"Hell yes."
"My God, Nash, he was sick. Addiction is an illness like cancer or diabetes."
"Except, when you get cancer, it's only your life that's in danger."
"Nash … "
"He killed her, Nat."
"He did. And he's sorry for that. He really is. But nothing he can do now will bring her back. We have to come to terms with that."
I shook my head, ready to yell, to scream until she saw reason, but I knew better. Natalie was bullheaded. If she latched onto something or someone it stuck. Even, I guessed, if it was the man who took our mother from us both.
"You can't just forget … "
"No, you can't but sugar, you have to learn to forgive." Nat's voice was strong, but she didn't yell. It was a calm tone, something she'd perfected when we were kids and temper and anxiety had turned me into a bad seed. It was her nurturing way, and that firm, confident tone never failed to pull me back from the edge. But this wasn't me buckling to peer pressure from asshole kids putting on me to lift beer from a convenience store cooler. This was the man I'd always hated inching his way back into my sister's life.
Still, Nat adopted that tone and just the sound of it had me tamping down my anger. She leaned forward, taking my hand. "You've got yourself all twisted up over the stuff that happened to us. You're still letting it rule your life."
"I am not." I jerked my hand back and leaned against the sofa with my arms over my chest.
"Really? So pushing away women, not wanting to rely on anyone at all, thinking that your life will be perfect with enough money? That all comes from losing everything you had as a kid. It comes from not trusting the one person who should have never let you down."
"Yeah?"
"So maybe if you let it, that mess will keep you down. That happens, little brother and the man who killed our mother, also killed the person you were back then. You hold on to that and Nash, that kid stays dead."
She knew she'd had me. I tried to tell myself I was too tired to argue. I tried to move the reason and logic around in my head so that I made sense, so that my reason was sound. But Nat always saw things differently than me. She always saw the potential, always had hope even in the grayest parts of our lives.
"Man, whatever." I stood, stretching as she moved in front of me. "We'll talk about this tomorrow." I nodded toward the hallway. She's stayed with me a half a dozen times and knew the routine. "You take the bed." I laid back down on the sofa, fluffing the pillow as I stifled a yawn. "For now, let me sleep."
New Orleans
After I didn't come back home, and Mr. Simoneaux's old Chevy had circled our driveway for the third time, Mama and Uncle Aron came looking where I'd most likely be- the tree house. We'd seen the headlights from our hiding spot; whether it was him looking to see where Dempsey had gotten off to or maybe Andres telling some lie about me, making the man bring him around to see things over, I wasn't sure. But Mama made her irritation known.
"Why you hiding up there, girl? You do something to that hateful man?"
"No, Mama. Not me. I ain't done nothing."
"You always running your mouth, sassing folk … " Then she shut herself up I climbed down and she noticed how I held the too-big shirt Dempsey gave me over my chest. She didn't fuss about how I'd missed the delivery, then, not when Dempsey climbed down after me, then took my hand and went to move in front of me a little, as if to run interference between me and my kin. Both Mama and Aron looked at me holding Dempsey's button up over my chest like it was only a flimsy excuse to cover myself, then traded a look that was both worried and a whole lot scared.
"Ms. Lanoix, it was me, honest. I'm the one he's looking for." Dempsey had a way of speaking to grownups. It was how calm he could make his voice. It was deep, deeper than it should be at only seventeen, that put people at ease. "I forgot about cleaning after myself again when I got done fishing this afternoon. Left all the bait and tackle on the dock. He's probably looking to skin my hide."
A few moments passed with nobody saying anything. Mama was no fool, she knew when someone was trying to pull something over on her, but maybe she thought I wasn't worth the trouble of finding out what that something might be. The more we stood there, me looking at the ground and Dempsey looking at Mama liked a wupped pup, the more the anger seemed to leach out of her and resignation set in. Finally she signed, and gave Dempsey a soft look that she'd never once given me. For Dempsey, though, it came easy enough. "Fine then." She told him with one head shake that he needed to keep after himself. "Mind your business, Dempsey Simoneaux and don't bring your daddy's belt anywhere near this property."