Aftermath (10 page)

Camille marveled at how swiftly the two of them had slithered out of the packed courtroom and into the lights and cameras flashing in the lobby. Louis tried to pull the same maneuver, but Lily was on him before he could reach the door.

“I'm going to be there to visit with Shane in about an hour. Let him know that Grandma is coming to see him.”

Louis nodded and slunk out with his screw-faced girlfriend in tow.

Misa's attorney came over to Camille and explained Misa's bail situation. “Basically, you would need to put up cash totaling five hundred thousand dollars in order to bail her out tonight. Or, you can present collateral in the amount of twenty percent of her bail. In this case, that would mean assets totaling one hundred thousand dollars.”

Camille was at a loss for words at first. Teresa made it sound so easy, with her designer suits and expensive bags. Camille figured the prominent attorney probably had that kind of money to burn. Camille did not.

“Oh my God…”

Toya stood there and wondered if her friend was one of those dumb bitches her father had warned her about growing up: a dumb bitch who didn't know her worth, who never saved for a rainy day, who never asked a nigga for shit or planned for the day when he wasn't there. She felt a headache coming on as she watched her friend—the wife of Frankie B, head of the Nobles crime syndicate—struggle to come to terms with what had just happened.

“I don't have that kind of money,” Camille said.

“You can put your house up, Camille,” Toya pointed out.

Teresa nodded in agreement. “Yes, the court will accept the deed to your house as collateral.”

Camille shook her head. “The house is in Frankie's name. Everything is in Frankie's name.”

Toya almost wanted to choke Camille to death. “Everything?”

Camille felt like the dumbest bitch on the planet. “Yeah.” She nodded sadly. “Everything.” The severity of the situation made her weak in the knees and she sat down on the courtroom bench before she collapsed.

Teresa seemed dismayed, as well. “Well, then…” She began to pack her belongings into her briefcase, assuming that if these ladies couldn't afford bail, they couldn't afford her. On her way out the door, she handed Camille a business card. “Call me when you're able to work things out with your husband.”

They watched Teresa Rourke, Misa's ticket to freedom, saunter out the door one dollar sign at a time.

*   *   *

“You have … sixty seconds
remaining on this phone call.” The voice recording let Dominique and her incarcerated boyfriend Jamel know that time was winding down on their collect conversation.

Dominique had spent the past half hour telling Jamel all the events of the past twenty-four hours. Toya had accompanied Camille to Misa's court appearance and Dominique had stayed behind in order to wait for word from her daughter. Hearing from Jamel had been a welcome distraction from the nonstop worrying she'd been doing since Octavia's disappearance. She felt so alone. Octavia's father was not an active part of her life, never had been. Stationed overseas as an army sergeant, he supported his only child with monthly checks, but never visited or sent for Octavia. Dominique sent him a school picture of their daughter each year as a courtesy, but she suspected that he couldn't care less about them. She hadn't even bothered to contact him to inform him that Octavia had been missing for the past few days. He wouldn't be of any help to her. The person she wanted to cling to the most—her father Bill Storms—had died only a couple of months ago. Bill would have known what to do, where to look for Octavia. Without him, she felt so alone even with her friends' support.

“Baby, I'm gonna hang up and call right back so we can talk about this,” Jamel said, his tone at once calming and reassuring.

Dominique didn't feel reassured, though. Still she managed to say, “Okay.”

She hung up and hated that this was the closest she could get to being comforted at a time like this. So many thoughts had gone through her head all night. Octavia was only fourteen years old. What if she had trusted some stranger and was in peril? Dominique hadn't slept a wink all night and now she wanted nothing more than to fall into some strong arms and be held. She wanted to be hugged and kissed and told that everything was going to be all right. But with Jamel still in prison, she had to settle for the ringing phone and his words of comfort through the receiver.

“I have a collect call from … Jamel … an inmate at…”

Instinctively, she pressed 3 to skip the monotonous recording.

“Baby?”

“Yeah.” Dominique lay across Octavia's bed, feeling drained and anxious at the same time. She ran her fingers across the soft brown fur of Octavia's favorite teddy bear and sighed, tears pouring forth involuntarily. She imagined poor little Octavia being raped, beaten, and left for dead somewhere and a sob escaped her lips.

Jamel leaned against the wall as he spoke into the receiver, picturing Dominique's pretty face in his mind. He could imagine how she must look right now, so scared and worried about her only child. He wished, more than ever, that he could somehow escape the confines of the prison walls that held him.

“I can't imagine how you must feel right now,” he said honestly. “But I bet you're probably thinking the worst.”

She was. Dominique squeezed her eyes shut to block out the horrible thoughts going through her mind.

“You can't think like that,” Jamel said. “Octavia's a smart girl. She's probably staying with a friend of hers until she can get up the nerve to call you. She's gonna come back home soon, ma. You gotta believe that.”

Looking around Octavia's room, Dominique did believe that. She'd called the police that morning after Camille and Toya had left, and filed a missing persons report. The officers who had come out to her home and taken her statement had collected pictures of Octavia and searched her room for clues as to what may have caused her to run away. They'd indicated it was likely that a child who had grown up as sheltered and as privileged as Octavia would come back to the luxuries she'd miss on the streets. That is, one officer suggested, unless she was on drugs. Either way, they'd said, she hadn't packed much of her clothes and shoes. She would be more likely to come back for those things (if nothing else) in the coming days.

Dominique had never had any indication that her daughter might be using drugs. She hadn't noticed any drop in her grades or any overly rebellious behavior. There was no drug paraphernalia in her room and Dominique hated to think that was the case. But the truth was, she hadn't been spending much time with her daughter. And she had really no idea what might be troubling her so much that she would run away.

“Jamel, I haven't been a good mother to Octavia,” Dominique said, as she smoothed Octavia's pillows.

“Now you're playing yourself,” Jamel said. He hated how women always had to try and find a reason to blame themselves for everything. “You're a great mother, and you know it.”

She shrugged. “We have a nice home, she wears nice clothes and goes to a good school. But I don't spend any time with my kid, Jamel. I'm always traveling, and always working late. When I'm not working late, I'm going upstate to see you!”

Dominique hadn't meant for it to sound that way, hadn't wanted to make Jamel feel as if she was blaming him. Nevertheless, that was exactly how he took it.

His face fell. Here he was trying to soothe her in her time of need, and she was shifting the blame for all this to him. “Okay,” he said. “So I'm sorry if coming to see me makes you a bad mother.”

Dominique wanted to toss the fucking phone across the room. She was in no mood for Jamel's pity party. “I'm not even saying that! What I'm saying is that the police came over here today and asked me if I've noticed any change in my daughter's weight, in her sleep patterns, her moods … and I struggled to think of the last time I even noticed, Jamel! Octavia is so independent and I've been so used to this nonstop pace that my life moves at that I've been … I've been neglecting my daughter.” She shook her head as she said it. “And that's the bottom line.”

Jamel was about to respond when a CO rudely interrupted them. “Hang up the phone,” the officer barked. “It's count time!”

Jamel seethed, but had no choice but to comply. The count was a mandatory lineup during which prison officials tallied the inmates to ensure that everyone was accounted for. “I gotta go, ma,” Jamel said, hating to have to leave their conversation at a time like this. “I'll try to call back in a little while.”

Dominique shook her head, frustrated and sick of the way her life was playing out. She hung up the phone without even saying good-bye. She got on her knees and prayed that the next time the phone rang, it wouldn't be Jamel calling, but Octavia instead.

*   *   *

Frankie seemed too
big
for his mother's house, looming large on her tiny sofa. Gillian looked around Mary's humble home and tried to imagine Frankie as a child, the way he looked in the countless pictures of him dotting his mother's living room. Framed photos of him riding his bike, playing basketball, dressed up in his Easter suit—in all of them, he was staring back at the camera with the same serious and stoic expression on his face, never smiling. Steven was present in some of the pictures, too. Always peering from behind his older brother or from behind a tree, always half hidden or shielded by his own hands as if he never wanted to be immortalized in a photograph. It was kind of eerie to Gillian seeing the two brothers playing the same roles in childhood as they did in their adult lives. Frankie out in front, all serious and no-nonsense; Steven playing in Frankie's shadow, seemingly more comfortable there than anywhere else.

Frankie watched his mother rushing around her kitchen nervously, trying to find her best glass to pour something for Gillian to drink. Frankie knew she was making the task harder than it had to be and when he saw her reach way in the back of her cabinet, he grimaced. She was still so scarred from years of abuse by her husband, so accustomed to being alone and without company that she was going out of her way to do everything right.

“Ma,” he called out to her. He noticed that the sound of his deep voice caused her to jump a little. “You don't have to go through all of that. Gillian will drink from any glass you got.”

Gillian felt bad now for taking Mary up on her offer of something to drink. All she wanted was a glass of water, and Frankie's mother was acting like she had to go to the well to get it.

Finally, Mary came back into the living room and set a glass of water with a perfect slice of lemon inside of it on a coaster on the table in front of Gillian. Gillian smiled and thanked her for it, noticing that Frankie's mother seldom made eye contact with anyone.

She had been wondering why Frankie was so hesitant to break the news of Steven's death to his mother. He had been so wound up that he hadn't slept at all. That morning, he had locked himself in the bathroom for what seemed to Gillian like a never-ending shower. Then he had emerged, only to busy himself with calls to his lawyer and accountants. And when she suggested breaking the news to his mother before Misa's hearing, Frankie had ignored her. Gillian had pressed him, emphasizing how devastating it would be for Mary to hear about her son's death on TV or to see it splashed across the front page of the newspaper. Still, Frankie hadn't budged. Seeing the docile and nervous woman now, Gillian understood his reluctance a little bit more.

Mary was wondering why Gillian was with her son today instead of his wife. The last time she'd had the pleasure of a visit from Frankie, Camille had been by his side and Mary had fallen in love with her daughter-in-law. Camille was lovely, sweet, and so attentive to Frankie. Mary had never met Gillian before, but judging by the chemistry between them it was apparent that she was now the woman in Frankie's life.

Mary sat across from her son on the rocking chair she'd had since she was a little girl. Her father had given it to her for Christmas when she was six years old and it was one of her most treasured possessions. That chair was one of the few pieces of her life prior to marrying Frankie's father, John, that he hadn't destroyed in one of his many tirades over the years.

“I'm so surprised to see you, Frankie.” Mary's voice was soft and sweet.

Gillian was heartbroken, knowing that they had come to deliver terrible news to the fragile woman who sat before her.

Frankie offered a weak smile and stared at his mother for a few moments. He took in her facial features, her body language. She was thinner than he'd ever seen her before, but still just as pretty as he remembered. It had been two long years since the last time he had come by to visit her. He called her every now and then, sent money to her each month. But he had found it difficult to be around her, to see her still so meek and so powerless even though her oppressor was dead.

Her long thick hair was pulled back into a neat bun, her beautiful brown skin seemingly aglow. Her long dark eyelashes fluttered each time she dared to look up at him and her long dainty fingers toyed with the napkin she held in her hand.

Finally, Frankie spoke as his mother looked at him expectantly. He felt a surge of guilt as she smiled at him, unaware that he had nothing positive to say.

“Ma,” he said. “I came by here today to talk to you about Steven.”

Mary's facial expression changed then. She always felt a mixture of emotions at the thought of her youngest child. Steven was so much like her. He was weaker than his brother, less outgoing, not as resilient. He wasn't a fighter the way that Frankie was and Mary had noticed this early on. For that reason, she had always worried about Steven far more than she worried over Frankie. Ever since they were kids it had been that way. She felt a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach hearing Frankie mention his brother now. Something wasn't right. She could sense it.