the words of this young lady. So obvious was his shock, but more than anything, Mimi had never mentioned Afrika’s best friend. Was Mimi hiding something from him? Raphael finally smiled.
Raphael noticed Mimi’s irritation and her convenient silence. Before Raphael could approach Mimi, the door to the room opened again. A well put together woman in a smart black pantsuit about Mimi’s age rushed through the door. She looked from Mimi to Raphael, finally realizing that Raphael had to be Mimi’s husband. There was no smile on her face.
“Hi, I’m Brenda,” she said to Raphael, extending her hand to greet him.
“Brenda Christianson, this is my husband, Raphael. He finally made it.”
“Nice to finally meet you, Brenda,” Raphael said. “I’ve heard a lot of nice things about you.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Raphael,” Brenda said. “Mimi and I go a long way back. We were best friends.”
“Brenda is also Asia’s mother,” Mimi interjected.
“I do see the resemblance,” Raphael said, looking from Brenda to Asia and then to Mimi. “I’m sorry if I look perplexed. Although Mimi talked about you, I didn’t know you were best friends.”
Brenda smiled. “It’s easily understood. We’ve been estranged for many years. We lost touch and everyone moved on with their lives.”
“I guess so,” Raphael said, still sensing something else. Mimi avoided his gaze but he could tell she seemed pissed off. He loved that woman, but he had an eerie feeling…like something wasn’t right and he had been caught in a dragnet.
Raphael smothered the urge to comment on how much Brenda’s daughter looked so much like Afrika. No matter how much Raphael tried to toss it to the back of his head, the thought of it kept rumbling through his brain, itching to be addressed. It would be a conversation for Mimi and him later that evening.
Niceties were set aside and Brenda lightly touched Mimi’s arm, urging her with a slight movement of her head to go outside. Raphael didn’t miss a beat; that eerie feeling squeezed his brain… his need to know what was going on.
“I’ll be right back, Raf. Brenda needs to talk to me.”
“Okay,” Raf said as he watched the two women exit the room. He went to the edge of Afrika’s bed and listened as Asia babbled on about some boys they had met. And then she said something that struck Raphael as odd—pricked his ears, made him pay close attention.
“Trevor called me today. Said my mom and dad have been acting strange. Police were even at the house.”
“Why?” Afrika asked.
“It could be domestic. Trevor said he heard my mother tell the detective that she asked Daddy for a divorce.”
Afrika tried to sit up. “I’m so sorry, Asia,” she whispered.
“They’ve been having problems for a while,” Asia went on, “but it seemed to get worse after you came over that day. My mom wanted to contact your mom, but Trevor heard Dad tell my mom later that he didn’t want her to. Strange, huh?”
“Yeah,” Afrika said. Letting that little tidbit settle in her mind, she asked the one question Raphael had thought of. “But why would the police come to your house?”
“Trevor said that after Mom told Dad that she wanted a divorce, they started arguing and my dad picked up his coat to leave and a gun fell out of the pocket. What if he was going to try and use it on my mother?”
“So your mother called the cops?”
“It’s kind of vague to me.”
“I don’t mean any harm, Asia, but your dad scares me. I caught him staring at me when we cheered at our first football game. I felt weird, and I called and told my mom.”
Raphael didn’t hear anything else. He turned his head toward the door the ladies had exited and wondered if their conversation had anything to do with what Asia and Afrika were talking about.
Raphael put on his thinking cap. He’d barely been home twenty-four hours but something was wrong with all the scenarios floating around him. Mimi’s obvious awkwardness when John showed up and her nervousness upon him seeing Asia in the room to Brenda’s need to see Mimi in private right away didn’t add up. And why didn’t Mimi tell him about the man staring at Afrika? Maybe that’s what she had tried to tell him the night that she called, Raphael thought back.
In the military, Raphael was paid to think—to provide strategies to fight wars on foreign soil in a place they called the war room. He was in the war room,