Chapter

Seventeen

Kendall stomped back and forth in front of me. “Okay, come again.” She paused and cocked her ear as if she needed to do that to hear me better. “Did you just say that that heffa won’t tell you where your daughter is?”

Sheridan said, “Uh, Kendall, I don’t think you should use that word while we’re here in the church.” She knelt in front of me and squeezed my hand.

“Whatever!” Kendall said, still going off. “God might even be calling Caroline that right now.”

I could almost feel the steam coming out of Kendall. She was much angrier than I was. I wasn’t angry anymore, I was just scared.

Kendall’s rant continued. “I think it’s time for us to go over there and pay this . . .” For a moment she stopped moving and stood right in front of us, then she said, “. . . this heffa a visit.”

“Kendall! You’re not helping!” Sheridan snapped.

Kendall shook her head, took a deep breath, then she knelt in front of me. She held my hand as she said, “You know Angel’s all right. One thing you know is that heffa will take care of her.”

If I wasn’t so sad, I would’ve laughed. But all I could do was nod and sniff. I felt so drained, but thank God for Sheridan and Kendall. With them here now, all I had to do was keep breathing. They’d figure the rest out for me.

Sheridan added, “And Bobby, too. He’ll take care of her. He always has.”

“In my heart, I know Angel’s okay . . . at least, physically. But mentally . . .” My eyes shut and that video played in my head again. “I still can’t believe that she walked in on us like that.”

Kendall moved from kneeling in front of me to sitting next to me on the front pew. “Girl, I always knew you were a freak . . .”

And there wasn’t a thing that I could say because I’d told my girls everything. When I first barged into the church, I’d run right into Sheridan’s arms, since she was standing by the door waiting for me. Kendall was there, too, waiting for her turn, and after a couple of seconds, I fell into her embrace.

They went back and forth, taking turns holding me, saying nothing, until I was drained of all of my emotions. Then, when Sheridan pulled me down onto the front pew and asked, “What happened?” the story poured out of me. I started with how I’d thought Bobby wanted me, when he really didn’t, and then I explained how Bobby and I eventually got back together. And the grand finale: I told them how I’d put on a porn show on a sixty-inch monitor for Bobby, Angel, and her friends.

I didn’t think there could possibly be anything that I could do to shock Sheridan and Kendall. Through the years they’d seen the best, but definitely the worst of me.

But this story right here had Sheridan and Kendall sitting with their mouths open in matching wide Os. It was a major achievement—I’d made Kendall speechless.

Until I told them how I’d gone to Caroline’s looking for Angel. That was when Kendall’s rant began. And as she paced and roared about what she wanted to do to Caroline, I was so grateful. Kendall was saying all that I wanted to say, but didn’t have the energy to do right then.

“A freak,” I said, finally responding to Kendall. “If that’s what you’re calling me, what’re Angel and her friends saying?”

“Girl, please. You don’t have to worry about that,” Kendall said. “Angel and her friends have probably seen much worse!”

I was horrified at that thought and Sheridan must’ve been as shocked as I was, because Kendall looked at me, then at Sheridan, and finally Kendall asked, “What? Y’all don’t really believe these kids nowadays with their iPads, and their Kindles and their Samsungs, are not watching every bit of porn that they can on YouTube?”

“No,” Sheridan said. “Because you can’t post porn on YouTube.”

“Well, maybe not on the Tube, but trust and believe they can see whatever they want on the Internet when you’re not watching.”

“Oh, God!” I moaned. I didn’t want to think of my little Angel seeing any of that stuff.

“Look, all I’m saying is that you’re acting like Angel’s ruined for life. She’s not. She’ll be fine.”

“I want to believe you. That’s why I just want to talk to her, to hear her voice and to know that she’s fine and she doesn’t hate me.”

“Hate you because you were having tech sex with Bobby?”

“Hate me because I was having tech sex with Bobby when she loves Caroline so much.”

“Girl, the only thing I’m thinking about Caroline right now is what she’s going to say when we roll up there and beat her down until she tells us where Angel is.”

That sounded like a good idea to me.

“So let me get this straight,” Sheridan began. “You want the three of us to go busting into a house in Bel Air?”

Kendall shrugged. “I’ve done it before.”

If my heart wasn’t broken inside, I would’ve laughed, jumped up, and given Kendall a high five. She was my girl—even more than I thought. We always bumped heads like we didn’t like each other, though I knew how much she loved me and I loved her.

But how she was talking now? After all of this was over, I was gonna invite Kendall to hang out with me and Noon!

Right now, though I wanted to go with Kendall’s plan, I knew that we couldn’t. “The moment we drive onto Caroline’s driveway, she’ll call the police,” I said.

“And, she’d have a right to do that,” Sheridan said, glaring at Kendall. “Especially once she found out our intentions.” Turning back to me, she said, “We do have to find Angel and make sure that you at least speak to her, but we’ve got to do this in a calm, civilized way. So, you’ve called Angel, right?”

“A million times.” On my drive over to the church, that’s all I did. I called Angel, then I called Bobby, and then Angel again. I doubted if they were together, though; I just didn’t know. All I wanted to do was speak to my child, hug her, kiss her, and tell her that we were going to be all right, together.

“Okay, so you want something calm and civilized,” Kendall said more to Sheridan than to me. “Let’s go to Bel Air, but we’ll stop short of going through the gates. We’ll have our own stakeout and wait for Angel to go back there.”

Now, that was an idea! I grabbed my purse, turned to Sheridan—I was ready to roll.

Sheridan nodded. “We might be there all night, though. Angel might not go back there until tomorrow since she’s not due home to you until tomorrow night, right?”

“Yeah, but at least doing this, I’d feel like I was doing something to find Angel.”

Sheridan nodded again, though she wasn’t as enthusiastic as Kendall, and I got that. This wasn’t the way Sheridan handled things.

“You know, Sheridan, Kendall and I can do this together if you want to go back home,” I said.

“Are you kidding me? If you two are there, then I’m all in, too.”

I would’ve cried if I’d had any tears left. But since I was empty, I hugged Sheridan first, then Kendall. And as we grabbed our purses, my cell rang.

Looking down at the screen, I shrieked, “It’s Angel!”

Sheridan and Kendall stood so close to me that if anyone was watching, the three of us would have looked like one person. “Angel, baby, are you okay?”

“Hi, Mom.” She sounded so exhausted, like she hadn’t slept all night.

“Baby, I love you. Where are you?”

“I’m back at Mom Caroline’s,” she said, and I did not miss the way she didn’t mention her father. “She said that I had to call you and tell you that I was all right.”

“Oh, thank you, Jesus. Baby, I’m so sorry, but I’ll be right there—”

“Mom, no! No!”

“Please, baby.”

“No, Mom. I need a little bit of time.”

Angel was barely twelve. What did she know about needing time? Were those her words or was she saying what Caroline told her to say?

“I just want to see you, give you a hug.”

“Mom!”

“I’m coming,” I insisted.

From the corner of my eye, I could see Sheridan motioning with her hand, trying to get me to be calm. So, I took a deep breath and spoke softer, slower. “Angel, baby, I won’t come over there now.”

“Thanks,” she said quietly.

“But I can’t wait to see you tomorrow. And then we can talk, okay?”

There was a passing moment, and then, “Okay.”

I breathed. “I’ll come and pick you up about—”

“No, send Ms. Martinez like you always do.”

“Okay,” I said, agreeing to Angel’s final term in this negotiation. All that was left to say was what was most important. “I love you, Angel. I love you so much.”

Seconds ticked and ticked and ticked. Then a soft “I love you, too, Mom.” She hung up after that, not giving me a final good-bye. But that was okay because she’d given me something better. She’d given me hope.

My eyes were still on the cell-phone screen when I felt Sheridan’s and Kendall’s arms wrap around me. They stood, one on each side, holding me up, more figuratively than literally. But it was the figurative embrace that I needed the most.

“She’s coming home!”

“Yes, she is,” Sheridan and Kendall said together.

“She’s gonna be okay,” Sheridan said.

“I feel that way,” I said.

Kendall just had to add, “Of course she’s gonna be all right. I mean, how much damage can be done walking in on your mother with her legs spread wide open on a big-screen TV?”

Sheridan and I looked at Kendall.

“What?” she asked.

And then I busted out laughing. I laughed, and laughed and laughed. I laughed so hard I couldn’t stand. I laughed until I fell back onto the front pew. Then I laughed and kicked up my feet. I laughed until I cried.