Chapter Forty-six
Angel took a second to remember to breathe instead of scream. Moving forward into the darkness, she reached out for the lamp that was on a nearby table. The light calmed her, but her uncle did not. He seemed to have aged overnight.
“You scared me, Jacob. When did you get here? Grams has been asking about you.”
She walked farther into the living room and sat across from her uncle on the love seat.
“I’m sorry. I was hoping not to wake you.”
“What’s going on with you? And stop pretending like everything is okay. It’s not. Look at you.”
Jacob snarled, “Will you lower your voice?”
“Grams has noticed something is wrong with you too. She can’t even rest herself because she’s worried about you.”
Jacob leaned his head against the back of the couch. “This has been the worst time in my life next to your mother disappearing. Losing Dad was one thing, but I didn’t see them letting me go at the job. Fifteen years. I gave my best years to that company for fifteen years.”
Angel said, “I’m so sorry. Have you been looking for another job?”
“Angel, I’m almost fifty years old. Employers prefer the youngster, who they can pay less. But I have been working, just not doing what I thought I would be doing. More or less just temporary contract work. I still hope to obtain something more permanent with benefits again, but it’s been hard. So much has happened at once. I mean, I wasn’t expecting Mom to . . .” Jacob sighed and held his head down, but not before Angel took notice of the tears in his eyes.
She remained silent, understanding that her uncle had lost a lot and was probably just as scared.
Jacob interrupted her thoughts. “I ran her off. She’s gone because of me. That’s what has been haunting me lately.” Her uncle stared in her direction, but it was like he was looking through her.
“Liz? Why don’t you try talking to her? I’m sure you two can work it out.”
“No, no, no.” Jacob leaned over and held his head in his hands.
Angel continued, “You’ve been married so long, there has to be something . . .”
Jacob stared at her. “Angel, I’m talking about your mother.”
She sat back on the love seat and eyed her uncle. “My mother? What did you do?”
“Elisa was different when she was younger. She looked up to me as the older brother. I protected her. We grew farther apart the more people encouraged her to sing. It became her obsession. But then she started to change. Elisa’s behavior became so manic that she would get angry and lash out at people, and then, all of a sudden, she would just be the happy little sister I knew.”
Angel remembered talking to Wanda earlier in the week. She’d mentioned her mother’s mood swings. She didn’t want to interrupt Jacob, so she remained quiet.
He laughed quietly, his shoulders shaking. “You were the best thing that ever happened to Elisa. She doted on you. Dressed you up. Being your mother gave her a sense of being normal, being a mom. If only she’d stayed on her medicine.”
“Medicine?”
Jacob focused on Angel. “Dad didn’t want to think anything was wrong with her. If it wasn’t for Mom keeping up with her and staying on her, Elisa would have gotten into a lot more trouble.”
“What was she taking medicine for?” Angel asked.
“She was bipolar. Elisa would be up one day and then down for days.”
“How come no one told me this?”
Jacob shook his head. “I don’t know. I do know that she ran away before. She would go off when she was in high school. We would all look for her, and then we would finally find her at some friend’s house. Most of us had never met these friends.”
“So when she left that night, had she been taking her medicine?”
“I don’t know. I suspect not. She was really flying high, just a ton of energy. She was like a kid, going on and on about the record deal and how she was going to be like Mary J. Blige and Mariah Carey.”
Angel asked, “Did Eddie know? I mean, about her being bipolar.”
Jacob lunged from the couch and paced. “He knew. I tried to tell Dad that Eddie was no good. Yeah, he could play the drums, but he was surrounded by people who were questionable. Even the guys in the band were starting to be weary of him. I still don’t know how Eddie talked Dad into letting him be Elisa’s manager. He knew she had talent, and he just wanted to make money off her, but Dad was so blind.”
Angel stared at her uncle, trying to let his rants sink in. “Well, what did you mean when you said you ‘ran her off’?”
Jacob sat back down. “After she argued with your father, I tried to talk to her. I told her Angelino was right. She needed to wait a while longer for a better opportunity. She was so angry at me. I didn’t realize she had left, but . . .” Jacob swallowed. “Mom went to check on you, and you asked her where Mommy was going.”
“I did?”
“Yes, you were the one who clued us in on the fact that she had left. I knew she was angry with me.”
Angel leaned over. “Do you know if she was there the night the rapper K-Dawg was killed?”
Jacob studied her for a second. “What do you know about that night?”
“Wes has been looking into some things for me. There’s a theory that she saw who killed K-Dawg, and wherever she went after that, the person responsible did something to her. Do you think that’s what happened?”
Her uncle sat quietly for a moment, deep in thought. He looked back at Angel, his eyes glistening. “She was there. Dad sent me to get her. She had been off for a few days. Mom suspected she was not taking her medicine. Someone called Dad and said Elisa was acting a little crazy. I just happened to be home visiting and was sent to fetch my sister.”
Angel asked, “Did you arrive when the shooting happened? Do you think she saw something?”
Jacob responded, “I arrived after the shooting. I remember it was just chaos. It took me at least ten or fifteen minutes, but I finally located Elisa. She was standing on the sidewalk, just staring at the car. The police had asked her if she saw something.”
“She didn’t say?”
“No. Nobody said anything.” Jacob sighed. “It’s possible she could have seen something, but she never said anything. I just tried to get her back home. She was sitting so still in the passenger seat. I thought maybe she was in shock.”
Angel felt close to tears. This was the closest she had ever come to finding out the truth about her mother. She just didn’t understand why it had taken so long to pull it out of her own flesh and blood.
Questions still lingered, though. “Jacob?”
“Yeah?”
“Where would my mother have gone the night she left?”
“Angel, cops have been over this time and time again.”
“But they missed something, and I need to know.” Angel stood. “Did they know she was at the club the night of the shooting? When she was really frustrated, was there someone she turned to? She had to say something to someone.”
“Before Elisa disappeared, the only person she would really listen to or confide in was Eddie.”
Angel stood still. Wes was right. She was starting to question if she really knew at all the people in her life she thought she knew. When she met with Wes, they would have a lot of pieces to put together.