Aside from her old Buick, her carport held bins of her gardening supplies. I was grabbing the weed eater when tires rolled over her gravel driveway.
I expected to see her little boyfriend, Mr. Tiny and his Cadillac, but scowled at the Volvo SUV that stopped a foot away from me.
Yanking the towel from my back pocket, I cleaned my face as the woman I didn’t want to see hurried over to me. “Rico, I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“Likewise.”
Harlow’s mom sniffed at my cold tone and wrung her hands in front of her. Anxious eyes jumped over my face, but she kept her lips tight.
“You want something? Because I got work to do.” I nodded toward the weeds creeping up around the perimeter of the house.
“I have Harlow’s birthday present in my back seat. Maybe you could give it to her since you?—”
“No.”
She looked like she wanted to flinch and thought better of it. “I don’t see why not. Y-you…”
Her words disappeared with the rest of my patience. It was too hot out here for us to be staring at each other. “I don’t know what you want from me, but I won’t be your go-between,” I said, my voice callous.
Yvette’s perfect posture slumped.
“You were the one who broke communication, not her. You want to talk to her, or give her something, you got her number and my address. But don’t pull up without telling us first. I’m not letting you corner her.”
“Why are you talking to me like I’m some stranger off the street? Iraisedyou. I love you.”
That little wobble on her bottom lip would have meant something if I didn’t know what she said to Harlow.
“I’m talking to you like you’re somebody who disrespected the woman I love.” I stuffed the towel back in my back pocket. “I’ll always love you and honor the role you played in my life, but Harlow and the family we’re building come first.” I held out my palm and extended a finger with each name I said. “Her, Soul and Christian are who I protect before anything else.”
“I see.”
“You forgot you raised Harlow too? That make it okay to call her a pass around and tell her we don’t respect her?”
“No.” She wouldn’t look at me anymore but kept fidgeting with her hands as my words landed.
I scoffed, attention back on the crepe myrtle at the front of the house. Granny was conveniently in the house, and I knew she was probably at the kitchen window, listening to every word we exchanged.
“Listen, you can’t say you love me and have a problem with one of them just because you won’t open your mind to what we’ve known for years.” I shrugged, backing away from her with the weed eater in my grasp. “You can call me disrespectful, but I’m a grown man. I love them and I don’t care who feels a way about that.”
Yvette’s face crumbled after holding her pinched expression. “You love her?”
“That woman is my world. You raised the sweetest soul I know, that’s why I don’t understand what you’re getting at by saying we couldn’t love her.”
Her stubbornness gave way to remorse. “I think it shattered my illusion. Made me confront that our family would never look the way it did when your father and I first got together.”
My brows fell. “Why that gotta be a bad thing? Nothing in life stays the same. That’s kinda the point.”
“I know. I was in denial. In my head, y’all are still the seven-year-olds who took to each other like two peas in a pod. Everything was simple then.”
“There’s nothing complicated about what we are now. It’s just…different.”
“If I accept that, I have to accept—” Ms. Yvie shook her head and looked away. “Oh, never mind.”
But I could hear what she wasn’t saying, and I wondered what that meant for her reunion with my father. Did she only want him back because she wanted the image of her family back? Or did she love him?
A long-suffering sigh split the humid air and she said, “I’m sorry.”
“Telling me ain’t enough. Tellher.”
