Get ready to see author Yasmin Angoe like you’ve never seen her before. She’s stopping by today to share an excerpt from her latest release, Not What She Seems.
Chapter 3
I spent two years of my life, first as his assistant and then in the past year as his lover, losing myself in Conrad because anything was better than thinking about home and what I’d done. I thought he was trying to help me, even when I knew that wasn’t in his nature. Just like he did to his students’ stories, he had helped himself to my life, my pain, and got himself a damn book deal for it.
God, I really wanted to burn down everything in Conrad’s place, just like Angela B. Firing off that email to Dean Higgins and the entire department hadn’t been satisfying enough. Tomorrow, I’d regret blowing up my job, but truth be told, I wanted revenge.
Conrad’s teaching career at the university was a start. And I couldn’t just let him use my past. Taking all his meticulous notes and his partially finished manuscript, taking back what was mine from someone who could not tell my story—that I would never regret.
I took one last inspection of the condo, making sure there wasn’t anything else I needed to take. Nothing I could see. I stopped in the kitchen on my way out. The page from his contract for the manuscript Deadly Daughter: A Lowcountry Killing—the bastard—rested on top of the box I held.
In the hallway outside, I stood in front of his closed door. I locked it, then bent down to pick up the page from where I’d put it on the floor beside his door.
Don’t ever be a fool over love. Or anything, come to think of it. That is what my granddad would have said. Don’t be a fool over nobody.
I’d been a fool over Conrad. It wasn’t going to happen again.
I placed the first page of Conrad’s contract in the middle of his front door and stabbed his kitchen knife though it, holding it there.
My shoulders sagged, reality settling in. Maybe the email was a mistake. What was I supposed to do for work now? No other college would hire me because who at the university would recommend me? My southern saint of a mother would never let me live it down if she had to drive up from South Carolina to bail me out of jail. I couldn’t bear the look Granddad would give me, letting me know that, once again, I wasn’t making the best choices.
I jumped when something moved behind me. I spun around, expecting that Conrad and the cops had caught me. My hand went automatically to my heart when I saw it was Mrs. Dixon, the nice old lady in the condo across from Conrad’s, with hair so white it was nearly blue. My small-town upbringing didn’t allow me not to know a neighbor’s name, even if the neighbor wasn’t mine. Conrad wouldn’t know her.
We said nothing as the seconds stretched while she took in the whole scene. I watched as her clear blue eyes looked me over from head to toe, then danced over the box at my feet with the notebooks protruding from it, finally resting on the knife embedded in Conrad’s door.
My body deflated. The jig was up. The knife might have been overkill.
Her voice came out wobbly and thin as she looked up at me. “Haven’t seen you in a while,” she said. “You aren’t back, are you?”
What was that supposed to mean? Past triggers of being Black in not-so-Black spaces bubbled to the surface, making me pull on my armor, readying myself to do the daily battle of fighting for my right to just be. Until I remembered she had just caught me squared up in front of my ex-boyfriend’s door, playing darts with his contract and chef’s knives.
“No, ma’am,” I said, my southern manners slipping through in a complete clash with the wobbling knife handle and the paper. “I, um . . .” Had she already called it in? Was DC Metro on her speed dial and careening here to take me in?
“I was just leaving him a note, Mrs. Franklin.” Should I say more?
“I stopped by to . . . grab the last of my stuff.”
Her eyes lit up with a satisfied glint. “Well, good. He’s an ass anyway. I was just telling my daughter about him the other day, although she thinks I’m being a busybody. He’s so rude and pompous, like those privileged male chauvinists I used to admin for back in the day who thought women were just around for their pleasure.” Mrs. Dixon harrumphed. “You’re better off without the likes of him. You aren’t the only young thing he entertains in there, you know.”
I dropped my head, feeling not a little embarrassed. “I know.”
The woman tutted disapprovingly. Probably for the pitiful young women these days who weren’t built like they used to be. She tightened the belt of her flowered terry robe, giving the knife a long look. There was a glint in her eye as she decided on solidarity, an unspoken multi-generational girl code passing between us.
She jutted her chin toward the staircase. “You should probably get going. And don’t come back.”
I bent down, scooping up the box in a fluid motion. “I won’t, don’t worry!”
Then, I ran for my life.
Mama’s name lit up on my phone screen as I slipped back in my car, the box in the passenger seat next to me. I hesitated, debating whether I was up for her call. If I didn’t answer, there would be a voicemail. I hated checking voicemail. The 237 unheard messages were an indication of my aversion to them—let alone ones from my mother. The texts would follow, each making me feel guiltier than the last for not answering.
I accepted the call.
“Hi, Mama,” I said brightly, mustering up all the cheer I could, even though my mind filled with murderous thoughts. The things I could do to the bastard. Bash his head in, watch him bleed. Relieve him of his pitiful deceitful, thieving ass. Maybe Conrad was karma for what I did back home and for running from it.
Mama’s voice was thick with emotion as she struggled to speak. “Jac, baby?”
The sound of her sobered me up, my mind switching from murder and burglary to apprehension. Dread coiled tightly in the pit of my stomach. Only one topic could make my mother sound like this. Death.
I put all thoughts of Conrad in my rearview, pulling out quick in case Mrs. Dixon had a change of heart and was peeking outside her window, or Conrad turned up.
“Who is it?” My mind scrolled down a list of names her call could be about, ignoring one because it better not be. Not him.
“Granddad.”
Not. Him.
My mouth became cottony, and only one word made it out. “How?” “There was an accident,” Mama said. “He was—he fell and had a massive heart attack, and he’s . . .”
“Dead,” I finished, wanting to say it first and quick because then maybe it wouldn’t hurt as bad. The word sounded alien to me, like it wasn’t even me saying it, though my lips moved.
“The doctors have him heavily sedated to stop any further strains on the heart or any more attacks while they stabilize him.” She hesitated, working her way to the point of the matter. “I know it’s been some time since you’ve been back, Jac, but you need to come home before . . .” A sob robbed her of the rest of her words, forcing my little sister to pick up where she’d left off.
Pen asked if I’d come. What could I say?
“Damn,” I moaned when we finally hung up. This news was the cherry on top of a truly f’d-up day. My love life. My job. My future. And now . . .
Six years ago, when I was chased away by the town’s angry whispers and accusations that I killed my father, I hadn’t stopped or corrected them. There’d been no need to clear my name.
It had just been him and me out there, arguing over . . . didn’t seem worth it now. Was stupid. Then Daddy was gone, and I was there. His death was a noose around my neck, cinching tighter while my toes struggled for purchase on wobbly ground. Despite that, I couldn’t tell any of them all of what happened that night. All the unglued bits and pieces were too fractured and confusing and fluttering in the wind.
Couldn’t even explain it to myself. And did they really matter, the details, when the only thing that mattered was that I’d done it?
Guilt and shame had made me swear I would never step foot in Brook Haven again, and I hadn’t for over six years.
Now here was Granddad making an absolute liar out of me.
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