James’s hands had stories carved into them. They were sturdy, heavy hands, more like fur-less paws of a bear than appendages of a man, and when she was very young and very small, it took all of the strength that Patience could muster to lift a single one of them into her lap for examination.

The webbing between his thumb and palm on his left hand was bisected by a valley of knotted scar tissue, a memento taken from a bar fight that took place somewhere during his early twenties. Rather than stitches, he’d used super glue to bring the edges of his skin back together and so the flesh was raised and hard, curving around his thumb towards the center of his hand like a snake. On the other hand, a perfectly circular gray dot that had been with him since third grade resided between his middle and index finger, the result of a reckless friend armed with a freshly sharpened pencil. Both hands sported a plethora of tiny, almost invisible scars and divots that were easier to feel than see, concentrated around his knuckles. The first time she discovered them and every time afterwards, his hands would close around hers and she would crane her neck upwards to find him watching her.

“Make sure you ain’t out here fighting like my stupid ass was. That’s how you get hands like mine, and you don’t want that, do you?”

She almost never thought of the man that he spoke of in these stories as her father; that was someone else entirely, someone that he would have certainly thrown out of the house were she were to bring him home.

A part of her was bitter that that man hadn’t made a resurgence as the weeks crept by sluggishly with no word about his daughter, and in this time she grew to know a third man. This one seemed to be the strangest of all in that he existed only in the absence of the others, lacking both the teasing humor that made him her father and the tenacity that made him James; most days, he danced periodically back and forth between awareness and a listless lethargy that left his memory of the passing days as turbid as the Missouri River.

Winter only made things worse. In the earliest part of the morning when he was slowly being drawn back into his body, James wished that he were a child again. He wanted someone else to take care of him for a change; hadn’t he done the caring for long enough? When did it end? And if it didn’t, did it get easier?

He wasn’t so naive. He knew that was asking too much. He reminded himself that at least he had things to take care of, and yes, that was a good thing.

The ache in his knees when he set his feet on the floor reminded him he was getting older. He despised the extra minute he had to wait before he could stand without discomfort. His body ran on a finely tuned clock, programmed foremost for children. He couldn’t afford to waste any time.

It didn’t matter that both Patience and Isaiah were both grown; his days always began at 5 AM sharp for a smooth 6 AM departure, remnants of a time when he’d had to rush to deliver his charges to the bus stop before even the sun was up. With no children to slow him down, he was caught somewhere between moving too fast for the amount of time that he actually had against the feeling that he was dragging his feet.

He was already running late, and so he coupled brushing his teeth with picking out his hair to save time. Less than an hour left before the bus would have arrived. An hour was hardly enough slack for all of the haggling, complaining, and whining that came with getting two kids ready for school, even with his wife’s assistance when she was prepared to give it. The house in his mind was already bustling with movement and light; clothes were being ironed, teeth were being brushed and school bags were being double checked. The one that he stood in was steeped in gloom and disconcertingly still.

Shanice hadn’t stirred when he’d stood from their bed, but her snoring had halted as he made his way out of the bedroom. As far as he knew, she hadn’t moved at all from her position, curled into herself like a wilting flower, faced away from him even as she slept. 

Isaiah was home or he wasn’t; James could have taken it either way.

Minty breathed and weary, he stood in the front room and considered calling out to his wife, rolling her name around on the flat of his tongue. Back when there were two, and even when two became three, she’d gripped the lapels of his coat and kissed him briskly before sweeping them out onto the porch. It had been a long time since he’d received such a send off.

In the end, he shook his head and shrugged on his coat early. If everyone sat in bed all day, the world would stop spinning. It seemed more and more that he was the only one who understood that.

He brought the barbershop to life alongside the rising sun, wiping down styling chairs, filling disinfectant jars, and sweeping up stray clumps of hair that had escaped the previous evening. He did his best to converse with his regulars as he normally would have. On more than one occasion his clippers caught skin and he found he’d trimmed outside of the crisp perimeters he’d set for himself at the start. As he offered free beard trims and cuts, he tallied up the lost money and time with a growing pressure behind his temples.

The hours clung to him even after he left the building at nightfall, his skin smelling of alcohol, gel, and various sprays that left it both tacky and gritty. He watched the sky grow dark outside the large glass panes between men.

Finally, it was time to go. He’d taught Patience to always keep her wits about her when she walked at night. 

"Take them damn earbuds out and listen," He’d said to her. His keys jingled loudly in the lock as he stooped over to secure the steel shutter in place. He stayed crouched there until his knees screamed at him to rise.

Hadn’t he done everything he could? Clearly not; if he had, then she would be back at home. To James, it was that simple.

His fingers began to pulse, and he realized he’d been slamming his fist against the shutter.

Patience waited for him in the front seat of his car. It was awhile before he joined her.

She filled the silence of the car with hate. She hated James for being too weak to grieve her properly. She hated Shanice for not being there for him, and for all the times that she wouldn’t be in the future.

When James returned home, the house was just as dark as when he’d left it. Jahiem’s voice drifted from the car radio at the lowest volume, almost overtaken by the roaring of the heater. He sat with his palms resting on the steering wheel, the headlights illuminating the bumper of the car in front of him. His pulse pounded behind his temples.

He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there before his stomach twisted, rumbling so loudly that it broke through his concentration, tethering his mind back to his body. He couldn’t remember eating a single thing all day.

Heaving a sigh, he exited the car and made his way to the front door. Another sigh, strung out as he slowly undid each lock. His teeth shed his lips against his will, chattering as he searched the walls, cutting on switches as he went. When he got to the kitchen, he tasted something like regret. What was the purpose of turning on lights? What did he even want to see?

He pawed through the fridge before settling on a pack of thawed hotdogs. Filling a pot with water, he set it on the stove with the fire on high before dragging a chair out from underneath the table, dropping his entire weight into it. Whilst the water boiled, he set out four slices of plain white bread. He’d just dropped the flimsy meat into the water when he felt Shanice in the doorway.

“Why you ain’t turn on the heat?” He stared at her, draped in their king size comforter. He couldn’t even see her feet on the floor.

She shook her head. “Ain’t no need for all’a that. And anyway, I was sleeping just fine before I heard you in here loud and clear, messing up my kitchen.” The blanket mopped the floor as she moved further into the room.

“Yo’ kitchen? Last time I checked, I was the one who paid the bills.”

“Barely.”

He sucked his teeth. “Girl, it’s too late in the damn evening for this. And I know damn well you wasn’t sleep.”

She’d recently gotten her hair straightened. Around her head she wore a paisley patterned scarf tied securely to cradle each strand, the blue faded from too many washes. Had she been asleep, the bandana would have been either askew or replaced completely with a bonnet after she got fed up with trying to be cute about it.

She ignored him, drifting over to the stove where the hotdogs were beginning to split. “I don’t know why you ain’t ask me to make you something. I know you don’t really like these; they was more for Isaiah than for you.”

“If they in my house, then they for me.”

She turned the stove off, fishing the hotdogs out with the fork. She took his plate, shaking the excess water off before pressing them into the bread. She gave him a bottle of ketchup and sank into the chair across from him as he squeezed piles of red onto the corner of the plate. She watched him eat, shrugging when he arched a brow at her. He stared back at her, tracing her features with his eyes. The soft swell of the dark pink lips that she hated, the kitchens at the nape of her neck made frizzy in her attempts to scrape them into the swath of the scarf, and the flutter of her eyelids as she tried to stay awake even as she slouched over the table. His wife was effortlessly pretty.

“What the hell you lookin’ at?”

He snorted, nearly choking on a bit of bread. “Damn, I can’t even look at yo’ crazy ass now?”

She jutted out her chin. “Clearly.”

The matter-of-factness of the answer shook a tired laugh out of him. “You really is crazy.” He only laughed harder when her glare intensified, the sound traveling from deep in his belly. The corners of her lips twitched, the stern set of her face melting away. A smile peeked through and soon she joined him, laughing until tears collected in the corners of their eyes. She raised her hand to wipe them away, and as she did so he reached across the table and caught her wrist.

“I love you, baby.” He tried to remember the last time he said it because he meant it, not out of habit. 

She swatted him away and rose from the table. “Before you get in that bed I hope you take a shower, because you musty and I just washed them sheets. And yo’ breath smell like ketchup.”

He deflated, his hand closing into a fist in his lap. He didn’t have it in him to say it again.

But at least they were talking. So long as he didn’t bring up Patience, the arguments were at a standstill. For now, he could live with that. If only just for one night, he could promise himself that his daughter was tucked safely away at college at her dorm, little more than a phone call away. As he sank into their mattress, Shanice said nothing as he pressed himself against her back, molding his body to fit hers. He kissed the back of her neck, drawing her into him by her waist. The house was still once he was; it made it easier to forget that the child that he didn’t want was likely somewhere inside, eating his food and drinking his water.

In the moments before exhaustion took hold of him, James could almost convince himself that they were twelve years into the past, younger and hopeful with nothing but up ahead of them.

Almost.

Next Chapter: 10