AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I cut him off with a warning. “Never ever say tapped that in regard to Whitley Mae Belington ever again.”
“If I were drinking instead of driving tonight, I’d have already hit you twice.”
Lifting a shoulder, I admit, “I’d deserve both.”
“You deserve more than that. You should have asked me man.” He pokes himself in the chest. “I’m the reason you stayed away for years.”
“Step lightly, Danny,” Marks says quietly, trying to defuse what he sees as a possible situation.
“I mean, Mama Pope, too, but?—”
“Jesus, Danny, shut?—”
I force myself to own up to my truth. “Nothing here felt like home anymore.”
“And how’s it feeling now?” Marks nods toward the church.
“Over there? Like winter in New York,” I answer honestly.
“You gonna do something about that?” Marks asks.
“Made a promise to a little girl that I’d teach her how to play ball. Gonna make sure I’m around to do that as often as I can be.”
“And what about her mom?”
My lip twitches up into a sneer. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting her marry that piece of shit.”
The next couple of hours are rather enlightening. I learn that Whitley broke some code or law by doing a DNA test with hair from my brush and some snippets of Nelly’s. Whit was going to tell me about Nora and then insist I tell my mom so that Mom wouldn’t worry so much about me being without family. When she found out I was not her father, she made sure Mom knew that the four of us would always remain family.
Next, I find out that Whit apparently tried to remove my name —that Nelly had somehow fraudulently given the hospital an affidavit stating I was the father — from the birth certificate because she didn’t want it to affect my life or Nora’s down the road. And then I find out she went to Kal fucking Seward to start the adoption process.
“Now, all of a sudden, she’s not so hell-bent on Nora’s last name being the same as hers.” Danny sighs.
“Why’s that?”
“Because hers is going to change when she gets hitched to Kal.”
“Again, she’s not marrying that piece of shit” I sneer. “Whit and Nora won’t be dragged down by people who think they’re better than everyone else when those people are far from it.”
“Agree. Now, what’s the plan?” Danny asks.
“The more I know, the better I can come up with a solid one. So, I’ll let you know when I hammer it out.”
“Or you could tap it out,” Danny suggests, trying to rile me up.
I don’t bite, not this time anyway.
“By hammer it out” Marks nods to the house I’m now balls deep into renovating—“this part of the plan?”
I nod and ask, “You think you can get your hands on a copy of the original birth certificate, the one with my name on it?”
“I can look into it.”
We shoot the shit for a couple of hours, and we do so on the porch so I can see when Whit passes by. I know that she works four ten-hour shifts, starting at eight thirty in the morning, but often gets stuck far past that. I’m guessing tonight is one of those nights.
When I see headlights coming down the road, I perk up, but when the vehicle slows to almost a stop and a window rolls down, I know it’s not her. We all watch as something flies out the window, followed by a loud shattering of glass against my house —bottles— followed by several more.
“What the fuck was that?” Danny asks as I jump over the side of the porch while they peel out, laying rubber down the road.
