man die because his company wouldn’t pay for his medication. They were a Fortune 500 company, okay? It woulda been a drop in the bucket for them. He had a bad heart. He died. God did nothing to intervene. No prayers were answered. No illness was cured. No miracle worked. I’ve seen shit that I will never tell anybody, the kind that would give you nightmares. It would happen in some of those hospitals. Deathbeds… that look in some of their eyes, the fear… the last breath. Some of the things said to me I’ll never repeat. I’ll take them to my fuckin’ grave. And with all of that, yes, I still believe in God. And I still believe we’re destined for death from the moment we draw our first breath. We are born to die. That’s why I live my life on the edge! Chasing my next high. I’m angry because I know how this ends! One day, is going to be the last day. My clients get their money, sometimes on their death beds. What good is that, Dad? What good is it?! Sammie’s dead, your marriage with Ma is dead, my heart was dead. I closed out the world. I got control, and made sure to never lose it again…”
He hung his head for a spell, the emotions flooding him. The anger within him gave him a headache, made his skull throb, his brain teeter on the verge of explosion.
“And somehow, Nix, your heart got revived. If that’s not proof that God loves us, I don’t know what is. I love ya, Nixon. You don’t talk to me! It took me gettin’ on a plane after all of these years to hear what’s been eating at you.”
“You had thirty-nine years to find out what was eating at me. Nobody ever listens until someone is screaming, but silence is a language, too. I spoke it fluently. Nobody was listening.”
They stared at one another, the thickness in the air like a fog.
Dad got to his feet, walked around the table, and gathered Nixon in his arms, squeezing tight. Nixon breathed slow and easy, accepting the hug, but his muscles stiffened, wishing this closeness would end soon. He couldn’t recall the last time Dad had held him like this; he couldn’t remember the last time he wanted him to do so. He couldn’t control this. He couldn’t make it stop… At last, the old man slowly let go of him and dabbed at his eyes.
“Now you see why you can’t stay here, why you have to stay at the hotel? Ya make me uncomfortable. We’re at each other’s throats, and now we’ve sat here fighting about Black chicks, God, and crackhead sex.”
They burst out laughing at the exact same time. The old man had tears in his eyes, but also joy in their depths.
“I’m never going to forget this, Nixon. This trumps all the other gifts you have ever given me. The tickets to ball games, the watches, the money… Nothing is more precious than my son’s love. You talked to me. Finally. I hear your screams of silence now, loud and clear…”
CHAPTER TWENTY
From the Grave to the Cradle
“And so, that’s it?” Yasmine glared at Camden, who casually tossed up his hands, then let them fall loosely back down to his new desk.
She stood in his office, his assistant present. The woman with the short, reddish brown hair, oversized designer prescription glasses, and too-short black shirt looked dumbfounded, as if she’d swallowed her own damn tongue. The man’s lip slowly curled at one end, then did the same on the other, as if the muscles were independent of one another. He sat there grinning like a twisted Joker. Her hand shook ever so slightly, resisting the urge to wrap it around his throat and squeeze the breath out of him. His office still smelled of fresh paint, plastic, and leather furniture, it bothered her now.
“What else is there to say, Yasmine? I have my own assistant and paralegal, so I don’t need either of yours, and I have your notes.” He picked up a manila folder and waved it about like some flag.
“I only gave those notes to you because Terrell said we’d be working on this together. I told him from the jump, after I saw how you behaved soon thereafter, that you had no intention of doing such. What you have in that folder are my ideas. My hard work. The case is practically complete, and you are