Free With Friends Like These by Reshonda Tate Billingsley Page B

my purse on the end table. “What’s going on?”
    That’s when my eyes made their way over to the foot of the stairs, where I noticed four black leather bags.
    “Daddy, are you going on a business trip?” I asked, not quite sure about why he would be taking so many bags.
    “Sweetie, have a seat,” my father said, motioning to the sofa.
    Whenever someone says “sweetie, have a seat,” you know he is not about to give you some good news. Kinda like a guy going on the Maury Povich Show with his girlfriend who has a secret to tell him, then being surprised when Maury says, “You are not the father.”
    “Somebody wanna tell me what’s going on?” I said, without sitting down.
    My father sighed and looked at my mother. She scared me because she looked away, and I swear there were real tears in her eyes. Not those drama crocodile tears she could turn on and off. “It’s your idea, so you tell her.” My mother’s voice was soft and dejected. There was no attitude, no dramatics, just pain.
    I looked at my father. “Daddy, are you leaving us?”
    My father took a deep breath. “Baby, I’m not leaving you.” He reached out to touch me. I jerked away.
    “You’re leaving Mom? You’re leaving this house?” I knew this was a possibility, but now that it was actually happening, I was about to lose my mind. “How can you do this to us?”
    “Lexi, you are old enough to understand this.” He glanced over at my mother. She still had her head turned away but I could see the tears trickling down her cheeks.
    “Your mother and I are getting a divorce.”
    I looked around the room, waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out and tell me I was being punked or something. No way my father was standing here saying this to me. “A divorce? You’re not even going to separate first? I mean, don’t you have to separate first? Isn’t that the law?” I felt myself getting hysterical. I know my family was jacked up, but we were still a family. Images of my father moving out, remarrying, starting a whole new life without us, flashed in my mind.
    “Sweetheart, we’re past the point of separation,” my father said.
    I looked at my mother. “Mama, tell him don’t do this. I know y’all been fighting, but you don’t want this, I know you don’t.”
    “It’s for the best,” my mother whispered.
    My father walked over toward his bags. “Don’t worry about anything, Lexi. Both you and your mother will be well taken care of.”
    I rushed over to where he was. “I don’t care about your money. I have never cared about your money. Please, Daddy, don’t do this.”
    “It’s done,” he said, picking up his smallest bag.
    “What about till death do you part? What about the vows you made before God?” I knew I was grasping at straws, but I would try anything to get them to come to their senses.
    That must’ve caught my parents off guard, because both of them were quiet.
    “You made a promise to God. Until death do you part,” I said, looking back and forth between them.
    My father looked at me. He, too, had tears in his eyes. He reached out and caressed my face. “Lexi, I love you. But living here is killing me. God will understand.”
    He reached down, picked up the rest of his bags, and walked out the front door. I heard my mother let out a loud moan just as the door slammed. I collapsed to the floor in tears.

15
Camille
    W here have you been? And don’t even try saying you were at Alexis’s, because I called over there, and her mother said Alexis was asleep and that neither of them had seen you.”
    I was cold busted. I didn’t know what to say, and I couldn’t think of a different story fast enough. I had taken off my shoes and tried my best to be as quiet as possible when I snuck into the back door. I was walking slowly on my tiptoes with my wedges and my purse in my hands, then suddenly the lights flicked on, nearly blinding me. I stared at my mother sitting on the sofa, her arms folded across her chest and I