“Thank you,” Kayla told the policeman, but it took all her willpower not to tell Mrs. Witherspoon to kiss her naturally born half-black ass.
She carried the letter back up to her tiny one-room apartment, which had come furnished with a twin-size bed, a table and one chair, a recliner, and a combination cabinet, stove, and refrigerator over in one corner. Her hands shook as she fell back into the worn recliner, and she noticed the return address. The letter was from Miss Janie, not her mother, thank God. Had it been from her mother, she would have burned the damned thing without even looking at it.
A wave of guilt bigger than a tsunami washed over her. Within a week of running away with Denver, she’d known it was a big mistake, but she couldn’t go back and admit it to Miss Janie. Besides, the government had stopped paying for her upkeep when she turned eighteen, and Miss Janie had been kind enough to let her stay until she graduated. She’d even offered to pay for Kayla’s college, like she had Teresa’s.
“Not even the wonderful Teresa stayed in school, though. She dropped out to get married.” Kayla remembered the first Christmas card that came to the house after Teresa left.
She turned the letter over several times in her hands. Miss Janie was dead. Kayla could feel it in her bones.
Finally, she slipped a thumb under the edge of the flap and opened it. Three one-hundred-dollar bills fell out into her lap. Tears flowed down Kayla’s cheeks. Miss Janie had left her an undeserved gift, and she’d never know how much Kayla appreciated every dollar, or how much she needed the money.
She dried off her cheeks with the back of her hand and unfolded the letter, expecting to find something handwritten in Miss Janie’s perfect handwriting, but it was a typewritten letter on letterhead from Noah Jackson, Attorney at Law and Private Investigative Services. She remembered Noah very well even though he came to the house only once. His father was in the military—she couldn’t remember which branch—and his mother was kind of high class in Kayla’s estimation. They had stayed only a few days because Noah was due to start college and his folks were moving to Japan.
Noah wrote that Miss Janie was dying of cancer and had Alzheimer’s. Kayla heaved a sigh of relief—Alzheimer’s and cancer were bad, very bad, but at least Miss Janie wasn’t dead, and she wanted Kayla to come home. The money was to get her there by whatever means she wanted, and she read that she would have free room and board if she would help take care of Miss Janie.
Kayla eyed the letter as if it were a poisonous snake. Did she really want to open up that can of worms again? Go back to where she’d had even less self-confidence than she had right then? Where people followed her around in the stores because she might shoplift like her mother had been known to do, or just because she had dark skin?
“The apple and all that,” she muttered.
What if Teresa had been summoned to Birthright, too? Could she stand to live in the same house with her again? All they did was argue and bitch at each other—they fought about everything from who used the last of the shower soap to who hated the other one the most. The only time they were civil was when Miss Janie was in the room, and even then, it was a chore.
Kayla closed her eyes and flashed on a picture of her bedroom at Miss Janie’s house. She couldn’t expect it to be the same as when she left it, but it was twice as big as her tiny room above Mrs. Witherspoon’s garage. If she went back, she could make peace with all the regrets she’d piled up inside her heart, and the letter said that Noah would pay her a salary to help take care of Miss Janie. She couldn’t take money for that job, though—not when her foster mother had dragged her out of the pit where she’d been living and treated her like a daughter.
Determination flashed through her as she opened her eyes—she was going back to Birthright. She picked up her phone and found the bus station—a bus left going east to Dallas that afternoon at one o’clock. Kayla packed her suitcase and wound duct tape around the outside to keep it from falling apart. Even though Denver had never