Chapter 7
Derrick had set two bags of soiled linen outside the back door and returned to the kitchen when Kayana walked in with the tray he’d fixed for Leah. A text from the laundry service confirmed the driver was expected to come before three to pick them up and drop off clean restaurant linens.
“Did you enjoy your book club meeting?”
Kayana scrunched up her nose. “Very funny. You know we’re not going to start up again until Cherie gets here.”
He took the tray, frowning. “She didn’t eat half of what I fixed for her.”
“I’d noticed she didn’t eat much yesterday. After being fed intravenously for more than a week she probably has to get used to eating solids again.”
Derricks lifted one inky-black eyebrow as he angled his head. “She was in the hospital that long?”
“Yes. She really hurt herself when she fell down the stairs.”
“Fell or pushed,” Derrick said, as he scraped the plate into a large, plastic-lined garbage can.
“Why would you say that?”
He gave his sister a direct glance. “When Leah told me she’d fallen headfirst down a staircase I didn’t believe her.”
With wide eyes, Kayana stared at him. “Why don’t you believe her?”
“Because of the faint bruising around her throat. Someone choked her, Kay.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No, and I don’t intend to get into her personal business. But if I had to hazard a guess, then I’d say it was her husband. When she came down here last summer she was wearing a wedding band, and now there’s no ring. She’s your friend, Kay, and you should let her know that we don’t want any trouble if her husband decides to come after her.”
“If he does come down, then he’s going to be the one in trouble.”
Leaning a hip against the countertop, Derrick crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re going to have to talk to me about Leah, otherwise I’ll be in the dark if something funky does jump off.”
“You’re going to have to promise me that you won’t repeat what I’m going to tell you.”
“Come on now, Kay. Haven’t we always been able to keep each other’s secrets?”
“You’re right, Derrick.”
He listened intently, his impassive expression concealing the rage that made it almost impossible for him to draw a normal breath as Kayana repeated what Leah had revealed about how her husband had beaten and thrown her down a flight of stairs in their home, then lied as to how she’d sustained the injuries that had placed her in a drug-induced coma.
“Shit!” he spat out between clenched teeth. “The SOB was trying to kill her.”
“If it wasn’t his intent to kill her, then it was to beat her into submission.”
“It’s a good thing she didn’t hang around for him to finish the job.” Derrick knew guys from college who would slap their girlfriends to keep them, as they professed, in their place. And although his parents argued constantly, his father had never attempted to raise his hands to strike his mother.
“Leah told me she came here rather than to her family in Kentucky because she’s afraid her father would do something to her husband.”
“Does her husband know she’s here?”
“Probably, because that’s what they were arguing about. She said when she told him she was coming down here again this summer he went apeshit, because he wanted her to go away with him.”
“I suppose he’ll be going away by himself unless Leah changes her mind and decides to go back to Richmond.”
“That’s not going to happen, Derrick. She’s planning on filing for divorce.”
Derrick silently applauded Leah for ending her marriage to an abusive husband. “I don’t want to interfere in what goes on between a man and his wife, but if she is serious about divorcing him, then I will get involved if he does show up. If he doesn’t leave, then I’ll call the sheriff and have him forcibly removed.
“He’s a judge, Derrick.”
Derrick’s mouth was smiling when his eyes weren’t. “I’m not impressed. There hasn’t been scandal on Coates Island since Mr. Campbell discovered he was sterile and that his children were actually fathered by his next-door neighbor who had been was sleeping with his wife.”
Kayana wagged her head side to side. “That was a hot mess because Mrs. Campbell packed her bags and moved next door and left her children with her devastated husband because they had his last name.”
“It was beyond a hot mess, Kay. One of the Campbell boys was on the high school football team with me, and the kid was so full of rage that when he tackled someone on the opposing team he would body slam them and always get ejected for unnecessary roughness.”
“Mr. Campbell should’ve put those kids in counseling to deal with their mother abandoning them to live with her lover who just happened to be their biological father. Those are very serious issues for teenagers to have to deal with.”
Derrick’s eyes crinkled in a smile. “Spoken like a therapist. Speaking of therapy, Kay, do you miss counseling clients?” he asked.
Kayana walked over to the sink with dirty dishes and filled it with hot water before adding a squirt of liquid soap. “No. Once I resigned from the hospital, split from James, and left Atlanta, I mentally erased every memory of my life up to that point. It wasn’t until I came back to the island and began working here that I felt whole again. Between counseling patients and/or their families at the hospital, occasionally filling in to counsel clients at Mariah Hinton’s private practice, and playing hostess for James whenever he invited his colleagues and family members to our home for some inane function, I was pulled in so many directions that I’d lose track of the days. One time I got up on Sunday to go into the hospital because I thought it was a workday. James’s cheating gave me the excuse and strength I needed to get off the roller coaster and discover who I was and what I didn’t want.”
Derrick patted her back. “Been there, done that.”
Kayana’s Atlanta lifestyle mirrored his when he’d worked for a Wall Street investment firm. While hers was a merry-go-round of social engagements, his and Andrea’s had revolved around the unpredictability of the stock market. Spending hours on the phone with their clients, buying and selling stock had begun to take its toll. Once they returned to their high-rise apartment with views of the Hudson River it wasn’t to unwind and relax, but to eat a hastily prepared dinner, go to bed, only to wake early the following morning to repeat the prior day’s activity.
“The difference between us, Derrick, is you didn’t stay in New York when compared to the number of years I lived in Atlanta.”
“Don’t forget that we were expecting a baby, and Andrea didn’t want to raise it in the city.”
“True, but didn’t you say you were looking to move to one of the suburbs.”
“Yeah, but—”
“But once you made a decision to leave Manhattan you acted on it. You guys came back here, lived with Mama while your beach house was being built. You stepped in to help Mom and Grandma Cassie run this place, while Andrea took care of Deandra and managed the Café’s finances. Meanwhile, I didn’t have chick nor child and I still put up with a husband that had turned our home into a club because he needed folks in his face, otherwise he felt he wasn’t having a good time.”
“That’s all behind you, Kay, because now you’re married to a man who can be as reclusive as Howard Hughes.”
Kayana narrowed her eyes at her brother as she slipped on a pair of rubber gloves and scraped the dishes before putting them into the commercial dishwasher. “You got jokes about my husband?”
He held up both hands. “No. I’m not maligning my brother-in-law. It’s just that since you two have been married he rarely comes here anymore. And FYI, I happen to like him a lot better than I did your ex.”
“FYI, so do I. The reason Graeme doesn’t come in as often as he used to is because I’ve been giving him cooking lessons.”
Derrick had made it a practice not to get involved with his sisters’ personal lives once they married. When he’d teased Kayana about Graeme Ogden gawking at her like a lovesick teenage boy every time he came into the restaurant, she’d turned on him like an angry cat, stopping short of telling him to mind his own business. He did stay out of it, until he was forced to confront Kayana about her relationship with the New England schoolteacher when his sister appeared to retreat into herself, and he feared she was headed for an emotional breakdown. He managed to get her to agree to see Graeme again after she claimed he was hiding a secret and refused to tell her unless they were married.
She’d accepted the man’s proposal, he revealed his secret, and they were married on Christmas Eve at Graeme’s family’s estate in Newburyport, Massachusetts, with the entire Johnson clan in attendance. Derrick had closed the Café for two weeks and gone back to Florida to spend time with his family, while Kayana and Graeme honeymooned in the United Arab Emirates.
Derrick knew he’d changed once he returned to Coates Island. The time he’d spent in Gainesville with his daughter forced him to see what he’d been denying for much too long. She was no longer a little girl but a young woman. Deandra had made the decision to live in Florida during her senior year, and being away from him had permitted her to mature more quickly than if she’d remained on the island. They’d had an in-depth father-daughter talk in which she accused him of smothering her. She said that he hadn’t wanted her to grow up because one day she would leave him to start her own life, and he feared losing her as he did her mother. And he knew his daughter was right. It had taken an eighteen-year-old girl to tell her forty-eight-year-old father what he’d refused to acknowledge. It was time for him to stop mourning and living in the past. He was still young enough to fall in love and marry again like her aunt Kayana.
“Speaking of Graeme cooking,” Kayana said, breaking into his musings, “we decided to cook out on Sunday, only if it doesn’t rain. Why don’t you come and join us.”
“That sounds like a plan. What’s on the menu?”
“Grandma Cassie’s mac and cheese and a few other Johnson family secret dishes.”
“You got me at the mac and cheese. I don’t know how you do it, Kay, but you’re able to duplicate our grandmother’s recipe for mac and cheese every single time.”
“That’s because she had me make it over and over until I got it right.”
“And that’s why you make the sides while I concentrate on the meat.”
“We all have our gifts.”
“You’re right about that.”
“I also invited Leah to join us, so can you please pick her up and bring her with you?”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. Be sure to let her know that I’ll be picking her up.”
“I’ll send her a text,” Kayana promised.
“Speaking of meat, what if I bring a few steaks. Some of them having been aging for nearly a month, and lately I haven’t been getting many requests for steak.”
“That’s because many of the locals are older and don’t eat a lot of red meat, Derrick. We sell more steak, brisket, pulled pork, and ribs in the summer than during the off-season.”
“You’re right about that. I’m going to take an inventory of the meat we have on hand, and then do an analysis of the bills we paid the butcher over the past two years. That should tell me if I’m ordering too much of each item for any given month.”
Kayana waved her hand at the same time she shook her head. “Why do you have to be so analytical? Just stop ordering so much steak.”
“We run this restaurant on analytics.”
“This isn’t a large company where everything has to be measured and accounted for, Derrick. We are running a family-style eating establishment where we raise prices between eight and ten percent every other year to offset higher costs for food and utilities. We know the dishes the locals like and those the vacationers prefer and make them available. I’m also aware that you make up projections every year, so how did we do last year?”
“We did extremely well.”
“There you go, brother love. Now if Leah has agreed to make the baked goods, then your bottom line should be even better because you won’t have to pay Lena’s Bakery. Personally, I think she’s overpriced.”
“She is a little overpriced, but she’s the only bakery on the mainland willing to deliver what we want.”
“Between ordering the ingredients you’ll need and paying Leah, you should save a lot of money.”
“Leah won’t accept any money.” He held up a hand when Kayana opened her mouth. “Please let me finish. When I offered to pay her, she went for my throat. And I wasn’t about to get into an argument with her, because I witnessed enough verbal back-and-forth with our parents to last me two lifetimes. She claims because we’re not charging her rent—”
“I would never charge my friends rent,” Kayana said, interrupting him. “No one is using the apartment, so why not let her stay there.”
“You misunderstand me, Kay. I don’t have a problem with Leah living upstairs. But what I don’t want to do is take advantage of her working for free.”
“It’s called barter, Derrick. I’m certain you’re familiar with the term, Mr. Number Man.”
“You don’t have to be facetious, Kayana.”
“I’m not being facetious.”
Derrick didn’t want to argue with his sister and remind her whenever she attempted to best him she would refer to him by the sobriquet. “Go home to your husband.”
“You’re pissed with me, aren’t you?”
“No. I am not pissed with you. Stop what you’re doing and go home. I can finish up here.”
She took off the gloves. “I’ll see you Sunday around two. You can bring steak if you want.”
Derrick cursed under his breath as he watched his sister walk out the back door. He wasn’t as upset with her as he was with himself. He wanted to tell Kayana that he envied her. After nearly twenty years of marriage she’d discovered her husband had not only cheated on her but had gotten another woman pregnant. She’d sworn off men, refusing to even acknowledge any who were remotely interested in her until a man who had vacationed on the island the year before purchased a home on Coates Island because he’d fallen in love with Kayana.
If he had been younger and cynical when it came to affairs of the heart, Derrick would have called the man crazy to buy a house just to be close to a woman who would not give him the time of day. But he had to give it to Graeme. He saw what he wanted and went after it. And in the end Kayana was given a second chance at love, while as her brother he found it impossible to move forward.
Andrea had been dead five years, yet he’d refused to let go of her memory. When she knew she was dying she made him promise not to grieve for her, that he should find someone to love him as much as she had. He’d promised her while knowing it was an empty promise.
Andrea was gone; however, a part of her lived on in their daughter. Not only was Deandra her mother’s clone, but they also had similar personalities. That had been more apparent during their last reunion. She possessed the same streak of independence that had drawn him to Andrea. Deandra had become a leader among her peers and not a follower. She’d run for a position on the high school’s student council and, despite being a new incoming senior, won. When he’d asked her what she wanted to study she said she hadn’t figured that out yet. He’d teased her, saying she had inherited her mother’s beauty and her intelligence. Andrea had graduated at the top of her class in high school and college.
It was Saturday, and Derrick did not have to concern himself with prepping for the next day. If need be, he’d come in very early Monday morning or Sunday night to get a jump on things. He heard three rapid knocks on the rear door. It was the driver’s signal that he’d left bags of clean laundry.
Since he took over managing the restaurant after his grandmother passed away and his mother moved to Florida to look after her grandchildren, he’d made it a practice to hire college students for the summer. They were responsible for bagging garbage, sweeping and mopping the dining room and kitchen, loading and unloading the dishwasher, and maintaining the restrooms. This freed him to cook and keep track of the restaurant’s inventory.
Andrea had brought every item in the restaurant online, including accounts payable, payroll, and taxes. Derrick knew with a single keystroke how many pounds of bacon or cartons of eggs were on hand. The task of computerizing the business had been monumental, but Andrea relished it, because she had complained constantly about several file cabinets filled with bills and receipts going back decades. Once she completed bringing everything up to date she shredded paper that, if audited, they didn’t need.
It took Derrick ninety minutes to empty the laundry bags and stack aprons, towels, and tablecloths in the supply closet, clean off tables, sweep and mop the floors, and clean the restrooms. After bagging the garbage and placing it in the dumpster behind a partition in the corner of the parking lot, he returned to the restaurant and turned off lights, set the building alarm, and closed and locked the rear door.
He didn’t want to think about the woman in the upstairs apartment who’d been savagely beaten by a man because she’d attempted to challenge him. Kayana said Leah had planned to file for divorce, and Derrick hoped it would end amicably. He slipped behind the wheel of his Toyota Highlander, tapped the button to start up the engine, and maneuvered out of the parking lot.
Three minutes later he pulled into his attached two-car garage and entered the house through a door leading directly into a mudroom. After leaving his shoes on a mat, he walked into the house with its open floor plan where he’d experienced the some of his most joyous times as a husband and father. However, the joy was short-lived when he’d kept a vigil at his wife’s bedside as she hung onto life, and he’d prayed for her to let go so there would be no more pain. Andrea had loved the two-story, four-bedroom, three-bath house facing the beach and shaded by a copse of palm trees, but after she was diagnosed with cancer she’d spend most of her free time on the front porch or in the tiny cottage behind the main house reading or napping.
The garden shed had been originally used as an additional guest bedroom with inviting features such as French doors, painted shutters, and window boxes overflowing with colorful blooms. Andrea had also planned for Deandra to move into the cottage once she turned sixteen to allow her a sense of independence before leaving home to attend college. It had taken his daughter more than year before she ventured inside her mother’s sanctuary, and it was only to do her homework or study for exams. Derrick rarely entered the cottage and instructed the cleaning service that came biweekly to clean his home to dust, vacuum, and open windows to let in fresh air.
He headed for the staircase and his bedroom. Normally he would’ve gone to the room he’d set up as a home gym to log five miles on the treadmill after several repetitions of lifting weights. At six-four and tipping the scales at two twenty-five, and rapidly approaching fifty, Derrick knew it was a race against time and hoped to slow down the loss of muscle tone.
He stripped off his clothes, leaving them in the hamper in the second-story laundry room. Andrea had insisted on installing the room on the same floor as the bedrooms to avoid having to carry the bags or baskets of clothes up and down the staircase. Derrick brushed his teeth and showered in the en suite bathroom. Wearing only a pair of pajama pants, he sat on a leather recliner in an alcove off the master bedroom. It had taken him several months before he could sleep in the room once he’d become a widower, because too many pieces were a constant reminder of what he’d shared with his late wife.
When he’d disclosed this to Kayana, she recommended he solicit the services of an interior designer and decorate the bedroom to suit his taste. A California king bed with a leather headboard replaced the off-white hand-painted sleigh bed. Matching dressers and chest of drawers in mahogany gave off a more masculine appeal. It was the same with the reading corner that was converted to a space with a wall-mounted television, and a storage unit spanning the width of the wall contained shelves filled with books, magazines, and an extensive collection of movie and music discs. One door on the unit concealed a mini fridge and the other contained mementos from when he’d been a standout as a running back for the Alabama Crimson Tide football program. His dream of being drafted into the NFL ended when he injured his knee, tearing his ACL.
Although he’d erased every memory of Andrea sharing the suite with him, Derrick had not slept with another woman in the house. It would not have been possible when Deandra lived there, and even now with his daughter living in Florida he still couldn’t bring himself to do it.
He had not taken on a monastic lifestyle; he did see one woman several times a month. The town was far enough away from Coates Island and the divorcée with three adult children who’d left home enjoyed his company as much as he did hers. However, both were content with their current marital status. She did not want to remarry, and Derrick did not regard it as something he would entertain at this time in his life.
He flipped through several channels until he found one showing highlights of a Carolina Panthers football game going back three years. Derrick would be the first one to admit that he was a sports junkie and made no apologies when he’d spend hours watching encores of baseball, basketball, football, and hockey games. He’d found himself glued to the television during the FIFA World Cup soccer competition and, every four years, the Olympics.
Sports had become his pleasure, for which he refused to apologize. The game ended with the Panthers winning with a touchdown with five seconds left on the clock. He found another channel with a basketball game on the west coast and settled back to watch that, too. He didn’t have to get up early and open the Café, so it had become his time for watching late-night TV.
It was after one in the morning when Derrick finally turned off the television and got into bed. He fell asleep almost immediately, but it was a disturbing dream that kept him from a restful night’s slumber. It was Leah’s face, swollen, bruised, and bloodied that shook him awake. He sat up quickly, looking around the room. There was enough illumination coming from baseboard nightlights to tell him there was no one else in the bedroom with him.
It wasn’t a dream but a nightmare. It took a lot longer for him to go back to sleep, and he wondered if he’d made a mistake telling Kayana that it was okay to put her friend up in the apartment. And maybe if he hadn’t asked and she hadn’t told him how Leah had sustained her injuries he would feel less uneasy about her taking up residence in his place of business.
But on the other hand, he’d given his word she could stay, and anyone living on Coates Island knew the Johnsons never went back on their word. And now that he was aware that her husband was a judge he hoped the man wouldn’t attempt to use his judicial influence to intimidate him or his sister for harboring his wife. Hopefully, Leah had documented his assault as leverage for the deposition phase of her divorce.
Exhaustion finally won out, and when he went back to sleep there were no macabre images to disturb him.