The Realest Ever - By Keith Thomas Walker Page 0,96

have remained frozen for another minute, but Quinell hurried from the bedroom with Kat in tow. Kyra turned quickly and pushed them back inside the one room Aunt Ruth allowed them.

“No!” she nearly screamed. “Stay in here. I’ll come get you in a minute!”

She slammed the door in Quinell’s confused face. She turned back and saw Leonard watching her peculiarly. He tried to look over her shoulder, but Kyra effectively blocked his view. Her brain was going a mile a minute, but she had no idea what she should do. Aunt Ruth shook her head at the whole sorry scene, and she finally retreated to her bedroom.

“What’s going on?” Leonard asked Kyra. “Why you running the kids off like that?”

Kyra approached him cautiously. She hadn’t seen Leonard in more than six months. The last time they were together, Leonard was at the lowest point of his addiction. Kyra was too, even though she was a relatively new user. The police were there that night. They took Leonard to jail. Kyra remained free, but it was by no means a blessing. She spent the next three months fighting to regain custody of her children, fighting to prove to total strangers that she was not the lowlife their paperwork said she was. Leonard didn’t know anything about that struggle, just as Kyra didn’t know what he went through in jail.

“You can’t talk to me?” he said. “You ain’t got nothing to say to me?”

He sounded more hurt than upset. Kyra finally found her voice.

“What are you doing here?”

“I been calling you for weeks!” Leonard said. “What’d you expect me to do?” He was loud, but it was frustration rather than anger.

Kyra’s heart knocked against her sternum. Her nervous system flooded her blood with adrenaline, which helped her make smart, quick decisions.

“Let’s go outside,” she said, moving in that direction. She knew her aunt was eavesdropping. And the kids were already traumatized enough. Kyra needed to get Leonard out of her life as quickly as possible. Getting him out of the house was the first step.

She opened the front door and was greeted by cloudy skies, the taste of ozone in the air. The weatherman predicted rain for later in the day, but Kyra knew it was coming a lot sooner.

In the driveway she saw a new sedan with Arkansas plates. The drive from Little Rock was five and a half hours. Kyra knew that Leonard cursed her name plenty of times along the way. If his goal was to rattle Kyra by catching her off guard, he couldn’t have done a better job.

She stepped into the front yard, inviting Leonard to follow her. Inside the house Donovan called Kyra for the first time. Quinell heard the phone and saw Donovan’s name on the display, but he didn’t answer it. He had been forbidden to, ever since Leonard started calling the house.

Kat’s parents faced each other on Aunt Ruth’s lawn. Leonard stared into Kyra’s eyes for a few seconds before he asked the question that had been burning in his heart for the past six months.

“Yo, baby, why you leave me?”

Kyra had been waiting just as long to give him his answer. “You the one who went to jail, Leonard.”

“But you didn’t try to ride it out for me or nothing, Kyra. Soon as I got locked up, that was it. You didn’t take my calls. No visits. Nothing. It was like you just said fuck him. You forgot about me when I needed you the most.”

“You needed me? They took my kids, Leonard.” Even as she looked into the eyes of the man who caused the worst pain she would ever know, Kyra tried to keep the blame out of her voice.

“I know they did,” Leonard said. “I can’t tell you how many times I cried about that. I heard that you got clean and got them back. I was proud of you, even though you didn’t give a damn about me.”

“I’m sorry,” Kyra said. And she meant it. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. But I had bigger problems for myself. I couldn’t help you no more.”

“I didn’t ask for no help,” Leonard said. He was more fair-skinned than Kyra. She watched his face redden with anger. “All I wanted was to know that you still had my back.”

Kyra shook her head. “I didn’t have your back no more, Leonard. I couldn’t.”

“Yeah, I found out for myself,” he said. “You had your cousins telling me you didn’t want to be