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“How are you feeling about the plan?”
“I think it’s good and will get the job done. Until then, I don’t want to think about Malcolm. I don’t want him in our heads or in our house.” I pull her to me, holding her close. And for a while it’s just us. Exactly as it should be.
We fall back into our morning routine with ease. I pour the coffee. Dee, having time for more than a smoothie-to-go, makes a frittata. We talk and enjoy each other’s company, exchanging casual touches with an intimacy reserved for lovers.
After breakfast, we tidy up and Dee leaves for the office. I answer emails and attend a video call with Nadia. The project is slightly ahead of schedule thanks to her meticulous attention to detail and Jordyn’s design that only requires minor tweaks.
I pour another cup of coffee and head to the home office. I put on music, selecting the song track fromThe Dark Knight Rises. Although storytelling had started as an escape into the fantastical worlds of my making, it was also an essential creative outlet for my imagination. A driving force that could be intense, all-consuming, and often rewarding on a deep gut level.
There were, of course, frustrating times when the words in my mind wouldn’t harmonize on the page and my writing fell flat. I cursed the muses then. But there were other times when the gods of inspiration gave me wings and my writing soared so high I had to race to keep up.
After hours of my fingers flying across the keyboard, I realize this is one of those times when it had soared. The music blares and I feel a line of sweat riding down the center of my spine. I hadn’t ever had to suffer for my art, but it still came from pain.
I take a sip of coffee, wince that it’s cold, and look back over my chapters. At night, District Attorney Delayna sheds her conservative suits and law-abiding pursuits for justice to don leather and a black mask as she tracks down guilty assailants that the court had wrongly set free. Dubbed Dark Angel, this time her manhunt results in finding the wife beater, who had nearly killed his spouse and gotten off on a technicality. The scene is as vivid as the blood she spills. His pleas for mercy scream off the page. The terror he’d inflicted on his wife thrown back at him in savage reflection. It’s the image I want, the brutality I need. His pain, his suffering.
Dee has her therapy. I have mine.
Channeling the dark thoughts into my writing is as exhausting as it is energizing. I push back from the desk and flex my hands, open and closed. It’s not uncommon for them to cramp when I’m at it non-stop. Knowing I’ve given all I’ve got for today, I go shower and drive over to Victor’s. He’s working the late shift so he’s home this afternoon.
At the sound of the doorbell, Rufus starts barking and I can hear Victor try to quiet him down. When he answers, there isn’t a sting in his gaze, but there’s an implication of one.
I bend down to pat Rufus who is nudging my leg.
“Hungry?” he asks.
“I could eat.”
“Get the mustard and roast beef.”
For the next few minutes we work together assembling two behemoth sandwiches with a side of potato chips and pickles.
“How’s Dwayde?” I ask, grabbing a couple of Cokes from the fridge. “We talked a bit last night, but he was hard to gauge.”
“Dwayde thinks you walk on water, nothing you said has changed that. If anything, he feels more akin to you now that he knows you have this common bond.”
“Dee was hoping it would encourage him to talk.”
“Is that why you wanted him there?”
“In part. But I also didn’t want him to hear it from anyone but me.”
“Now I know why you were so sure that Dwayde wouldn’t reveal his secrets. You’d been keeping yours for thirty years.”
Guilt comes rocketing back. “I fucked up, Victor.”
“Just shut up and sit. I’ve got some things I want to say.”
He pulls up a seat opposite me. His temper is on a slow simmer, but threatens to gain more heat.
“You seriously pissed me off,” he begins after a few bites. “I’ll get over it. But I’m gonna make something very clear—and I’m speaking for Mama and Papa too. You got that?”
“Yeah, I got it.”
“You were never a burden or a charity case or anything but family.”
“You took me in—”
“I told you to shut up,” he snaps out. “We did what we were meant to do. What we wanted to do. We didn’t expect you to make sacrifices for us or to feel some goddamn obligation, and it makes me mad as fuck that you actually did.”
