Fifteen Years (9 page)

“Thank you,” both women said in unison.

“But as I told Mama,” Ana continued, touching her mother’s arm as she spoke. “I have too many things on my plate right now to even consider a serious relationship. There’s school, and then there’s my ensuing career,” she enumerated. “Plus I’m only here temporarily. I’ll be going back to Philly once the fall quarter begins, and I don’t think I’m one for long-distance relationships.”

Josiah couldn’t help but be impressed by her brilliance. Ana had somehow made it look like she was the one controlling the outcome
of the
nonrelationship.
He couldn’t be angry with her though. She’d been diplomatic enough to do it without making him look as though he’d been kicked to the curb.

“Well, I told her that distance is nothing but geography,” Nadhima said, clearly not ready to give up on the idea of putting the two of them together. “I think any relationship can work if both parties—”

“Your daughter is no fool, Nadhima,” Josiah cut in. “Ana is smart and beautiful. I can respect a woman who knows what she wants and sticks to her guns about it. When she’s ready, she won’t have any problems catching a man’s attention.”

“Humph.” Nadhima retorted like she had her doubts, but Ana’s grin was priceless.

“Thank you, Josiah.”

“You’re welcome, Ana. Enjoy the rest of your time here in North Cacalaci.” Josiah was sure that she was familiar with North Carolina’s slang name. He waved at both of them and walked back inside his office, smiling behind the closed door. It was a pity, really Ana was almost perfect. His loss would be somebody’s gain, but he had no regrets. Some things just weren’t negotiable.

Josiah tossed the used Lysol wipe in the garbage can, made his way back to his desk chair, and sat. Despite what he’d led Mickey to believe, the paperwork for Moniker Insurance Brokers was almost complete. He only needed to get the pages in order and hand them over to Lillian so she could make copies and put them in individual binders.

As he reached for the master copies, the framed photo that stood beside his pencil holder caught his eye. It always did. Reeva Mae Tucker used to be such a beauty. High cheekbones, smooth skin, shoulder-length hair, dimpled smile, bright hazel eyes. It was easy to see why his father was drawn to her. But the photo was the
only proof that Josiah had that his mother had ever been so attractive. He’d never known the woman who smiled at him through the frame. At the time of her death, she looked like a shell of her former self.

Josiah picked up the photo and held it in his hand. He’d cried for her. On the day he received the news, during the memorial service that was held in the funeral home’s chapel, and many days since. The void of a loss was there, no doubt about it. But it didn’t feel like he’d lost a mother; it felt more like he’d lost himself. She was the only visual proof that he even existed.

Bishop Lumpkin said that it was understandable that he didn’t have that heart connection that a son should have for his mother. But if it were so understandable, why was he having the reoccurring nightmares? In years past, he’d have the dreams sporadically. Once … maybe two times per year. But since the talk with the bishop nine days ago, Josiah had experienced the dream three times. There were different versions of the nightmare, but they all woke him up in the same cold sweat.

“Josiah?” The faint call was accompanied by several knocks.

Having placed the photo back in its place, Josiah answered, “Come on in, Lillian.”

“I know I’m a little early,” she said, pushing her glasses up on her nose, “but I had to come to this floor to bring a package to one of the other SAs and thought I’d see if you had the paperwork ready for me while I was in the neighborhood.”

Josiah waved her in. “I have it. I was just getting ready to collate it for you, but you can take them now if you don’t mind putting them in order. The pages are numbered.”

“I don’t mind.” She reached for the stack that he held. “I’ve got a little time on my hands.”

“You’re the best.” Josiah was glad to relinquish the duty.

She grinned her appreciation and then took a moment to look around the office. “Man … your office may not be as big as Mr. Colt’s, but it sure is nicer. And he had his set up by professionals.”

“Thanks,” Josiah replied. “I’m not all the way done yet, but it’s getting there.”

“Speaking of Mr. Colt,” she said, turning her face back to Josiah and lowering her voice the way she always did when she was about to pass along hearsay. “His little trophy wife called the front desk about twenty minutes ago, and she was
hot;
do you hear me?”

Josiah wanted to tell her to keep her gossip to herself, but he was too intrigued. “Hot?”

“Yes, hot… on fire …
mad,”
she clarified. “She had been trying to call him direct, and he was on his other line and letting her go to voice mail. Well, she wasn’t even about to be treated like she wasn’t the most important thing on the agenda.”

“What did she do?”

Apparently glad Josiah had asked, Lillian took off her glasses and leaned in closer. “Honey, she told me to interrupt his phone call and tell him that his wife was on the line and she wanted to speak with him
now.”

Josiah rubbed his hand over his five o’clock shadow. It was the result of his failure to shave this morning. “Did you interrupt him?” He felt like an old gossip himself, but he wanted to know.

“I sure did. She didn’t give me a choice. I thought something was really wrong, but how ’bout there was no emergency?”

“How do you know that?” Josiah raised an eyebrow. Surely Lillian hadn’t…

“I listened in.”

She had.

“What?” Josiah’s whisper was harsh. “Do you know how much trouble you can get into for that, Lillian?” His frown deepened.
“Should I ask whether or not you listen in on my calls too?”

Lillian flipped her wrist. “For what? You don’t get any interesting calls. All your calls come from clients, and they’re all business. None of your calls are worth listening in on.”

Josiah shook his head. “Just go run the copies and make up the binders for me. I need twenty of them.”

“Sure. Be back in a few.” Lillian turned to leave, but stopped short of reaching the door. “I hope you’ll be successful in giving Mr. Colt that crash course on the new software.”

Placing his pen on the desk, Josiah narrowed his eyes at her. “Why? And how do you know about that?”

She grinned as if he’d made her day by asking. “Didn’t I tell you Mrs. Colt was on fire? She wanted him to take her somewhere this evening, and he told her that he had to work on some project from home and you were teaching him how to work the program. She met him halfway, I guess you can say,” Lillian said, putting her glasses back on her face. “But she told him that he’d better know what he was doing by the time he got home because he wouldn’t have Thursday to work on it. She only gave him tonight to get it all done because she was only postponing her plans for one day.” Lillian paused to shake her head. “Easy to see who’s the boss in that mansion. Daphne Colt not only wears the makeup, but she wears the pants too.”

“Well, if you can avoid eavesdropping for an hour or so, you can get those binders put together, I’m sure,” Josiah said, shooing her away with his hand.

“Not a problem,” she sang just before opening the door.

“When you’re done, just hold them at the front desk,” Josiah instructed. “I’ll probably step out awhile, so I’ll pick them up when I return to my office.”

“Will do.”

Josiah watched Lillian close the door behind her as she left, and then began preparing to leave. He supposed that this would be just one more day that he would use and be used by Mickey Colt. He would go ahead and head to the boss’s office now and give him a couple of extra hours of his time to help him learn the software. Maybe he could save Mickey’s marriage, or at least, save him from getting an earful later. On the flip side, going to Mickey’s office and immersing himself in walking him through the user guide would also give Josiah the chance to think about other things than his disconnected life.

“MAMA!”

The sound of his own cries brought Josiah into a seated position. His bedsheet clung to his body, adhered by the perspiration that secreted through his pores. The sweat and the ceiling fan double-teamed Josiah and sent a stampede of chills through his body. Still half asleep and equally as disoriented, he cowered against the headboard, trembling from a mixture of cold and fear. He pulled the wet covers tighter around his neck, and he struggled to steady his breathing. Josiah’s eyes darted around the room, staring at each strange object until the onset of coherency made them vaguely familiar.

Still teetering between delusion and reality, Josiah slung the bed linen to the side, and grabbed at his right leg, gripping it over and over again from his thigh to his ankle. As he gathered his full wits and realized it had only been a dream, Josiah’s breaths eventually
stabilized. It took a bit longer for his heart rate to conform, so he sat motionless, his knees pulled into his chest until he was completely calm.

It had happened again. But nightmare number four was different. Normally Josiah wouldn’t remember the details of his bad dreams when he awakened. In stark contrast, the replay of this one was even clearer than the original. And it had his talk with Bishop Lumpkin written all over it.

There he was—one-legged and all—crawling, hobbling, and holding on to things as he tried unsuccessfully to reclaim his lost leg. Josiah didn’t think it was possible for his mother to look any more ghastly than she did at the time of her death, but in his dream, her sunken eyes, ashy face, boney body, and scattered hair, made her look like something out of a low budget horror movie. But as frail as she appeared to be, she was still able to avoid capture as she always remained at least five steps ahead of him. Just when Josiah thought his leg was within reach, Reeva would garner just enough energy to bob and weave, dodging his every grasp. Sometimes she would appear to be ready to give in, contemplating giving him what was rightfully his. But at the last moment, she’d put his leg behind her back like she was hiding it from him, or she would run in a different direction that would place her cripple son at an even greater disadvantage.

The dream confused Josiah. It implied that his mother had intentionally made life miserable for him. Life as the son of Reeva Mae Tucker was intolerable, true enough. But Josiah refused to believe that his mother had purposefully wreaked such havoc upon their existence. She was sick, but she wasn’t evil.

“No.” He whispered the denial and shook his head at the same time. There was no way she could have deliberately been so cruel.

Using sluggish movements, Josiah climbed out of bed. He gathered
his bedsheets and stripped them from the mattress before heaping them in a pile on the floor. His pillowcase followed and the stack was topped with his boxer shorts. Sweat had soiled everything his skin had come in contact with during the night. He would put everything in the washer before heading to work.

Josiah walked toward the clock that sat on the left side of the dresser. It was engraved with the words: A
LPHA
P
HI
A
LPHA
—F
IFTEEN
Y
EARS.
The wood-encased timepiece had been given to him as a gift when he crossed during his sophomore year at
UNC
. “Fifteen Years” had been Josiah’s line name. He’d been tagged with it when his “big brothers” heard him say that when he was fifteen years old he’d made the decision that he’d one day become an Alpha man.

It was 7:12 a.m., and although reading the time was the reason for Josiah’s approach, he was too lost in thought to pay much attention to the hands on the clock.
Fifteen years.
There were those two words again. It was the length of time that has passed since his removal from his last foster home, and it had been his line name. How ironic was that? And how ironic was it that the foster father he had fifteen years ago was the reason Josiah had selected his fraternity of choice?

Thomas Smith was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha. During the years that he lived in the Smith household as one of several foster children, Josiah saw all sorts of fraternity paraphernalia. Hats, shirts, bumper stickers, paddles, throw blankets, jackets, key chains … if they made it, Thomas Smith had it.

Josiah recalled the time when he pointed at a black-and-white photo that was framed and mounted on Thomas’s office wall and asked, “Who’s that?” From the look of shock on Thomas’s face, Josiah concluded that at the age of nine, it was an answer he should have already known.

Thomas’s eyebrows were raised when he asked, “Dr. King? You don’t know who Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is?” When Josiah replied with a silent shake of his head, Thomas grinned with pride. “He’s my frat brother. An Alpha man; that’s who he is.”

It wasn’t until after his foster dad was sure that Josiah understood Dr. King’s place among the many great men who had pledged into this historic brotherhood that he also schooled him on who Dr. King was as a civil rights legend. Both stories fascinated Josiah. The history of the fraternity and the life of Dr. King.