“I’m the lawyer remember? It always matters. Don’t speak on it again. Trust me!”
“I hear you,” Queen said with both hands raised.
Maverick walked over and handed her the travel bag. When Queen and Apollo started off to the plane, she felt comfortable to say the words she’d now said hundreds of times in private. “Love you.”
“Love you two,” he winked.
When she glanced back to see him standing there with his hands shoved down in his pockets, and his cap pulled down on his head, and mask covering her smile, she felt that worry over his wellbeing ratchets up several degrees.
“Bye!” She called out to him. Maverick nodded and turned and left. After she boarded the small, chartered plane, her stomach and feelings dropped.
“You okay?” Queen asked.
“I don’t know. I just feel like this isn’t a good time to leave him.”
“You said he was fine,” Queen asked.
“Right. Right. He’s fine.”
THE NEXT DAY STARTED early for him despite his fatigue. Delilah called him three times during the night. Maverick had to talk dirty to her to put her to sleep. Noah spent the night in his grandmother’s arms. She wouldn’t let him out of her room or her sight. So Maverick showered and decided to return to the guest house. The ranch felt like another man’s home with Delilah gone. What he didn’t expect was to walk into the guesthouse and find Delilah’s father fixing his breakfast in his boxers.
“Ah? Sorry, didn’t know you were... ugh... here?” Maverick said.
Henry chuckled.
“Just in time. I could only make turkey sausage. Want some? Just finished making the eggs.”
Maverick glanced to the door and then to Henry. He walked out of the kitchen with the frying pan. The food smelled good. He decided to take him up on the offer, so he grabbed himself a plate and utensils and joined him.
“You sleeping here?” Maverick asked Henry.
“Been sleeping here and hanging out here for weeks. Only went inside because Delilah was back with you and Noah. Didn’t want to upset her,” Henry said. “Go on, try my eggs. I use Oldbay seasoning in them. I wish I had some crab meat too. That’s how we make them where I come from. I was longshore, you know. I brought home food from the sea and froze it for cooking every day. When my brother Chippie used to visit, he’d bring me plenty. My girls don’t like seafood. They eat tofu,” Henry spat with disgust. “But I’m a man. I may not be able to have a steak. I damn well can have some fish. Oh, and I put a bit of onion chopped up inside for flavor.”
Maverick could do nothing but smile. He really did love her dad. He made him miss his friends back in New York. He scooped up a big helping of eggs and dropped them on his plate. He ate with Henry at first, not asking any questions. Who was he to question the man? His daughter owned every inch of the land, and Henry could bounce him out on his ass if he wanted to.
“I didn’t know. The whole story, in case you wondering,” Henry began. “When Delores came and got me from the house, she was crying hysterically. It took me a full day to calm my wife and learn of what she had done. Now I can’t get all of the lies she told me over the years out of my head. Makes me question my marriage, my life, my purpose. You know? To know we were living with some of this cut me deep.”
“She made a mistake,” Maverick said. “We all make mistakes.”
“This was no mistake,” Henry slammed his hand on the table surface. “My daughter? She blames me too? Don’t she? She can barely sit in the same room with me now. And I can’t face her either. Can’t look in her eyes and see that disappointment. It’s because of me she lost her childhood. When one parent is weak, the other is supposed to be strong. God wanted man to lead. I didn’t. I was too in love and too ashamed of my own ignorance to question my wife. I felt special because of this town and because of our reputation. Look what it got us.”
“Delilah will work through it,” Maverick reasoned.
“Well, let me tell you sumthin. I may be ignorant, yes. And I may have trusted my wife too much, yes. I would never let those girls Queen and Goodiva, be harmed by Abigail or anyone else in this town. They were my children too. I only signed up for the coverup because the man was dead. The day we found out he touched our babies, I got my shotgun. Goodiva’s father found him first. Ignorant or not, I’d put six holes in his rotten evil ass if I could,” Henry said it all through clenched teeth. “My wife knew that. She knew. She let us down because she was greedy. That’s the sin. That’s how Abigail owns all of these people, through their damn greed! She isn’t the woman I thought she was. I don’t know what to do about that, so l sleep out here in the cottage. Too late to punish her for her mistakes when I’ve benefited from them. And it’s too late to change the past. It may just be too late for us, period.”
“I disagree. If it can be fixed, it takes making the first step,” Maverick mumbled. Henry looked up from his breakfast. Maverick didn’t have any answers for Henry because he had none for himself.
“You were a cop? Ain’t that right?” Henry asked.
The question wounded him. He found it funny that nearly two decades of taking pride in being a cop was now flushed. Maverick didn’t understand how a man like Henry, who seem so blind to his wife’s deception, was keen enough with insight to see through his hidden pain.
“A cop. Yea,” Maverick managed to reply.
“What you think about these protests? All of the rioting over police brutality? Delilah told me you were a crooked cop; now that I know you, I don’t believe that is so.”
“I don’t know what to think. I don’t know what to say,” Maverick sat back. “I do have a question.”
“Well, give it to me,” Henry said.
“You’re a black man from the south. What was your experience with the police?”
“Me?” Henry let go a gust of laughter. He laughed, and his eyes lit with merriment. With his grey hair, grey eyebrows, and trimmed grey beard, his laughter reminded Maverick of Santa Claus.
“Sorry, son, sorry, you need to give me a minute,” Henry said and grabbed a few napkins to wipe the spittle from his lips. He slowed to a chuckle and shook his head.
“What is so funny?”
“It ain’t funny. It really ain’t. But you asking me, well that is funny. You know damn well what my experience was,” Henry chuckled.
“I—don’t,” Maverick stammered.
Henry put up his hand to silence him and finished his tickled laughter. He shook his head and smiled up at Maverick. “Let me put it to you this way. Black men in the south had three fears when I was growing up. First was God. The second was the cops. And the third was your Madear.”
“Madear?” Maverick asked.
“Southern shorten term for mother-dear. It’s our mother or grandmothers or grandaunts. The matriarchy in the black family is strong as steel. Anyways, cops view black men as expendable. So no meeting with them is ever pleasant from my experience. I was harassed for crossing the street as a boy, my first encounter. As a young man for leaving fishing gear at a pier once, arrested twice for broken taillights, and once for expired tags. No conversation, no warning, just straight to jail for the night, judge in the morning, fine to pay on installments. The only relief from the police for me and my brothers out of South Carolina was the sea. So we spent most of our time on water. I had a cousin beaten so bad one night for getting lost in the wrong neighborhood that he lost his left eye. Sun downtown. That’s what it was. Bet you don’t know that term?”