the motions you need to go through to get to where you need to be.”
“Well, I don’t want any part of them.”
“Why do you think you constantly watch what he’s doing with his new woman? Why do you think you care? It’s because you haven’t processed that it’s over between the two of you. I think it is, anyway, since you haven’t made a move to get him back. I’m assuming that you haven’t talked to him?”
Sadie shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Because he seems happy.”
“Looks can be deceiving,” Legacy said casually, but the tone of his voice suggested he was hinting at something.
“You’ve seen him,” Sadie said, studying his face. “Haven’t you?”
“Maybe,” Legacy told her, and when she cut her eyes at him, he nodded.
“Was she there?”
“Yes.”
“What . . . what was she like?”
“Do you really want to know?” Legacy asked, looking her in the eyes. It was her turn to nod. “Jada is beautiful, kind, sweet, and she makes him laugh.”
Sadie had never had a knife in her chest before, but it had to be like what Legacy’s words made her feel like. Sadie knew the woman was pretty, but hearing her name out loud broke her. Tears appeared at the corners of her eyes, but Legacy wiped them away before they could completely fall down her cheeks.
“Even seeing all that, she still isn’t you,” he told her, placing his hand under her chin.
“What does that mean?”
“Go see for yourself... before it’s too late.” Legacy stood up and placed a kiss on her forehead. “Now I love you, sis, but if you ever go ghost like this again, I’ll kill you. I’m about to go see about catching a flight home to my wife. And do me a favor? Take it easy on Ray. Truth be told, he wanted me to come check on you when he found out I would be in Detroit.”
He threw the half-empty bottle of liquor away on his way out of the kitchen. When he got to the entranceway, Sadie called his name.
“What’s up, sis?” He stopped to look at her over his shoulder.
“Give Lace my love,” she said, and he flashed his straight, white teeth.
“Always.”
And with that, he was gone.
Chapter 5
Later that night, in the darkness of her room, Ahli was entrapped in her own head. She lay on her side, facing the wall as a sea of thoughts rushed through her mind like a tidal wave. Ahli battled the confusion coursing through her body, mainly because Sadie had made a point to let her know that VEM was ready to be sold on the market. What she had failed to mention was that she meant in the U.S. Sadie hadn’t said anything about VEM being sold already overseas, but then again, Sadie was the boss. She didn’t have to tell anyone anything, and she had made that clear.
Ahli let out a sigh and opened the night table on the side of her bed. From it, she pulled out an old photo of her and her mom. Ahli had to have been about 2 years old in the picture, sitting on Rhebecca’s lap, smiling big with a lollipop in one of her hands. They were on the steps of a house that Ahli didn’t remember, but she knew her father had taken the photo because she saw his reflection in one of the windows. Rhebecca had been stunningly beautiful, and that was one of the things she’d passed down to her daughters. Ahli lay quietly, looking into her mother’s eyes and wishing that, just for a second, she could have her back.
Ahli couldn’t help but wonder how she would have turned out if she’d had a normal family life. She imagined herself as a music teacher, standing in front of a classroom of small children. But that daydream was cut short when she remembered that, even before she and Rhonnie were born, her parents had never lived normal lives. She and Rhonnie were never destined to be regular.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a soft tapping on her door. She wasn’t sure if her ears were playing tricks on her, so she lay still and held her breath. After a few moments, the same tapping sounded again, and that time she got up from the bed. When she cracked open the door to see what Rhonnie wanted, she saw that it wasn’t Rhonnie, but Brayland.
“I was on my way to the crib, but you were on my mind heavy,” he told her with a sincere look in his eyes. When she didn’t open the door wide enough for him to enter, he held a bottle of wine and two glasses up in the air. “I grabbed this from the cellar. I can’t pronounce the name on it for shit, but it looks expensive.”
Ahli bit the inside of her cheek as he shrugged his shoulders goofily. Fighting back the smiles he put on her face always proved to be the hardest task, and once again, she failed. Even in her moments of gloom, Brayland knew how to brighten her spirits. She couldn’t lie, some company would be nice, and at one point in time, they did share Ahli’s suite. When she opened the door all the way, the first thing Brayland did was whisk her into a deep kiss. The moment their lips touched, she felt herself melt into him.
“I thought I needed that more than you did, but maybe I was wrong,” he said when their kiss broke.
“I thought today would be a relaxing day. Clearly, I was wrong,” she sighed, closing the door behind him.
Once inside, Brayland took a seat on one of the sofa chairs in the corner of the large room. He opened the bottle of wine and filled the two glasses before placing it on the small table in front of him. After handing her a glass, his eyes went to something in her hand, and when she looked down, she saw that she was still holding the photo of her mother and her. He’d seen it many times, because she often pulled it out when she had a lot on her mind.
“You good?” he asked, concerned.
“I don’t know,” Ahli said and put the photo back where she’d gotten it from. “It’s just a lot to process, I guess.”
“VEM?”
“Yeah,” she stated. “Shit’s crazy.”
“To be all the way real with you, after that first year of working for Sadie, I forgot all about it. Don’t tell her I said this, but I don’t think I ever thought it would work. I mean, when you first told me about it all those years ago, it sounded like a myth,” Brayland said and made his voice go sarcastically deeper. “Vita E Morte. Life and death.”
“It was a myth,” Ahli said. “It was still a myth when I handed Sadie the formula, but apparently not.”
“I just can’t believe you didn’t tell me about it. I didn’t know we kept secrets from each other.”
“Well, I would have told you if I had known about it myself.”
“Wait, you mean Sadie ain’t tell you?”
“Not until today,” Ahli said.
“Damn.” Brayland looked shocked. “The way y’all act sometimes, I would think you were the best of friends.”
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that, but I can say that it shocked me that she just told me today. Especially since it’s already being sold in Azua. Especially since . . .” Ahli let her voice trail off, and she sat in the chair opposite him and took a big sip of her wine.
“Especially since what?”
“I just can’t help but think of my mom, you know?”
“What about her?”
“That she would be disappointed in me for giving the formula to anybody.”
“You don’t trust Sadie?”
“With my life.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“What