Free Black Fridays by Michael Sears Page A

good for her. She can be wild, I know. She has some of her father in her that way. But I thought she could find some peace with you. You were so solid.”
    “It was a good front.”
    “I don’t believe that. I don’t know anything about money and all what you do, but I know you are not a bad man, Jason. And I still pray for you.”
    “Thank you.” I didn’t think I was a bad man either, but it was nice to hear someone else say so.
    “But I don’t hold with divorce. It is a sin. I never divorced my husband. What God has joined? Hmmhmm? I don’t believe it was right. And it hurt Angie. She wouldn’t let you see, but it hurt her bad. I could tell.”
    Angie and I had talked it over too many times for her not to have heard what I was saying. Maybe I hadn’t heard what she had to say.
    “I never meant to leave her—or have her leave me. The divorce was just a way of hanging on to some of our money. The Feds took almost everything that wasn’t in her name. The plan was for her to wait and we could start again fresh. If she hadn’t bolted, we would be up in New York waiting on a new marriage license right now.”
    “And so this divorce was just about the money?”
    She understood. “Exactly. The court left me enough to pay my lawyers and I was lucky to get that.”
    She was shaking her head. “Young man, I don’t know why you don’t see. Money only makes it worse. The sin of greed does not excuse the sin of divorce.”
    I felt another sudden rush of anger. It was like trying to talk politics with a Libertarian. Practicality always falls to ideology.
    “Mamma, can we agree on this? I am here and I want to make things right. I want me and Angie to be one again. I want us to have a life together and to try and raise our son—whatever his problems—together.”
    For the first time, she would not meet my eyes.
    “I know how my little girl made money. She posed for those underwear ads wearing nothing but a spot of lace. I can tell you I was most pleased when she found you and stopped all that. And I know she loved living in the big city and playing at being a sophisticate. But that is not all she is. She is still just an upland Cajun girl who had the looks and got lucky. And when her man divorced her—over money, mind you—she took it very hard. My girl is hurting, Jason.”
    There was something else she wasn’t saying, but at that point I still believed there was some way of rescuing the situation.
    “I need to see her. I need to talk to her. I can’t change what’s past, but I can try to arrange things a bit better for the future.”
    Mamma looked off over the front yard with its sparse, burnt-brown grass and the line of white-painted rocks along the road. She was looking for something that left a long time ago.
    “All right. I will call her. Tell her you’re here. I will even, for all it’s worth, tell her I think she should come here and talk with you.”
    “Thank you.” There wasn’t anything else to say.
    “I’ll fix up a room for you.” She stood up heavily, looking twenty years older than her years. “The boy’ll be up soon.”
    I decided to go for a short run to work out the kinks from traveling all day. I changed in the spare bedroom and briefly stuck my head in the door of the Kid’s room. He had flipped to his other side, facing the wall. His skin was so fair that in that dark room he looked unreal—a ghost of a boy. I closed the door and stood there debating whether to replace the latch. Screw it, I decided. He was my kid and I wouldn’t have him locked up in the dark, like in some nineteenth-century gothic novel. I left it undone and tiptoed down the stairs.
    The late-afternoon heat and humidity were still deadly. I did one eight-minute mile and one twenty-minute stroll back toward the house, staying in the shadows of the live oaks and cedar elms.
    Coming in the front door, I could hear Mamma in the kitchen, softly singing along with some preacher’s choir on the radio. I started