Maddox had just finished having dinner with Uriah—he’d stopped and bought some ribs, coleslaw, corn bread and beans on his way home—when Aiyana called. He answered as he cleared the table. “What’s up?”
“Jada has agreed to let Maya come to New Horizons.”
Maddox turned off the water he’d been using to rinse the dishes. Uriah didn’t care for the fact that Maddox was waiting on him—he kept grumbling about it—but he wasn’t supposed to be moving around much, so Maddox was trying to do the menial stuff. “Why?”
“I don’t know. You told me you were going to talk to her, so I assumed you had somehow convinced her.”
“I tried. She said no.”
“Then something else must’ve changed her mind. Cindy just called to let me know. Cindy’s relieved, Annie and Maya are ecstatic and... I can’t even begin to guess what Jada is feeling.”
Maddox couldn’t, either, but he was excited. As far as he was concerned, that Jada would allow her daughter to come to the school where he was the principal—where Maya would run into him, at least on occasion—could only mean good things for their relationship, even if it turned out to be only a friendship. He doubted Susan would ever forgive him, but he hoped the rest of the family would. He wished he could put everything that’d happened that fateful night behind him, even become friends with Atticus, as far-fetched a hope as he knew that was. “I’m shocked.”
“Same here. How’s Tobias doing, by the way? Did you ever call him?”
“I texted him from the office before I left, but he hasn’t responded. I’ll call him when I get to my place tonight.”
“You’re not home?”
“I’m at Uriah’s.”
“How’s he feeling?”
Maddox glanced over his shoulder. Uriah had a scrape on his head from hitting the side of the house when he went down and a couple of stitches on his arm from where he tried to catch himself, but those injuries were already starting to heal. “He’s tough. He’ll be okay.”
“I’ve never been better,” Uriah yelled when he realized Maddox was talking about him. “Tell this young man he doesn’t need to coddle me!”
Aiyana heard him without Maddox having to repeat it. “Tell him I said to enjoy it while it lasts.”
“I’ll get him a meal and clean up afterward, but I won’t show him any mercy when we play chess,” Maddox joked.
“That knock on the head wasn’t hard enough that I can’t still beat you,” he said.
Maddox signed off with Aiyana and enjoyed the chess game, especially because, to Uriah’s chagrin, he did win.
“That fall must’ve rattled my noggin worse than I thought,” he complained when Maddox finally put him in check.
“You’d better get some rest, old man.”
“I’d better get some rest! You were the one who just about fell asleep half a dozen times during the game.”
For good reason. He’d had about three hours of sleep last night. “You took forever to move!” he joked, but he could tell Uriah knew the real reason when he said, “You’d better hope she doesn’t come back tonight.”
The possibility made Maddox smile. “I hope she does.”
Maddox was still smiling as he walked back to his house. Jada was going to let Maya come to New Horizons. That had to mean something, didn’t it? Had to mean he was earning some of her forgiveness, earning some of her trust.
He thought he’d fall into bed and sleep until his alarm went off in the morning. It wasn’t even dark, but he didn’t care. No SportsCenter for him tonight. But just as he was about to let himself into the house, someone stepped out from behind the garage, nearly giving him a heart attack.
“There you are! I’ve been waiting for freaking forever!”
Surprised that he had company—male company, anyway—Maddox gaped at his brother. “What are you doing here?”
The soft light of a late summer evening revealed a tentative expression on Tobias’s face. “I couldn’t take her, dude. You should see what she’s like. Such a slob and so fucking needy! She was driving me crazy.”
“But who brought you here? And how’d you find my house?” He hadn’t brought Tobias through Silver Springs. He hadn’t wanted him anywhere close to Jada and her family.
“Mom dropped me off down the road, but I could’ve found it. You sent me letters with this return address, and I have a phone now with maps, remember?”
“Be careful with using those maps. It costs you data. Anyway, she brought you out here but didn’t stay to say hello?”
“We were fighting. It made her mad when she offered to let me stay with her and I refused. She’s using again. You know that, right? I don’t want to get caught up in that crap.”
“Why didn’t either one of you text me, give me some notice?”
“Like I said, we were fighting. She probably didn’t want you to get involved because she knew you’d support my side of the argument. And I didn’t text you because...” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I don’t know. I guess I was afraid you wouldn’t want me to come.”
Maddox’s chest tightened at the insecurity in his brother’s voice and manner. When they were young, they’d had no one but each other. Maddox was still the only person Tobias could rely on to love him. “You’ve always got a place with me.”
“You have room?”
“Only one bedroom, but you can have the pullout couch in the living room. We can make do.” As much as his brother’s appearance in Silver Springs might screw up everything he had going here, he had to make room. If Tobias hadn’t been tripping on acid the night he shot Atticus, he would never have harmed a soul—not someone who didn’t come at him first. Besides, where else was his poor brother supposed to go? What good would it do to make him feel unwanted?
Maddox had to stand by him, but his heart was sinking at the same time.
What was he going to do with Tobias in Silver Springs?
“The new freezer looks awesome,” Tiffany said as she breezed into Sugar Mama with an armful of Chinese takeout not too long before closing. “When will I be able to order an ice cream sandwich?”
It had been a slow day, but Jada was exhausted, so for a change she was grateful for the lack of traffic. She was also happy to see Tiffany. She needed something to distract her from what was going on in her own life, and since Aaron had sent his younger brother home and stayed the night with Tiffany last night, they had plenty to talk about. “As soon as we get the ice cream.”
“I bet Maya’s excited.”
Jada lifted the hinged part of the counter so that Tiffany could slip through and join her on the other side. “Absolutely. Updating the menu was her idea.”
“Where is she tonight?”
“Atticus gave her a ride over to Annie’s a few hours ago.”
They went into the back, where there was a small table they could use. “Those two are even closer than we were at that age.”
“They spend every minute they can together. Tonight, I think they’re celebrating my reversal on New Horizons and making plans for the school year.”
“What reversal?” Obviously preoccupied, Tiffany put down her purse and sat across the table. There were only two chairs and enough space for two plates, which she pulled out of the bag.
“I’ve decided to let Maya attend New Horizons.”
Her friend’s hands froze instead of emptying the rest of the sack. “You what?”
Trying not to second-guess her decision yet again, Jada frowned. “I know.”
“Does that mean you’re going to tell Maddox about Maya?”
Jada got them each a bottle of water from the walk-in cooler. “No. I can’t. That will tie our two families together forever. And yet I feel guilty for keeping it a secret, especially now that we’re in contact again. I’m miserable, no longer know what’s fair,” she admitted. “I don’t want to hurt her or him.”
Tiffany finished setting out the cartons of food. “It’s not just the fact that it will tie your two families together forever that’s the problem, Jada. You’ve lied to Maya about her father for so long you don’t know what might happen if you reveal the secret.”
“Trust me, I’m fully aware that the consequences could be devastating.”
“So why take the risk of letting her associate with him?”
She twisted the top off her water. “Because it feels so selfish not to let her know him, as if I’m cheating them both. When I made the decision to keep Maya all to myself, it was because my parents were so sure he wouldn’t be good for her. But now that we can see for ourselves how he turned out...”
“Wait—what can we see?”
“We know he’s functional. He has a degree, an advanced degree, and a good job. He must’ve stayed out of trouble with the police, or Aiyana couldn’t take the risk of hiring him. Except for his relationship with Tobias, he seems as though he’d be a good father.”
Tiffany handed her a set of chopsticks. “Boy, and I thought going through a divorce was bad. You’ve been through so much. I’m just glad I’m not in your situation.”
Steam wafted out of the carton of chow mein Jada opened. “I wish I wasn’t in my situation, either.”
“What good will it do to send Maya to New Horizons, though? If she doesn’t know Maddox is her father, she might just ignore him, anyway. We didn’t pay a lot of attention to our principals.”
“That’s what I’m counting on. A casual acquaintance.”
“Casual is enough?”
Jada opened a second carton, scooped up some kung pao chicken and dumped it next to her chow mein. “I think so. At least, if she ever learns the truth, she’ll have a frame of reference, some general idea of who he was and what he was like. That’s better than nothing, isn’t it?”
“It might absolve your conscience, but I think the less Maya has to do with Maddox, the better.”
“There are other considerations besides my conscience...”
Tiffany’s chopsticks snapped as she pulled them apart. “Like...”
“I don’t want Annie’s mom to make a big deal of the fact that I won’t let Maya go to what is likely a vastly superior school. She doesn’t understand it, needs a reason, and I don’t have a good one, not now that she got Maya a scholarship.”
“Tell her about Atticus. Then she’ll understand.”
“Maybe she will, but what about Maddox? He knows Maya has the opportunity to attend for free, so if I don’t allow it, he’ll know he’s the reason.”
“I can’t imagine he’d expect you to let her, not after what happened.”
Memories of her time in Maddox’s bed flitted across Jada’s mind. “It’s not that clear-cut.”
Tiffany’s eyebrows gathered. “Why not?”
“It would seem hard-hearted, given the fact that I slept with him last night.”
Tiffany dropped her chopsticks. “Holy shit! We’ve been talking about me going to bed with Aaron all day, and yet you never mentioned that you went over to Maddox’s place after you left mine?”
Jada blew out a sigh. “I didn’t want to acknowledge it.”
There was a noise outside. Jada hadn’t heard the bell, but she hurried out front to see if someone was about to walk in. She definitely didn’t want anyone overhearing this conversation.
Fortunately, it was only two friends shouting a greeting on the street outside, one from a bike.
When Jada returned to the table, Tiffany lowered her voice even though they were still alone. “So? How was it?”
Jada scowled at her. “Stop.”
“Come on! This is the man you’ve been in love with since forever, and you just had sex with him! Was it amazing? As amazing as my night with Aaron? Or not quite what you’d hoped?”
“It was a mistake,” she replied. “And, just for the record, I’m not in love with him.”
Clearly, Tiffany wasn’t swayed. “What would you call it, then?”
Jada took a bite of her chicken but could barely taste it. “I just...can’t get over him.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
She rested her elbows on the table and leaned her chin on her fists. “I don’t know anymore. I don’t seem to know anything.”
“Does that mean you’re really not going to tell me how it was?”
Straightening, Jada laughed in spite of herself. “It was everything I dreamed it would be, okay?”
Tiffany swallowed her food. “And yet you don’t look happy.”
“Because I’m not. I can’t be with Maddox the way you can be with Aaron. I don’t want the people I love to get hurt, and yet I don’t see any other way for this to end.”
Tiffany shoveled another bite of kung pao chicken into her mouth. “He didn’t ask you anything about Maya, did he?”
Jada started moving her food around her plate. “No. He only said that I should let her come to New Horizons, that he’d look out for her if I did.”
“So that’s why you gave in.”
“No, it’s not! I told him no, too. It wasn’t until Atticus and my mother couldn’t bear to see how disappointed Maya was that I gave up the fight.”
“Whoa, Atticus thought you should let her go?”
“He did. Can you believe it? He said it wasn’t fair for her to suffer because of something she had nothing to do with.”
Tiffany took a sip of the water Jada had given her. “He has a point.”
Jada swallowed a piece of chicken. “That’s what I thought.”
“But it wouldn’t be an issue if only Cindy would change her mind.”
“You know she won’t.”
“I’m the one who told you that. That woman’s a tiger mom.”
“I wouldn’t call her a ‘tiger,’ exactly. But she is ultra-assertive, and she’s so convinced that having some well-adjusted pupils at New Horizons will help those who are less steady that she’s determined to see it happen. And I don’t have the heart to separate Maya from her best friend. I feel like I’ve already denied her the opportunity to know her own father. If she finds out, she’ll probably hate me.”
“She’s not going to find out.”
“She might. Atticus told me earlier that she’s been actively searching for him.”
Tiffany’s chewing slowed. “For who? Her father?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. I knew she’d been asking you a lot of questions lately. Moving back here was bound to pique her interest. But this is going a step further.”
“It makes me nervous.”
She went back to eating. “Still, how effectively can a twelve-year-old search for anyone?”
“She’s smart, Tiffany. Really smart. She’s been going to the library, trying to find newspaper articles on his death, visiting the high schools to ask for old yearbooks, hoping to spot his name—”
“Yikes. That’s a lot more than I expected.”
Although Jada could usually manage with chopsticks, tonight she was struggling. Tossing them aside, she got a fork from a nearby drawer. “Thank goodness I gave her the wrong name.”
“Do you think she’ll give up if she doesn’t find him?”
“Who can say?”
Tiffany bit her lip. “And now she’s going to be right under his nose. You’d better hope Maddox never recognizes how much she looks like him.”
“I see that, and you see that, but people tell me all the time that she looks just like me.”
“Those people never saw Maddox.”
The worry that churned in Jada’s stomach along with her food grew almost painful. “He asked me about Eric’s involvement in her life, by the way.”
Tiffany rocked back. “You don’t think he’s beginning to suspect...”
Jada shoved her plate away. “No. I didn’t get that impression at all. He would have no reason to wonder. We didn’t always use protection, but he pulled out every time.”
“The withdrawal method is hardly reliable.”
“I know that now. We were just dumb kids who couldn’t keep our hands off each other. But, like I’ve said before, I finished high school, and I got married right away, which helps. And I never hit him up for child support. Most mothers wouldn’t be willing to pay for everything themselves, so the thought that Maya might be his has probably never even crossed his mind.”
“True. And you couldn’t tell you were pregnant when we were in school, so there’s been no talk we have to worry about him getting wind of. I’ll never forget how surprised I was when I found out.”
“You’re the only one I told.”
Tiffany took a second helping of the kung pao chicken. “You’ve got all that going for you.”
“Let’s hope it’s enough,” she said as she watched Tiffany finish her meal.
It took Maddox the whole day to work up the nerve to talk to Aiyana about his brother. He’d been trying to figure out what to do. Although a small but stubborn part of him was still hoping that Tobias and Tonya would be able to patch things up, so he’d be off the hook and could continue trying to build his own life, deep down he knew that probably wouldn’t happen. There was no depth of feeling between Tobias and Tonya, nothing that would bring them back together. Tobias had thought he loved her while he was in prison. But Maddox was beginning to suspect most of that was gratitude and the pleasure of having some romantic interest despite being incarcerated. Tonya’s letters and visits made him feel as though he was important and mattered to somebody besides the brother he’d relied on for most of his life. It also gave him the illusion he’d have somewhere to go once he was released.
Before walking over to Aiyana’s office, Maddox called to check on Tobias and could tell by the cracks in his brother’s voice that he’d woken him. The past few days had left Tobias drained. Truth be told, he was likely depressed, which added to his fatigue, although Maddox didn’t care to acknowledge that fact. He felt helpless in the face of depression, knew that was partly what had cost them their mother. The drugs Jill took were merely an attempt to self-medicate.
“Hey, you okay?”
Tobias cleared his throat. “Yeah. Why? Somethin’ wrong?”
“No, nothing.”
“What time is it?”
“Five twenty.”
“Isn’t that the time you said you’d be home?”
“Yes, and I’ll be there soon. What would you like for dinner?”
“There’re no groceries here?”
He hadn’t even looked through the cupboards, which meant he hadn’t eaten all day. “Just the basics. Eggs. Cereal. Bread.”
“I’m okay. I can fry an egg, I think,” he added with a laugh. “I used to fry eggs when I was a kid.”
“Don’t turn on the stove,” Maddox said. “I’ll bring dinner.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to put you out.”
He couldn’t help that. But he had no one else. “You’re no trouble.” Maddox hesitated. He wanted to ask about Tonya, to see if Tobias was feeling any better toward her, but he knew it would come across as though Maddox was anxious for him to make other arrangements, so he bit back the question and signed off before trudging across campus to the administrative building on the boys’ side.
Aiyana was working late as always, but fortunately her son Eli was gone for the day, and so was the receptionist who generally sat out front. The place was as quiet as a church.
Since her door stood ajar, Maddox knocked on the doorframe.
She startled as she looked up. “Oh! Maddox! I didn’t hear you come in. Are you ready to head home?”
He drew a deep breath as he crossed the threshold and turned to close the door.
She checked the clock on the wall. “We’re alone in the building, if you’re worried about privacy.”
“I’m worried about a lot more than that,” he said as he slumped into a chair.
She came around the desk. “Don’t tell me this is about having Maya come to New Horizons...”
“No.”
“You’re okay with that?”
“Of course.”
“What is it, then?”
“My brother showed up at my house last night.”
Her eyes widened.
“His relationship with that woman—Tonya is her name—has already fallen apart.”
“In just two days?”
“They didn’t know each other very well to begin with.”
“But from what you said, he was really excited about her.”
“I believe he was excited to have someone to care about him. It has to be hard, being locked up for so long, wondering if anyone will want you when you get out, or if you’ve already missed the most important years of your life.”
“True. I feel for him in that regard. So what are you going to do?”
He formed his fingers into a steeple as he thought that question over. “I don’t know what to do. I feel terrible that you’ve given me this opportunity when I might not be able to take advantage of it.”
Several creases appeared on her forehead. “There has to be some way to make it work.”
“I don’t see how. I don’t want Jada and her family to face the prospect of running into Tobias. It was bad enough when I moved to town.”
“Don’t leave yet,” she said. “Let’s give it some time. See if the problem will resolve itself.”
“How will it do that? I’d have him move in with my mother, but...” He hated to admit that Jill was using again, but this was Aiyana. After all she’d done for him, he felt it only fair to level with her. “That wouldn’t be a safe environment for him.”
“I see...” Thankfully, she seemed to catch on, didn’t make him spell it out.
“I’m all he’s got,” Maddox explained. “I can’t let him down.”
She came close enough to squeeze his shoulder. “I understand. I would never encourage you to do that, anyway.”
Maddox stood. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. This isn’t your fault. But, like I said, don’t give up just yet. Let him hang out at your place for a couple of weeks. I’ll give you whatever time you need to help him get his driver’s license and a vehicle and find somewhere for him to stay in LA so that he can get a job.”
“Do you think he will be able to get a job? Realistically? An ex-con who’s never had any experience with...anything?”
“If he can’t get something, I’ll hire him myself.”
“To do what? He took some classes in prison, but I’m not sure how applicable auto mechanics will be to whatever you might like him to do around here.”
“He can do grounds maintenance. Gavin was just telling me last week that he’s going to need help with all the repairs and upkeep now that we’ve expanded.”
“What about the Brookses?”
She lifted her palms up. “Everyone’s got to eat, Maddox. I say that takes precedence over all the baggage of the past.”
Maddox appreciated her support, was grateful she cared what became of Tobias. But he hated knowing how upset his brother’s presence in Silver Springs would make Jada and her family. He was fairly certain that, if she did have any inclination to see him again, learning Tobias was around would destroy it for good. “I’ll do everything I can to help him find work in LA.”
“I know you will. But if it comes down to it, this is probably a much better place for him, anyway,” she said. “You realize that, don’t you? At least here he’d have me, you, Gavin, Eli. It’ll be harder for him in LA, without a support system.”
Maddox rubbed his temples. “I know,” he said with a sigh.