Renee Page 5

  “I don’t know how. How do you tell a ten-year-old this?”

  Renee poked her head out. Ms. Pam moved from the love seat she sat on to the full couch and plopped down next to her friend. Ms. Pam’s chubby hand stretched across the coffee table and plucked a single tissue out of the rectangular tissue box. She gave it to Sheila.

  “It’s been a week. Where does she think he is?”

  Sheila dried her cheeks with the tissue, then rolled it into a small ball, which she covered with both hands. A tiny sob seeped out of her mouth. She swallowed, then cleared throat. “A medical convention.”

  Ms. Pam pursed her lips. She crossed one leg over the other, crossed her arms, and turned her head in the opposite direction to Sheila.

  “Don’t give me that, Pamela. You’re not a mother. You don’t know how difficult this is.” Sheila tossed the tissue ball on the coffee table.

  “I’m not a mother, but I am a woman who lost her father at a young age, and I’ll tell you this much. Had my mother waited a week to tell me my father had passed away, I’d have been pissed the hell off.” She got up from her seat. Her red and cream sandals slapped against the wooden floorboards as she walked away.

  “I’ll tell her soon!” Sheila hollered.

  Renee leaned against the wall. Her heart fell to the tips of her toes, and her stomach roiled. She shut her eyes, balled her small hands into fists, and repeated over and over in her mind, It’s not true. It’s not true. He’s at a convention. He’s not dead. Then the waterworks started, making it harder for her to believe what she heard held no truth.

  She opened her eyes, looked up and, through tears, made eye contact with a pale-faced Ms. Pam. Ms. Pam’s mouth dropped. Her lips formed a lot of words; however, none fell out except for two.

  “She knows.”

  Renee buried herself deeper under her blanket as painful memories constantly played in her mind.

  “Remember that paper you helped me write on the Cold War? I finally got my grade. I got an A.” Renee beamed. “I’ll be getting my report card soon, and I’m predicting all As.”

  A cool breeze started blowing, and Renee folded her arms.

  “Mommy said we’re going to Disney for spring break, but I don’t believe her.” She ripped a piece of grass out of the ground and threw it to the side. “I don’t think I’ll ever believe what she says after she lied to me about you.” Renee pulled strands of grass out of the ground and tossed them aside. “I wish you were here.”

  “Renee!” Ms. Pam walked as fast as she could through the grass without falling in her high heels. With each step she took, her stilettoes stabbed the ground.

  “How did you get in here?” Renee asked.

  Huffing and puffing, Ms. Pam told her, “You don’t want to know.” She used her hand to fan her face, then rested it on her chest to catch her breath. “Have you been here since four?” Ms. Pam looked down at her watch. It read 11:00 p.m. “Your mother and I were worried sick!”

  “Yup. Did Mia tell you where I was?”

  “Her mother did. She told us she dropped you off here because you told her Sheila had asked her to. She was under the impression that your mother was meeting you here in the cemetery.”

  Renee didn’t respond. She just continued staring at the tombstone. Ms. Pam straightened out the purple polka-dot sheet Renee sat on. She kicked off her heels and sat down beside her. For some time neither of them said anything. They both just stared at Daniel’s grave and read over and over the tombstone’s inscription.

  Renee broke the silence with her words. “I just don’t understand.” Before Ms. Pam could chime in, Renee continued, “I just don’t understand death.” Renee’s head shook softly.

  “I felt the same way when my father died.”

  “Your father died?” Renee turned to face Ms. Pam.

  “Yup. It was the worst day of my live. I was a daddy’s girl, just like you.”

  “How did you get over it? How did you make it stop hurting?”

  “You never get over it, and it never stops hurting. It only becomes easier to cope with,” Ms. Pam explained. “Don’t fight so hard to ignore and understand your feelings right now, Renee. Take this time to mourn.”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t know how!” Renee’s watery eyes begged for answers.

  “Do what you feel like doing. If you feel like crying, cry. If you feel like screaming, scream. Hell, if you feel like dancing in the middle of a rainstorm, do it. Just don’t deny yourself the opportunity to feel.”

  “Do you want to know how I really feel?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “I feel broken, I feel gypped, and I’m angry all the time.” Renee gave a weak smile. “And I feel trapped, because I have a mother who doesn’t even love me.”

  Ms. Pam’s gaze dropped. “Renee—”

  “She doesn’t care about me.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Then why are you here and not her!”

  A gush of wind rushed past both Renee and Ms. Pam and caused the hair on their arms to rise. Renee directed her attention away from her mother’s friend and back to her father.

  “Your mother has a lot of issues. That is obvious. But I guarantee she loves you. She just has no clue how to show it.”

  Renee folded her arms and fell silent.

  “How did you manage to stay in here for so long without getting caught?” Ms. Pam quizzed, looking from left to right.

  A sly smile crossed Renee’s lips. “You don’t want to know,” she answered.

  Ms. Pam playfully shoved Renee. She stood up. “We better get going.”

  Renee touched the tombstone. “Five more minutes.” She looked up at Ms. Pam. “Please.”

  Ms. Pam sat back down beside Renee. “Hi, Daniel. It’s Pamela.”

  Renee took a deep breath and shut her eyes in an effort to will the memories away. For three days, Renee had lived in darkness within the four walls of her bedroom. Sweaty and depressed, she resembled the fiends who bought her poison. Her hair was a bee’s hive, her eyes were sunken in, and dried-up blood stained her lips due to them cracking so badly.

  Renee couldn’t take it. Today marked the fifteenth anniversary of her father’s death, and she couldn’t come to terms with it, couldn’t accept that once her father passed, her life had turned into a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. Every year that passed was a blow to the heart, and just the thought of her father no longer being around choked the life out of her. This year was worse. This year Julian had left her to battle her demons alone.

  It’d been three weeks, and Julian still hadn’t shown his face or contacted Renee. She could feel the coldness he was blowing her way, and she was sure she’d caught frostbite. Julian locking her out of his life had left Renee feeling lonely and lost. She covered her face with her hands and lay paralyzed, trying her best to fight off the pain. With Julian absent, Renee didn’t know how she’d get through this day. In her mind, she had officially lost the two most important men in her life. She saw no need to go on.

  Each year, on this day, Renee allowed her vulnerability to show and her pain to speak. Like the good man Julian was, he had been right there, cradling her in his arms while whispering all the right things in her ear. The two had fallen in love as teenagers. Renee and her family had moved from Miami to Brooklyn after her mother remarried, and there she had met Julian.

  Three houses down from Julian’s, Renee and her family had unpacked and prepared to try to fit into the new neighborhood, but they would never fit in. What took place in that house would transform every person, inside and out.

  A month after Renee settled into the family’s new home, Julian had walked past her house, only to see this magnificent beauty sitting on her porch steps, crying her soul out. He’d asked what was wrong, and her answer had shocked him. “My stepfather rapes me,” was what she’d told him, her eyes drowning in a sea of pain, begging him to save her. It was the first time she had said it out loud, and she’d
said it to a stranger in a strange place. At that moment Julian fell hard for Renee, and he vowed to be her knight in shining armor.

  Although their first encounter had been drenched in heartache, Julian never mentioned it when they were walking down memory lane. Instead, he turned the memory into a fairy tale and told Renee how the moment their eyes met, he knew she was the one. Tangled in his arms, Renee would mourn her father’s death and wish she could turn back the hands of time. Julian gave her the strength and love she needed to get through the day. It was his touch and soothing voice that made Renee fight the demons of her past. She was traumatized and scarred, and she missed him terribly right now.

  Her father’s death and her abusive childhood had turned her into a coldhearted monster. Unable to let go of what was, when she became an adult, she created her alias, Jordan, and set out to wreak mayhem on the streets of New York. She wanted everyone to feel her pain, so she had made the streets take a never-ending ride down misery lane with her.

  Few had ever seen the ruthless person responsible for pumping cocaine into New York, so people automatically assumed Jordan was a man. Only those who worked directly with Renee and had seen the inside of her home knew she was the person behind the name. This no-face alias of hers kept her protected and under the radar. And hers was a close-knit circle, which guaranteed her more insurance for longevity in the game.

  Renee was a queenpin sitting on millions now, but no amount of money could ease the constant anger she felt toward her past. Renee had demons that she couldn’t shake, and she had allowed them to swallow her whole and crush her heart. She stared into space now and turned the pages of her life in her mind. Her father would turn in his grave at the sight of her; she was a monster, a black-hearted beast with no conscience. She was nothing he had envisioned her being. Before he died in that five-car pileup on the highway, he had had great dreams for his baby girl. His love for his daughter had trumped everything. Even as a successful heart surgeon, he had still found time for his Ree-Ree. She was the reason he had stayed with her mother; he’d been the bandage to a broken family.

  Renee had been ten years old when he passed. Her world had crumbled when he died, and the little that was left of it had shattered when her mother remarried, exchanging vows with a man who would steal Renee’s innocence, virginity, and happiness. Renee was lost in a sea of confusion over why her childhood had been such a nightmare. She had many unanswered questions, such as why her mother had stayed with a man who continuously raped her child, why she’d been bullied, why friends had been so hard to come by, and why her father had disappeared for days at a time before he died. Life had been hard, and it had left Renee scarred. But instead of searching for answers to all her questions, she let her despair control her.

  Renee rolled over on her side and felt the empty space in her bed, the spot reserved for Julian. She took a deep breath. She was far from being the woman that he wanted, but she knew one thing: she knew that she was the woman he needed. With Julian’s disappearance, flashbacks of her father vanishing for days at a time invaded her thoughts, and she pushed them to the back of her mind. Anger took over once again. Renee didn’t know what to do with this thing called life, but if she didn’t figure it out soon and get past her rage, she’d be doomed.

  Two days later . . .

  Renee opened her eyes and felt like she had been hit by a ton of bricks. Her soul was broken, and her heart was punctured. Lying in her bed for days had done nothing to ease the pain of losing her father and enduring Julian’s disappearing act. She pulled herself out of bed and walked over to her vanity table. Leaning the palms of her hands on the table, she stared at herself in the mirror. She didn’t know the woman who looked back at her, and she didn’t care to meet her. The longer she looked, the more she hurt. She was lost within a world she had created, and she didn’t know how to get out of it, didn’t know how to walk out of the darkness and into the light.

  Renee closed her eyes and then opened them and stormed away from the mirror. She couldn’t stand the sight of her own face, and she couldn’t conjure up the strength she needed to move past the pain and into happiness. She was weak, and in her mind, weak people had no place in her life.

  She jumped in the shower, dried off, and threw on a diamond-studded black tank top, dark blue skinny jeans, and a black, fitted hat. Then she went out on her terrace. It was late afternoon, and the cool summer breeze graced her skin as she sat on the terrace. She knew it was time to end her mourning for the year and continue doing what she did best: ignoring her pain and allowing her misery to wreak havoc on the world. She looked down at the busy streets of New York City, and her eyes followed a guy riding his motorcycle, weaving in and out of traffic.

  Smiling, Renee walked into her bedroom and reached into her nightstand. She pulled out her Harley-Davidson keys. When she made her way downstairs, Slice was in the living room, playing her PlayStation 4. The screams of a crowd coming from the console indicated that he was playing NBA 2K19. Lyfe sat alone in a corner, playing a game of chess. When they heard her open the coat closet and retrieve her helmet, both men looked at her with confusion. Renee hardly, if ever, left the house. It was something she just didn’t do. She ran the streets behind closed doors and sat on her throne, looking pretty. So now that she wanted to leave, with dark circles around her eyes, and bags so heavy that they threatened to pop, all eyes were on her.

  “Where you going?” Slice questioned, but Renee didn’t answer. She just continued to grab her belongings, and then she made her way toward the door.

  Slice paused the game and stood up. “Renee!” he called out.

  Still, she didn’t answer.

  He opened his mouth to call her again, but he stopped when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around and saw Lyfe staring at him, his eyes and his firm grip telling him to leave it alone. Slice took his advice and shut up. He went back to his game.

  Ten minutes after the front door shut, Lyfe was still staring at the door while clutching his cell phone. The calendar app was open, with the date from two days ago displayed on the screen.

  Chapter 9

  After forty-five minutes of riding around, Renee found herself in Brooklyn, over in East New York. She had had no destination in mind when she started out, and life had led her back to where she spent the bulk of her life. The mere sight of her old neighborhood brought back unforgettable memories. Three blocks from her old home, she looked across the street and saw Ms. Johnson, a sixty-five-year-old woman who had more men than Bill Gates had money. Renee watched her walk into the house with two men. She was wearing a black miniskirt and a tight spaghetti top.

  Renee smiled. Old Ms. Johnson still got it.

  Minutes later, Renee sat at a red light in front of her mother’s house, a place she hadn’t been to in years. The house hadn’t changed; it still stood tall, with flowerpots filled with sunflowers on the porch, and roses and tulips surrounding the yard. She stared at the home, trying to find something, anything, that was different, but there was absolutely nothing different about it. To Renee, if there was nothing different about the outside of the home, then there was nothing different about the people inside it, and that angered her.

  She thought about her sister, and instantly, her anger subsided. She looked up at the window to the bedroom that she knew belonged to Page, and she thought she saw a shadow, but then she figured it was only her eyes playing tricks on her. She hadn’t seen her sister in years, and as hard as it was for her cold heart to admit, she missed her terribly and wanted nothing more than to get off her bike and walk into the house.

  However, entering that home would be like going back in time, which was something Renee could never do. Before another thought came to mind, she heard a high-pitched woman’s laugh. Renee looked over and saw an older female with the physique of a model walking up to the house with a male. Renee couldn’t get a good look at the guy’s face. His head was turned in the opposite direction, but she did look over his lime-green pants and ora
nge shirt before laying eyes on the woman who caused her blood to boil. The sight of her mother after all these years still enraged her. She followed her every move now. You would have thought the woman was twenty again by the way she was all over this young guy, who could have been her oldest daughter’s boyfriend.

  As she stared at the couple, Renee entered her own little world and relived the past.

  Why do we have to stay here again?” Julian dribbled his basketball effortlessly and at such a high speed that Renee’s eyes could barely keep up with the ball.

  “I can’t leave until she comes back.”

  “Where did she go?”

  Renee screwed up her face. “Don’t know. Don’t care.” A short brown-skinned guy walked past just then, pushing a baby stroller. Renee sat right on the steps of her porch; however, she felt completely separated from society. “I’m stuck here in this shit hole. You can go.”

  Julian sped up his dribbling, his stare fixed on Renee. “If you’re stuck, then I’m stuck.”

  Renee tried to suppress the smile creeping across her lips and failed. Her unwanted smile broke Julian’s focus on dribbling. He smiled back, and the ball slipped out of his hands and tumbled inside Sheila’s garden. It rolled over on an impatiens and a sunflower.

  “My bad, Ree. I know your mother will blow her top if I mess up her flowers.” He removed the ball from the garden and attempted to straighten the slightly damaged stems.

  Renee walked over. “I got it,” she announced. Julian stepped aside, and Renee stomped on the flowers. “Much better.” She went back to the porch and sat down on the steps.

  Shortly after the assassination of the flowers, a red convertible pulled up across the street.

  “That is a bright-ass color red,” Julian noted.

  “Tacky as hell,” Renee replied.

  The driver’s door opened, and Sheila stepped out. She speed walked from the car straight to her house.

  “About time,” Renee mumbled. She pulled her braids back into a ponytail and stood up, ready to go.