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Marcus muted the TV.
“I woke up that night. I don’t think I ever really fell into a deep sleep. But anyway, I woke up and…you weren’t there.”
“So?”
“So…where were you?”
“I don’t know. Bathroom? Kitchen? The office?”
“You don’t remember?”
He frowned. “That was almost seven—no, eight months ago. No, I don’t remember. Why?”
“I don’t know. I just got to thinking about it, that’s all.”
His eyes narrowed into slits. “Is there something you wanna ask me?”
Ladonna stood frozen in her spot. Something was telling her to let it go, but she had never been one to back down, even when it was in her best interest to do so. “I already asked, and you answered. So I guess not.”
Marcus continued to stare, and Ladonna slowly felt the energy shift. It was disquieting. “Since we’re asking questions and all, I got one for you,” he said.
She knew she needed to walk away. Not because there was danger, necessarily, but because she might be walking into a trap. “I’m listening,” she said.
Marcus sat up and turned to face her head-on. “You told me Iesha told you about the thing with Bakari and his teacher.”
Oh, shit.
“Yeah. What about it?”
“I saw Iesha at the PTO meeting last night.”
She’d forgotten Iesha was a member. Not that it mattered. Iesha had been to dozens of meetings with Marcus, but he’d never mentioned speaking with her. “Okay…” she said, trying desperately to sound like nothing was amiss when everything was amiss.
“She said to tell you ‘hey’ and that she misses you. She said she hasn’t talked to you since the last game.”
Getting caught red-handed like a ten-year-old who’s perfectly dry just after supposedly taking a bath is both humiliating and horrifying. Ladonna stood there like a child, perfectly still, staring at her husband, mind swirling, and waited for something or someone to save her. Maybe the stove would suddenly catch fire and they’d have to run out of the burning house, forgetting all about the lie between them. Or maybe a sudden storm would pass over, bringing a tornado with it, and they’d have to flee the kitchen and head to the basement as the wind whipped around them, blowing out the windows and scattering debris. Better still, maybe an intruder would suddenly kick the door in. He could tie them up and gag them—yes, that would be perfect—and the trauma from the ordeal would make them forget all about the lie.
If the situation wasn’t so dire, Ladonna would have laughed at the irony. A lifelong worrywart who woke up every day scared of those situations was now trying to will one of those situations into existence so she could escape the consequences of her shitty actions.
But alas, it wasn’t a natural disaster or sneaky criminal who saved Ladonna that night. It was her daughter Carmen who came bursting through the door, interrupting whatever Marcus had planned for his lying wife.
“Carmen? What are you doing home?” he asked, and Ladonna nearly collapsed in relief. She couldn’t have cared less why Carmen was at home instead of in Greensboro.
“I—um, I need to tell you guys something.”
Marcus raised his eyebrows. “What? What’s wrong?”
“I dropped out of school.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Webblookedaroundthesmall office and scrunched his eyebrows together in frustration. The disarray was particularly bothersome today, but what made it worse was Ackerman’s complete blindness to it. “Can you at least throw the trash away? What the fuck is this?” he asked, holding up two empty, yet food residue encrusted plastic wrappers.
“Oh, that’s from my cinnamon rolls.”
Webb flung the wrappers at the trash can in disgust, but their weightlessness only made them float off in two different directions before drifting to the floor. Ackerman snickered and made no move to collect them. Webb stood staring at his partner with hate in his eyes.
“You on your period or something?” Ackerman asked.
