“The coroner was bribed? So, in other words, you’re saying there was a cover-up?” She whispered behind pleading eyes.
The phone rang, not a moment too soon for Zaeed. He lifted the cordless handset before the second jingle and headed into the kitchen.
Traquinna turned over to her back and tried to relax by taking very deep and slow breaths. With each exhalation she attempted to clear everything out of her head except thinking about her unborn son. She knew she had to find a way to not let this crisis jeopardize anything. She’d prayed too long and hard to come this far. Somewhere inside, she hoped, was the power she’d need to get through the next month.
If only Dempsey hadn’t become so ostracized. After he arrived on death row, he totally closed off from her. And the final blow was when he requested her name removed from his one-person visitation list. That was eight years ago. But she still should have waited longer for him to come back around and stop blocking her out of his life. She could have waited. She could have waited for as long as it took.
Vaui and her father were trying oh so hard to wear her resistance down and take her mind off the matter. She was confused and couldn’t understand why Dempsey had totally closed off from her like she had swine flu or something.
Her father had almost made a song out of admonishing her to wake up from fantasyland and start living her life. Now here she is in a storybook marriage trying to stay healthy enough to deliver her first and only offspring. Her heart won’t hold up through another pregnancy. That’s why she can’t afford any slipups with this one.
Zaeed walked back in and stood a while watching the movie on the television screen as father, son, and the dog, “Sounder,” chased the raccoon into the underbrush. He shifted his view to Traquinna and wanted to kick himself for pouring all of this information on her at one time. Just when her jacked-up life starts to be worth living, the bottom drops out like a volcanic eruption. There has to be a silver lining hidden under these dark clouds somewhere.
“Zaeed, who was that on the phone?”
“My girl, Fabu. You know what? She said she was right there at the Seafood Shack with us. I didn’t even see her. She was out on the rear deck, though. Is that weird or what?”
After getting no response from his cousin, he returned to the kitchen. Watching ‘Sounder’ reminded him of the good old days with his father, before the accident. He simply idolized the man, as did most everybody else that knew him. And he still does.
In his youth, he would wake up some mornings to his parents’ hushed voices coming from the kitchen. He’d walk on tip-toe to get close enough to observe them both, standing shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen counter cooking breakfast and reminiscing about their lives together or some other event from a bygone era.
In those early years, he frequently questioned why he had ended up being the one exposed to the dwarf gene. However, his parents didn’t ever allow his size to be a hindrance in the household. Every sibling had chores to do and each pulled his own weight. But the good thing was, with him being the oldest of the three, he set the stakes for his sister and brother to follow. And, yes, you guessed it, he sat the stakes mighty high.
The twins begged to attend different schools because they had grown tired of everyone making comparisons. If they wanted to follow in their older brother’s footsteps they would have to be able to talk, walk, skip, jump, hop, and chew gum at the same time. His shoes were just too big for them to fit into at his alma mater. The twins felt like they were under a microscope until they were able to convince their parents to transfer them to another high school. It had been bad enough dealing with the comparison following behind him through primary grades.
He didn’t play sports much but ran everybody in the household nearly batty with a mean set of drums. That bass drum in the school band may be the reason why he has issues with his back requiring bi-weekly chiropractic visits today. He had to lean far enough back to keep it from scraping the ground. He still does sets around town occasionally with the combo he formed during junior year of college. The gigs had slacked off a bit until they agreed to perform at Traquinna’s wedding reception. The combo basically plays local events scheduled around each member’s availability.
He returned to check on his cousin again to find her exactly as he left her on the last check, staring in the direction of the television.
“Hey, woman, you want a pillow? ‘Cause if you doze off and start slobbering on my new imported designer throws, your ass gonna be mine.”
Traquinna rolled around to sit up and take a look at the couch decor. “You talking about this made in Bugaland little sad rubbish?”
“Uh, Uh, see. You know damn well I had those shipped back while I was in Paris last spring.”
“I told you, Zaeed, to start getting some advice from somebody that knows something about decorating before you just go grabbing up stuff.”
She stood and waited for her spinning head to start to clear the haze from her eyes before meandering toward the kitchen to find something to snack on, although she was still stuffed from dinner. Then she stopped and looked down at her bare feet with chipped nail polish only on the big toenails.
“Zaeed, what am I going to do? What kind of new information is Maureen holding? I haven’t even told Dempsey about me and Vaui, and definitely not about the baby.”
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