Freddy sat in his basement apartment, brooding, all the lights off, candles burning around him. He thought about what he had just put his best friend through, the lies he’d told him, the predicament he knew he would be putting Lewis in after all this was over. Kia sat next to him on the bed, just staring at him. The lights were off, not because he’d turned them off, but because the electric company had shut them off for late payment.
“I gave them the money before they closed today, and they promised the power would be back on tomorrow,” Kia said.
“I’m so sick of this,” Freddy said softly, angrily to himself.
“Baby…”
Freddy turned to Kia, a look of disgust on his face. “You want to know why we’re poor like this? Why we’ve always been poor like this, since I was eight years old?”
“Why, Freddy?”
Freddy paused for a long moment, then said, “I never told you, because I been afraid of how you would react.”
“Just tell me.”
Freddy swallowed hard, then said, “My father ain’t die in no car accident like I told you. I killed him.”
“What?”
“He was beating my mother. Like almost every day,” Freddy said, not looking at Kia, but staring straight ahead. “I thought he was gonna kill her. So one day, I came home for lunch, because I knew he’d be in his room sleeping. I grabbed my baseball bat, and I killed him in his sleep.”
Kia jumped off the bed, released Freddy’s hand, and backed two steps away from him. “You killed your father?” she gasped.
“We never been able to catch up without my father’s income, so we been struggling since. Bills went unpaid, and the house taxes, and now some motherfucker went and bought those taxes out from under us.”
“You got to pay those,” Kia said, an urgent note in her voice. “After a certain period passes, somebody can come and buy those—”
“Somebody else already has. That’s what I’m sayin’.”
“Freddy, no.”
“Yeah. And they telling me that if I don’t do certain shit for them, against Lewis, then they gonna kick us out of this house and have it torn down.”
“Who is this? You told him no, right?”
“I’ve been doing what he’s been saying—I ain’t got no choice! But something’s tellin’ me Lewis is gonna come out of this thing fucked up if I keep on.”
“You can’t do that to Lewis! He’s your best friend.”
“If I just keep on, the man said he’d give me the title to the house. It’ll be all paid for, no back taxes, nothing. We’ll be all caught up.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Kia said. “You’ve known Lewis since you were eight.”
“It does matter!” Freddy said, standing up. “Me and Moms been poor as hell almost my entire life. She don’t say nothing, but I know she blames me. I know it. Regardless what I say, I ain’t nothing but a loser to her. I killed her husband, and all she got to show for it is bills she can’t pay and a son who earnin’ minimum wage. I do what this man tells me, I can give her a house. I don’t, having me for a son, she would have not only lost her husband, but the house he bought her.”
Kia stared at Freddy for a long while before standing and saying, “You’re wrong and you know it.” She walked over to him, took him in her arms. “You don’t want to admit it, because you’re scared. But you know if you were to tell your mother—”
“I’m not telling her this.”
“Okay. But if she were to hear, you know she wouldn’t want you to go through with this. You’re a better man than this, Freddy. You aren’t the type to let yourself be pushed around by whoever this is. My father is one of the top lawyers in this city—”
“I don’t want to bring him into this.”
“And I don’t think we’ll have to. I’m thinking the threat alone would be enough. All I’m saying, baby, is that there is a better way than to deceive your best friend like this. You know that, don’t you?” Kia said, holding Freddy’s face between her palms.
“Yes,” Freddy said softly.
“Tomorrow, you tell this man, whoever he is, he can kiss your ass, and if he doesn’t lay off, he will have an entire law firm camped outside his damn house. Can you do that for me, baby?”
Freddy smiled sadly, nodded his head. “Yeah.”