later, Monica came in wearing a teal sweat suit. Coleman followed. He was clad in jeans and a black T-shirt.

“Well?” he asked. “What is it?”

“Tell him to leave,” I said to my ex.

“You don’t order me in my house,” Coleman said.

“Please, CC,” Monica said in almost a whisper.

He wanted to fight. I did too. Instead he turned away, walked through the rooms to the stairs, and stomped his way to bed like Rumpelstiltskin after a hard day making gold on his Wall Street spinning wheel.

When we were both sure that he was gone she said, “What is it?”

“You mess with me all the time, M.,” I replied. “Send me threatening letters, have lawyers send me threatening letters, and every once in a while you try and get at me through A.D. That’s cool. I take it in stride. I don’t come to you and ask why didn’t you do something to help me, your daughter’s father, when they were trying to bury me under the prison.”

“You know why,” she said like Moses on high.

“And so you do this?” I asked, running my finger along the deep scar down the right side of my face.