Braeden made a hissing sound. “That polite bit different, ain’t it? Hyacinth be bluesing me with that!”
“I tried to ask what it was really about. Not the liability stuff. The feelings stuff. She wasn’t having that at all. Shut me down tighter than that hair on Loyalty’s head.”
He flipped me off over Zoriah’s ponytails. For a moment, Mariah Carey was the only voice breaking the silence.
Zahara sighed. “She got a right to feel how she feel. I just hate that she still messed up over Christmas time.”
“Yeah, I told her I was sorry she was hurting. She told me nothing and nobody in this town can hurt her now. At the end,she said if I or anybody from the town show up again about them trees, she calling the sheriff and pressing criminal trespass charges.”
Ajani let out a low, “Damn.”
“Not ‘criminal trespass’ behind some lil twinkle lights,” Braeden said, a smile flitting across his face.
“She was dead serious. I told her I heard her, that I wouldn’t put her in that spot. Then I left.” I shrugged, like that shit hadn’t bothered me, hadn’t torn open places that had never properly healed.
“How did it feel seeing her?” Akeira asked sympathetically.
I shrugged. “I mean, she looks good.”
Understatement. She was beautiful as fuck, always had been, like a thick, chocolate, dream. That’s why them hoes had hated her so bad in high school. “But she looks like she’s… I don’t know. Something is different.”
Something that looked rooted in pain and distrust.
Ajani tilted his head. “And how you feel walking away?”
“Like I just got put out of a house I used to feel at home in. Like I deserved it. Like walking away was the last thing I wanted to do. Like I still wanted to say everything I been holding ten years and couldn’t,” I said, trying to articulate all the feelings that had been churning inside of me.
Truth nodded. “You did the right thing, not unloading all that on her tonight, though.”
“It ain’t feel right,” I muttered.
Honesty frowned. “So, no tree on the hill this year?”
I lifted my shoulders again. “Looks like no. The town gon’ survive. Her boundaries more important than them twinkle lights.”
The conversation dried up. Zoriah stuck a gumdrop on the gingerbread roof, then popped one in her mouth.
“Poor house gon’ be under decorated,” Honesty teased her.
Zoriah looked up at me. “Uncle Jay?”
“Yeah, Zo?”
“You talking about the lady in the big house?” she asked. “Up the hill? With the tall gate?”
My chest tightened at the mention of that gate. That was new. As introverted as she was, she still hadn’t kept herself caged up and away from everyone. “Yeah, that’s her.”
“That’s my friend house. The pretty girl that lives there. We talk through the fence,” she said proudly.
Zahara frowned. “I’m sorry, you what?”
“What?” Zoriah blinked. “We not doing nothing bad. We just talking.”
Honesty’s eyes narrowed. “How long you been talking to somebody through that fence, ma’am?”
“A little bit. When me and Mama go outside and go walking. Sometimes when my daddy takes me. She be on the other side with Ms. Serena. She got puff balls in her hair, and she got a bunch of reindeer shirts. She funny. She said she wish she could see the lights, ’cause her mama don’t want no Christmas trees downstairs.”
Zahara stared. “Now, I’ve seen that child, but Zoriah Katelyn Christopher, you never thought to mention talking to your new little fence friend?”
