He found shade and moved under it.
Then he demanded, “Talk to me.”
Silence then, “You don’t know?”
“Don’t know what you’re gonna tell me,” Walker evaded.
Pause then, “Right.” Another pause then, “She’s clean. Her parents were not.”
Fuck.
He was silent. Jackson kept talking.
“Caught that, did a little digging and called a couple of guys. They’re digging too. I’ll know more but what I got, they were junkies. Made the news in Dallas thirty-four years ago. She was born in a crack house. Mother so gone, don’t know she even knew she had a kid and probably a miracle the baby survived and wasn’t f**ked up, considering what the Mom was doin’ to her body. Someone in the house was together enough to phone emergency, they went in, got her, placed her with her grandparents. Don’t know what went down after that until I get callbacks but I do know the Mom OD’ed five years later. Dad died four years after from internal injuries when he got his ass kicked by a loan shark.”
He was right, it was definitely f**k.
“She was placed with her grandparents?” Walker asked.
“That’s why I’m diggin’. It was the Mom’s parents. Death records show the Grandma died when your girl was six. The Grandpa died when she was thirteen. I don’t have access to those kinds of files but my work takes me to Texas, got some people I know so I’ve contacted those who can access the files or know people who do. May take a couple of days.”
“What about her Dad’s grandparents?”
“That was easy. Traced him, found out they died in a car accident when he was sixteen.”
“Aunts? Uncles?”
“Mom, an only child. Dad had a sister but she didn’t step in. Don’t know why.”
Foster care.
Walker looked across the street to their hotel thinking about Lexie and her shades and high heels and short-shorts and bright smile in foster care then, thirty-four years later, finding her shit tied to the likes of Shift.
Fuck.
Jackson spoke in his ear. “Ty, you’re marryin’ this girl, you don’t know this shit?”
“Both of us prefer to look to the future,” he lied again though he had no clue what Lexie preferred. However, that statement was pure bullshit from him. He was living in the past and would until mistakes were rectified.
Then, if he had a future, he’d look to it.
“That’s good news,” Tate said quietly, misreading him and Walker thought it was good this conversation was happening on the phone. He’d learned a lot in prison but he didn’t expect part of that was pulling shit over on Tatum Jackson. “Though, that’s true, why am I doin’ what I’m doin’?”
“Can’t be too careful.”
“She know about you?”
“She picked me up outside the penitentiary yesterday.”
Silence then Tate started digging, this time somewhere else.
“You meet her in Dallas before you came home and that shit went down with Fuller and Misty?”
“Yep.” Another lie.
“Again, brother, seen her picture. How the f**k you leave that behind?”
“I think me bein’ an idiot was proved in a courtroom, Tate.”