Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 70429 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70429 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 352(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
“Because it makes people uncomfortable when I don’t. Folks I care about. Someone tells you a joke—a friend—and if you don’t smile it gives off the wrong vibe. You give a guy a gift and he doesn’t even crack a grin. I was that guy. It makes folks feel awkward. I trained myself to smile even when I didn’t want to. Not for my sake, but for the people I care about. Something inside me turned off like a light switch.”
He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “I faked a lot of shit until it was natural. Then, I eventually got tired of faking and that’s when the true me came out. People didn’t like it. I started gettin’ in trouble in school. Axel, Legend, and I all met in detention.” He chuckled. “We were some of the baddest kids, not just in our school, but the whole damn neighborhood. At one point, Aunt Angel got so fed up with me, she said she was sendin’ me to military school. What was strange though was nobody asked why I stopped talkin’. They just assumed I was in shock from my mama dyin’. Yeah, that was part of it, but not all of it.”
“What was the other reason?”
He turned and faced her, and her heart broke in half as tears filled his eyes.
“I’ve never been completely convinced that my mother offed herself.”
“What do… what do you mean? You don’t think she committed suicide?”
“I’m not convinced of it. No.”
“Why not? What makes you think somethin’ else happened?”
“My mama wasn’t depressed. At least, it never appeared so. Aunt Angel said she’d been diagnosed and took pills for it, but I never saw my mama in that state, not takin’ care of herself and me. She was always smilin’, playin’ and goofin’ around, and lovin’ on me. She’d tell me she loved me every morning and at night when she’d tuck me in. The night before she supposedly killed herself, I heard her arguin’ with some man. I came out of my room to see what the fuss was all about, but before I could see who she was talkin’ to, she told me to go back in my room.”
Azure lay there, trying to wrap her damn arms around this bombshell.
“Well, my God, baby, why don’t you tell the police?! I’m sure they—”
“I did. They didn’t listen to me. I told my aunt. She thought I was daydreamin’ or mistaken, or it was much ado about nothin’. I told a lot of people… nobody believed me or they thought it was unrelated. And then, one day, I told Mrs. Florence…”
She scooted closer to him as Leela James’ ‘Fall For You’ played from the other room.
“I take it she believed you.”
“Yes. She believed me. She believed me so much, she told me it was going to destroy me if I didn’t at least try to find out if my suspicions were right—that some motherfucker murdered my mama.” He squeezed her hand again and closed his eyes tight.
“Look, I know this is sensitive, but I have to be one hundred.” She lifted herself onto her elbow.
“Do it. I don’t care. Say what you want.”
“I will. Caspian, you make your bread and butter off unsolved murders and cold case stories and yet, here you are, sittin’ on a powder keg of your own! Why in the hell wouldn’t you try and test your hunch, after all these years? Do the research to find out what happened to your mama?”
“Because if my hunch is wrong, Azure, then I’ll know without a doubt that she didn’t love me enough to stick around. I’d know she didn’t want me, that my existence wasn’t sufficient to make her stay. I’d have to face the fact that she gave me an act of cruelty and selfishness as a final gift. For the longest, it felt better to leave this knowledge in the unknown, sittin’ there collecting dust, than to dig up those old bones and find out they were just that: old bones. No muscle. No flesh. No blood. No life. No story behind it. Just wishful thinkin’. I’ve spent the majority of my adult life chasin’ happy endings for other families… the happy endings I used to want as a child. I hated the world.