The Will(39)

That was proof Jake was wrong. Henry was irate because he was concerned about me. Yes, he was my employer, but he also cared.

However, Henry was wrong too. I wasn’t on my own.

Jake was with me.

This caused that warmth to return even if all around me was cold but I ignored that and assured Henry, “I’ll phone.”

“And I’m telling Daniel to cancel Paris.”

I blinked at my lap then looked up to the boats bobbing along the wharf. “You can’t do that.”

“I can, Josephine, and I’m going to.”

“But, it’s a video shoot that took months to set up,” I reminded him.

“They’ll have to find another director,” he told me.

“Dee-Amond only works with you,” I continued recounting things he knew.

And Dee-Amond did only work with Henry and had only worked with Henry for the last seventeen years.

He was a renowned hip-hop artist who’d started his own fashion line, which was remarkable and thus quite successful. Henry did all his work on Amond’s music videos and his fashion shoots.

Amond was also a very handsome, though somewhat frightening black man, who had, in his early days, beat a number of what he called “raps,” the charges being rather violent.

He’d since settled and he could be very charming. This was why I spent a particularly enjoyable night with him after a party that we attended after the VMAs seven years prior. After that, he’d asked me to join his “posse” but I’d refused, with some hesitation (this was because he was very charming, and as I’d mentioned, also very handsome and our night had been just that enjoyable).

But I could never leave Henry.

Then again, there was also the small fact I was not a woman who would be comfortable as a member of a “posse.”

Henry never knew, of course. I was always, without fail, discreet and fortunately Amond was too.

“Then he’ll have to reschedule when we can both do it,” Henry replied.

“Henry, I hardly need to be—”

He interrupted me. “Are you going to meet me in Paris?”

I hesitated, looked back to my lap and whispered, “Things are such that that’s unlikely.”

“Then I’m canceling.”

I sighed before I asked, “Can we discuss this later?”

“Right. Your omelet and Jake.”

His tone was unusual and vaguely disturbing.

I pressed my lips together.

“I’ll speak with you soon,” he said.

“Of course,” I murmured.

“Until then, Josephine.”

“Until then, Henry. Good-bye.”

He didn’t say good-bye. He simply disconnected.

He’d never done that before either.

I stared at my phone for a moment before putting it back in my bag and regaining my cutlery, saying distractedly to Jake, my eyes on my food, “I apologize. That lasted too long.”

“And it didn’t sound like it went real good.”

At Jake’s comment, I turned my eyes to him. “He’s canceling work to come to Magdalene.”

I watched as his mouth got tight for some strange reason and I watched as, seconds later, it relaxed as if he’d willed it to do so to hide his reaction, which was even stranger.

“It’ll be good, you have your people around you.”

“He shouldn’t cancel. It’s a video shoot. That’s even more involved than a photo shoot. They’re shooting on location, so they need to get permission, permits. There’s a good deal of money tied up in it, not to mention all the personnel.”

“You’re worth f*cking all that.”

I stared at him as that warmth swept through me again but I replied, “It’s foolish.”

“You’re worth bein’ that too.”

His words were making me feel such that I decided to return my attention to my probably now chiller-cabinet-cold omelet. So I did.

After I took a bite and found it was, indeed, now chiller-cabinet-cold, Jake asked, “When’s he coming?”

I looked back to him. “The job in Rome lasts just over a week. If he cancels Paris, he’ll be free to fly here next Saturday.”

“Right.”

I took a sip from my coffee cup and returned my attention to my omelet.

“Your offer, I’m gonna take you up on it,” Jake declared and my eyes went back to him.

“My offer?”

“Lookin’ after Ethan,” he said. “He, Con and Amber would go over to your place a lot after school. I got shit on, it falls to Con and Amber to step up, look after their little brother, take him places, shit like that. Lydie wasn’t real young, but the kids loved her. It wasn’t really her lookin’ out for them so much as all of them havin’ each other and my kids havin’ someone to go to when school was done. Like my kids havin’ good in their lives and Lydie was the best.”

He was not wrong about that.

He was also not done speaking.

“And Amber needed a good, decent woman in her life. Lydie was that too.”

She was indeed.

He went on.

“Part of Amber bein’ a pain in the ass is she doesn’t know what to do with the hurt she’s feelin’ with Lydie gone. Ethan lets shit hang out, too young to bury it or really know how to deal with it. Con was tight with Lydie too but he’s not a kid anymore and thinks he’s gotta hide emotion to be a man. With that all around Amber, she doesn’t know which way to go. And Lydie gave her a lot which means she lost a lot.” His voice dipped lower when he finished, “I figure you know all about that.”