DARNELL
Just wanted to say thanks again for believing in me.
Before Maurice could answer, before Monique could read more, Tommie’s voice boomed with reverb around them. Almost everyone slapped their hands over their ears. “Yo! We gotta wrap up! Boat ride tonight—we got two and a half hours to get ready!”
Saved again. But Monique had gone still, her eyes lingering on his phone.
He felt it all—her measuring the distance between where she stood and the truth. His mouth was already moving.
“You’d better make sure your camera batteries are charged. I think you’ll like the bioluminescent bay tour. Then dinner.” Maurice stood, gathering trash, pocketing his phone quickly. “Fancy place Lanie picked.”
Monique picked up her bag. “Two and a half hours. That’s not much time.” She turned away. “Sure.”
They walked back through the gardens in a group, but Maurice hung back with Tommie, coordinating logistics about the evening’s plans. What time. Which dock. How many in the party. Information he had practically memorized before today. He knew what he was pulling, but he couldn’t stop himself.
When he looked up, Monique was already ahead with Cassie and Lanie, the three women talking and laughing. But Monique glanced back once, catching his eye with an expression he couldn’t quite read. Was she questioning? Doubting? Waiting?
Maurice looked away first.
In the lobby, the group dispersed toward the elevators. Maurice watched Monique step inside with the other women. Then the doors closed.
He stood there, phone in hand, and pulled up his messages. Five texts from Newark. His crew. His discipline. It was the life Deb helped him build from the ashes of erasure. All of it. Every year since he was fifteen, gone. Then Returning Home offered him something he could call his own. And he still couldn’t tell Mo about any of it.
Three times she’d asked. Three times he’d turned away. And like Peter in the garden, Maurice felt the weight of his denial settle in his chest—not guilt exactly, but the knowledge that with each evasion, he was choosing fear over truth.
His phone buzzed again. Sofia texting to remind him about the specs she’d asked for hours ago.
Maurice typed back.
MAURICE
Give me 30 minutes. I’ll call.
Then he headed toward his room, already mentally cataloging everything he needed to handle before tonight’s boat ride, and all he needed to reconcile within himself before Monique asked another question he should have answered the first time.
The only thing he couldn’t find an answer to was, how many more chances would she give him?
CHAPTER 13Monique
Monique climbed into the van that would take them an hour away to a bioluminescent bay for a moonlit boat ride and dinner. This time tomorrow, Tommie and Lanie would have said their I Do’s and Monique could return to her life, her routine.
Her phone buzzed with more texts from her girls and her kids, all demanding that she have fun, take more pictures, “uncomplicate things with Mo.” She was gonna have to check some folks when she got home.
The Aunties took up the van’s center row, heads together, whispering to Mr. and Mrs. Turner in the back row. They weren’t slick. None of them were.
“How you doing, sweetheart?” Mrs. Turner asked, giggling with Don and Deb.
“Good,” Monique said. She lied.
Don leaned forward and pressed her hand onto Monique’s shoulder. “I know you’re looking forward to this boat ride. Got your camera out already.”
Monique smiled and turned to the older woman. “You know it. And don’t you dare complain. You encouraged this.”
“I’m trying to encourage something else,” Don fake-whispered toward Deb.
“Whatever, old crazy ladies.” Monique’s sass and eye roll couldn’t stop the heat rising in her cheeks.
The Aunties giggled like middle schoolers, and Monique laughed too.