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Ajax loved grocery shopping, so she’d had Burger King from the drive-thru for lunch and waited the errand until she’d picked him up from school.
“Not those, tiger. There’s hardly any actual food in them.” That was the third sugary treat he’d tried to add to their cart, so she asked, “You got a sweet tooth today, huh?”
He shrugged. “I guess. Mercy Weller had a birthday today, and her mom brought cupcakes, but they had coconut.” He made his ‘gross’ face, which was in the top five cutest things he did.
Marcella laughed. “Tell you what—if you can wait dinner so long, after we take the groceries home, we’ll go back out and run up to Mama Kay’s, pick up an apple pie. Maybe get some wings and potato salad, too.”
His sweet face lit right up. “Yeah?”
“Sure. Let’s focus on groceries first, though.”
“Do you think she’s got sweet potato?”
“Probably not yet. Mama Kay doesn’t start selling pumpkin and sweet potato pies until the first of October.”
“But that’s tomorrow.”
“It is. You want to wait and go tomorrow?”
He considered the question as if the fate of the world depended on his answer. “No, let’s go tonight. Wings sound good. And apple pie, too.” He put the Ding Dongs back. Marcella put a loaf of wheat bread in the cart. It was pretty sneaky of the supermarket folks to put the packaged cupcakes and shit in the same aisle with the bread and peanut butter—staples of every family with kids she knew.
As they went down the aisle, Ajax walking alongside the cart, his fingers hooked into the wire side just like she’d made him do when he was little, Marcella gave herself a little pep talk.
Eight had called again that afternoon. He and his ‘brothers’ were on their way back from California, due in Tulsa tomorrow. He hadn’t changed his mind; he wanted to get together with her and Ajax as soon as possible.
As far as she could tell, he didn’t remember his drunken phone call on Friday night. When he’d called today, he was the same old Eight, except possibly a bit … gentler, she supposed.
He didn’t remember, but she did. It had been fucking with her head since Friday night.
A lot of that was probably the jarring juxtaposition of that strange call and then the ‘audition’ or whatever it was for Wes Brown right after. A blend of adrenaline and emotion had filled her full and swirled together, and she still felt pureed by it all.
Now that it was time to actually do it, put her son and the man who’d helped her make him in the same room for the very first time, she felt ill with worry.
But it was Ajax’s call, not hers. That was what she’d decided, and as freaked out by all this as she was, she’d never wavered on that point. If her son wanted it, she wouldn’t get in his way.
As they swung the cart around into the next aisle—snacks and soda—and Ajax was momentarily dazzled by the shelves full of Halloween candy, she jumped. “Hey, Aj, I heard from Eight Ball this afternoon.”
He’d been reaching for a bag of Reese’s pumpkins. Drawing his hand back, he turned to her. “My dad?”
That sounded so fucking odd. “Yeah. He’s been out of town, but he’ll be back in Tulsa tomorrow, and he wants to know if we can meet up.” Unable to read his expression, she added, “How do you feel about that?”
When he didn’t answer right away, she said, “If you don’t want to—”
He cut her off. “No, I do. You told him I don’t want just one time, right? Like, I only care if he wants to know me.”
“I told him.”
“So this means my dad wants to know me.”
If that asshole hurt her child, she was going to chop his body into such small parts no one would ever find them all.
Out loud, she said, “Seems like it.”
“And you’ll be with me?”
She reached out and grabbed his hand. “Every step of the way, Ajax.”
“Maybe we could take him to Mama Kay’s and have wings and pie with him.”
