4
“I should go,” Patrice said as soon as Blackheart was out of sight.
“Okay. Are you alright?”
She nodded. “I’m fine. A little embarrassed, I guess.”
“You don’t have to be embarrassed, but...do you really think Blackheart killed your mom?”
She shook her head, slowly. “No. He’s right...too much time had passed; it wouldn’t make any sense at all. I’m just...I’m in shock over all of this. I read her diary, Gabe, every page of it. She wasn’t depressed, not even unhappy.” She smiled and her face lit up when she said, “She loved me. She was working at a medical office in Maine. She hadn’t had a chance to go back to school, but she planned to. She was so young...” The smile faded again and fresh tears filled her pretty eyes. She took a shaky breath and said, “Even the day she got back to New Orleans, and my grandmother told her she wasn’t welcome at the funeral, she barely wrote a paragraph about it. She was sad, but it seemed like she was at peace and ready to just go back to her new home and get on with her life.” She smiled again and said, “The next whole page was about what a good time she’d had that day, ‘showing me around’ New Orleans. She said she’d wanted to show me everything in the place she loved, and missed. It was her home.” Another tear rolled down her face and she quickly wiped it away. “She was forced to leave it because of me.”
“It’s not your fault though, I mean, you know that, right? Whatever happened, you were just an innocent baby. It sounds like you made her real happy, at least you have that.”
“I have nothing,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I’ve got nothing of my mother but a bunch of old papers, and that’s my family’s fault. They could have kept her alive for me. They just wrote her out of my life, and theirs...she was only twenty-three years old.” She started crying again and this time Gabe put both of his arms around her and pulled her in tight. He just sat there and held her until she pulled away, wiped her face again, and smiled at him. “I’ll bet you’re sorry that you’re the first man I’ve ever really trusted right off the bat, huh?”
He smiled and wiped away a tear that she missed. “Not a bit.”
“Thank you.” She sighed and said, “I need to apologize to Blackheart. I’m not even sure where that came from. I’m so embarrassed.”
“I think he understands,” Gabe said, unsure if his president did or not. But all he wanted was to make Patrice feel better. He hated seeing her so sad. “Can I ask what you plan on doing about...you know, finding out he’s your dad...maybe?”
“I think that’s his call at this point. I’m not pushing for a DNA test or anything. I don’t want anything from him.” She hesitated and Gabriel said:
“But you’d like to know.”
“Yeah, I would. I never had the choice before, you know...when they took my mom from me, they took him too. They took that choice away from him and me both.”
“You think your mother would have ever told him, about you?”
She nodded. “She wrote about it a lot in her diary. I guess that’s what made me so mad when he said he didn’t remember her. I think she was a little bit in love with him, and it made me sad that she was just another conquest for him.”
“It was a long time ago...” She rolled her eyes and he said, “Sorry, I guess defending him just comes natural. He’s a good guy though, you know. He’s been with a lot of ladies, but I’ve never seen him disrespect one, or treat them poorly.”
She smiled slightly and said, “I’m sure he must be a good man, or you wouldn’t care about him so much.” Giving herself a little shake, like maybe she was trying to clear her head, she said, “What happened to your face?”
Gabe had forgotten about the fight the night before, and the black eye and bruise on his cheek. He felt his face go hot now when he said, “Had a little too much to drink last night, I guess.”
“You got in a fight, at the club?”
“Yeah, you know...brothers fight sometimes, but we always make up in the end. Ripper said something that pissed me off and I had enough drink in me to not think before I threw the first punch. I was worried about you, you know? You just disappeared on me.”
She touched his bruised cheek softly. “This was about me?”
He covered her hand with his. Her skin was so soft, and she smelled as good as she looked and felt. His body was going crazy and he was trying to concentrate on not having an embarrassing bulge in the front of his jeans when he stood up. He pictured his Maw Maw in her housecoat to get rid of it and said, “No. It was about him saying something stupid and me being drunk. But do me a favor?”
“Okay...?”
“Don’t disappear on me again, okay? I really was worried.” He hoped to God she never found out that he was worried she was screwing Blackheart...her dad, maybe. He shuddered at the thought. She gave him a look that said she didn’t completely believe the fight wasn’t about her but all she said was:
“I won’t, I promise. And I’ll apologize to Blackheart too. I hope he’ll understand that I didn’t mean to fall apart like that. I’m a little overwhelmed right now with what’s going on at home...at my parents’ home, though. I guess I’d better get back to that mess. I’m just so angry with them, and I’m not even sure if I can believe anything they say.”
Gabe’s heart hurt for her. He hated that she had to go and do it alone, but it wasn’t something a new boyfriend should be there for. “Okay, but if you need anything, you’ll call me, right?”
She kissed him softly on the lips and smiled. “I will. Thank you, Gabriel.”
“She thinks you killed her?” Sally had just picked up her beer off the bar to take a drink. She sat it back down and looked at Blackheart with wide, brown eyes. He’d found her at Ace’s bar and told her the story. If it had been up to him wholly, he hated to admit, he would have never gone looking for the girl. Sally was the one that told him he had to find out for sure. She told him he’d question it forever if he didn’t. Sometimes he wondered if he was as good a man as Sally thought he was, or if she saw something in him that just wasn’t there. Had he known he had a kid when Patrice was a child and she needed him, he was sure he would have stepped up, but this girl was an adult, and one who didn’t seem to like him all that much to boot.
“I don’t think she really believes that. She just desperately wants to believe her mama didn’t kill herself and leave her alone. All that anger just came out at me.”
“Was there a note, or anything? Did her mother leave a suicide note?”
He shook his head. “Not that she said, and since she did manage to get a copy of the police report, and her mother’s diary, I’m guessing she’d have that too.”
“Hmm, that is weird. I mean, she had her daughter with her when she suddenly decides to kill herself, not leaving anything for the baby, or making any arrangements for her? I know a lot of mothers, and that doesn’t sound very maternal to me.”