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“Do you want me to call Jr to come—” Evan called behind me.
“No.” I quickly cut him off. “She’s fine.”
After making May some tea and helping her calm down enough to just lay down, I walked through the house nervously, listening for sound coming from my bedroom. There was silence. Evan was waiting for me.
The last light, the one in the foyer before the front door, led me to my purse. I slid my cell phone out to place it on the charger and looked to see that I had twenty-seven missed calls. All were from Evan. The last two came with alert pages—PLEASE CALL HOME.
“I was worried. Really worried,” Evan said when I walked into the bedroom.
Anything I could say sounded flat here, so I waited for him to go on.
“You never stay out that late. I didn’t know what happened to you. When I came home and you weren’t here, I called and you didn’t respond.”
“The ringer was off. I had it off since I was at work. I forgot to turn it back on. I didn’t know you called.” I sat down on the bed, eased my shoes off and began undressing.
“And then John called, saying he saw you joyriding downtown with some thug,” he said, pulling off his undershirt. John was his assistant.
“Some thug?” I was frozen now. The mention of John, joyriding, and downtown made me afraid to move. I’d forgotten about this possibility. That someone had seen me. Someone I didn’t see. Of course they had. But they hadn’t seen anything. I hadn’t done anything. But that was easier to think than say.
“Yes. He said you were driving down University in the front seat of a pickup truck with some thug. But I knew it couldn’t have been you,” Evan went on. “But he kept insisting—”
Evan was walking around the room and then he stopped to look at me.
“Wait ...” He came closer. “Was that you?”
“I wasn’t joyriding with some thug.” When I said this, I wished so hard that that was what it was—some drug dealer, a hustler, a pimp who’d kidnapped me. Anyone but Dame, because now I had to explain.
Evan’s next question came as no surprise.
“Then who was it?”
I exhaled and thought again that I had nothing to hide.
“It was Dame.”
These three words splintered into the room like buckshots. They were loud and fast, ricocheting off the walls and hitting Evan and me so hard that months from now, I’d know that we never recovered from that very moment.
“Dame? What would you be doing in a pickup truck with your former student? Riding down University ?” Evan’s questions came carefully, but there was confusion attached to each one.
“He came to the school,” I started.
“Again?”
“No ... well ... yes ... It was to see me. He wanted me to hear a song he’d written and I just went with him.”
“You went with him? Why couldn’t he have played the song at the school? Wait ... and why did he need you to hear it?”
“He’s doing some work with the organ and he wanted me to hear it in the truck. He has this whole sound system thing.... And I just went with him.” I tried to make the situation sound as simple as possible. As simple as it was.
“Why didn’t you call home and tell me this?”
“Everything was happening so fast. I was just going to listen to the song and then I lost track of time and then there was the whole thing with May.”
“Journey, you’re a grown woman. You don’t lose track of time. You call your husband. That’s the bottom line.” Evan’s voice was tightening. He started walking around the room again. “And you can’t just go riding around with that kid.”
“He’s not a kid,” I said. “And what do you mean, I can’t just go riding around?”
“John saw you. Who else do you think saw you? What do you think people are going to say? This could hurt us,” he rattled off.
