doubt that at least half of the people in attendance were watching and the other half were busy trying to distract my children for me. God, I loved my family. We had some rough bumps along the way, but dammit, they had all come through for me in the end.
“Am I cursed?” I sobbed out to my friend.
“Cursed? What? No! Fuck that noise. You ain’t cursed. Where is this coming from?”
“The way my biological mother conceived me, it almost ruined the Brother’s family when they found out about me. She never told me, then she died in my arms. I came into the Brothers’ lives and caused trouble from the start. I made a divide in the family, my brother died, my husband is missing, and now my other mother is gone. How the hell am I not cursed?”
“Aww, babe, none of that is on you. You’re just unlucky enough to be touched by so much tragedy but you are not the cause of it. Not a damn ‘but’, you hear me? Don’t do that to yourself.”
“I know the logic, Sully. But I also know that shit is just stacking up.”
“I hate to break it to you, Little Sis, but this shit starts stacking up for everyone the older we get. It’s called life, experience, and age. The clock doesn’t stop ticking, and when it’s someone’s time, they go. Unless you held the gun to their head and pulled the trigger yourself, it ain’t on you.”
I knew that. I did. On a normal day, I’d be preaching it to someone else. “I’m so tired,” I managed to squeak out between my sobs that were finally ebbing away.
“I’d be worried if you weren’t. You know you can always ask us to help out. I’ll be more than happy to take my nieces off your hands for a day, a few hours, whatever you need. Hell, if you trust me with the little one and want to bottle up some of your lovely breast milk for me, I’ll take him too.”
“You need the daddy practice?”
“Nah, don’t think it’s in the cards for me, sweetness. Not after Billie left.” Billie had been the one woman I’d known Sully to love and be serious about. She took off, out of the blue one day, and while she had sent a goodbye, it had been received as more of an insult at the time. I didn’t think Billie’s story was as cut and dry as her simply not being ready to settle down and running on cold feet, but there was no convincing Sully of that. Ever since, he was dead set against a real relationship of any kind. It was sad, because he was closing in on his 40s and the man deserved to find happiness. He also deserved to be a father. He was one hell of a surrogate uncle.
“Tell ya what, how about I come over twice a week, give you a couple hours to go do your thing, whatever that is, and we’ll go from there. If you need more, we’ll work with it. I have plenty of time off coming to me since I never take a vacation.”
“Sul, you should take a vacation without wasting it on me.”
“You are never a waste of my time, Little Sis.” He hugged me tight for a minute then reached up with both hands, cupped my jaw, and used his thumbs to swipe away residual tears and help dry up the salty tracks that ran down my face. “Let’s get you sorted and back over to your family before they start to worry after you, okay?”
“Thanks for being here, Sul,” I whispered before leaning up on my tiptoes to kiss his cheek.
“Aw, shit girl, you’re gonna make me blush.” I smacked his chest and turned to head back toward my family. It appeared some of the extras around the periphery were starting to trickle out. That was good. My mom didn’t know a stranger and made friends everywhere she went, so there were a ton of people there to pay respects to the woman everyone admired. My Momma Luce was an amazing woman. She would be so terribly missed.
Before we left, I moved to my mother’s casket and touched my fingers to it. “If he’s with you, take care of him for me,” I told her in a hushed tone so no one would overhear me. “I hope he’s not, but… just… I’m going to miss you so much, Momma.”
Chapter 21
Determined
Double-D
I held her letter