Chapter Two
It was dark when Amerella parked her Lexus in the round drive out front of the house. She climbed the wide steps to the ornate glass door, exhausted and ready to go to bed. Hopefully Maria had something to eat waiting. She could so go for a veggie burger and a huge cranberry-and-apple salad sprinkled with sugared pecans. Her stomach growled. Then chocolate pudding for a chaser. Yum.
The door opened to a worried Maria. Her hands were waving through the air, punctuating words flying from her mouth. Amerella had no clue what they meant. Amerella walked in and closed the door behind her.
“You think your day was rough,” she said to Maria. “Just wait ’til you hear mine. OH MY FREAKIN’ GOD. I was almost killed, Maria.” She laid the back of her hand on her forehead. “Shot down in the prime of my life. Can you imagine?” Amerella leaned against her companion. “Help me to the kitchen, Maria. I feel weak.”
Maria wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You poor bebé. Maria is here now. She take good care of Ms. Amie and all her drama.” They shuffled to the kitchen, where Maria deposited her into a chair at the small round table. “I have a veggie burger and salad ready for you, Ms. Amie. Are you hungry?”
She sighed. “I don’t know if I can eat with all the distress I’m in, but I’ll try.” Maria set a plate and bowl filled with food in front of her.
“That’s a good girl. You must keep up your strength for the young one.”
Amerella’s spirits instantly rose. There was only thing that made her happy these past three, almost four years, and she thanked god every day for her son. The sound of small feet thumping on tile grew louder.
“Mommy, you’re home, finawy.” Her young man stood with tiny fists on his hips in the doorway from the hall. “Where have you been, young wady?” With her feigned-surprise look, he giggled and ran to her. She opened her arms and he wrapped himself around her. She lifted him into her lap and inhaled his sweet scent.
“I missed you, French fry.”
He rolled his eyes. “I been right here with Mawia for hours, Mommy.” She laughed at his over dramatics he’d picked up from her. He was so smart. Like his father. Just as handsome, too. Maria set a Thomas the Tank Engine plastic plate with cut-up pieces of rare steak in front of him. He gobbled them up like they were cookies, which he never touched. She hadn’t figured out his strange diet, but his dad only ate meat, too. Like father like son in more ways than one, apparently.
Amerella reached out and slid her iPad closer and pushed the button at the bottom to bring the screen alive. After entering the passcode, her son’s birth date and year, the homepage popped up with the latest news. Across the top flashed Senator Killed in Bank Robbery. That didn’t take long to get out.
She skimmed the article to get the highlights, mainly to see if she or Joey were mentioned. The reporter noted only the facts and the recent bill the senator was trying to push through that would revitalize parts of Vegas by tearing down the old and putting up new attractions and buildings.
She knew more about that bill than she cared to. At the last several Monday night dinners, when all the cousins and family in the area were required to eat at Uncle Giuseppe’s, the main point of conversation had been about how the senator wanted to knock down the old Mafia gambling holdings but didn’t want to bring them in on the new stuff. Effectively shutting off the Mob’s source of income.
A shiver crawled down her back. She refused to acknowledge what her brain wanted to piece together. If she thought too much about it, she’d hide away in deep depression like she did four years ago. And this time she might not come out of it. No, that wasn’t true. She had a son to protect. And she would with her very life.
With her finger, she tapped the back button and saw Capone in a smaller headline. Her heart hiccupped. Seemed one of the reporters outside the bank heard her and Detective Freeman’s conversation. The headline read Capone Niece to Testify Against Mob Family. Fuck. This scared the shit out of her. What if her uncle read it?
“Mommy,” her son said.
“Yes, love.”
“Bobby’s daddy picked him up from daycare today.”
“Did you meet his daddy?” she asked.
“Yeah, he’s nice, I guess . . .” She heard a question in his voice and despaired at what was coming. “Mommy, why don’t I have a daddy wike everyone else?”
Her heart squeezed. Maria glanced at her with sad eyes, excused herself, and left the room. The subject of his father has been skirted for a while, but now with his exposure to the world as he grew, she knew the questions would come. But today really wasn’t the best day. She’d rehearsed the line she would say to him.
“You do have a daddy like everyone else,” she said.
His small body rotated in her lap. “Why isn’t he here, then?”
Amerella looked him square in the eye. “He’s lost.” Good god, that sounded pathetically lame out loud. Fortunately a three-year-old didn’t understand lies.
“Wost?” he said. “Where is he?”
She rolled her eyes and harrumphed. “If I knew where he was, he wouldn’t be lost, would he, silly?” She tickled his tummy and he burst into laughs, wiggling in her lap. Maria stood in the kitchen entrance.
“Time for your bath, young man, then to bed,” the woman said.
“Awww, Mawia,” Amerella’s son whined. “Mommy just got home.” Amerella slid him off her lap and patted his bottom.
“You know Maria is the boss around here. I’ll come up and tuck you into bed. I love you.”
“Okay, Mommy.” He trotted to the woman Amerella never would’ve made it without and grabbed her fingers. “Can we have bubbles tonight, Mawia?” His sweet voice faded as they headed down the hall. She hoped Maria saw the thankfulness in her eyes for the distraction from talking about the boy’s father.
She couldn’t handle the emotions the conversation would bring. Not enough time had passed to take the raw edge off the event. Maybe in fifty years, but certainly not four. She fought the tears burning in her eyes.
Amerella gathered the dishes from her dinner and carried them to the sink. She stared out the window into the lot’s manicured backyard. Like all the other rich people in her ’hood, she had the new-fangled playsets for her child, the perfect flower garden for fresh floral displays year round, and a lush, green, fertilized lawn in a place that averaged fewer than five inches of rain each year.
This life was expected of her. This was what she had to do to keep her son safe. But with the Internet article she just read, she worried how secure it was anymore. She walked up the balustrade stairs to her son’s room, where Maria was drying off the child from his bath. He tore from her and ran across the room as naked as the day he was born. This was their nightly game.
“Can’t catch me tonight, Mommy. I’m getting faster.” And he was. His speed for a child his age, even for an adult, was more to the superhuman side of things. That was only the tip of the spookiness going on.
Amerella pulled out a pair of Captain America skivvies from the dresser and tossed them on the bed. A whine started in her son’s throat.
“No complaining,” she said. “Our agreement was you didn’t have to wear pj’s to bed, but undies are a must.”
He huffed and sighed. “Fine, Mommy.” He snatched the underwear off the Marvel Comics comforter and slid them on. “But when I get older, I don’t want to wear anything to bed.”
Curiosity won her over tonight. “Tell me why you don’t like wearing clothes, French fry.”
His eyes glanced at Maria then her. She looked over her shoulder to see the woman standing with the towel in her hands. She turned back to her son. Behind her, Maria went into the bathroom to leave them alone.
Amerella brushed wet hair from his cheeks. “Is it because of the . . .” She never knew how to address the problem. “The changing issue?”
He nodded, tears forming in his eyes. His lower lip trembled. She leaned forward and kissed his forehead. “It’s okay, baby. I’m sure you’ll grow out of it. Everybody has something different about their body.”
“But, Mommy. None of my friends can make cat claws come from their fingers or hear and smell things wike I do.”
Amerella sat up quickly. “You’re not showing your friends your fingers, are you?”
He shook his head, a wet drop rolling over his cheek. “I don’t want to scare them.”
She wiped the tear. “That’s a good boy. We don’t want anyone to know. Especially Uncle Giuseppe or Cousin Tony, right?” He nodded again.
Her heart ached for the pain she knew he felt at being different and hiding his true self. She understood what it took to hide who you really were. She’d been doing that for four years now.
“How would you like to stay with Grandpa and Nana Running Wind for a while?” she asked.
His eyes lit up. “Can I? Please, Mommy, please. I’ll be good, wike I always am.”
She laughed at his use of persuasion. But he was always a good child. When Amerella met the Native American couple on a field trip for her sociology course in college, she never thought they would play such a big role in her and her son’s lives. And even though the Running Winds weren’t biologically his grandparents, they loved the child and gave him something she couldn’t: belief in the unbelievable.
The Mojave people, like many Native Americans, had a religion steeped in nature and the supernatural. She just couldn’t accept aliens, gods, and animals that changed into people as part of her world. Like everyone else, she liked things backed by science and facts.
“I’ll give them a call and see if they can get you tomorrow morning. How does that sound?”
“That would be great, Mommy.” Her Francis sat up and hugged her. “You’re the greatest.” That was new. She hadn’t heard him say that before. He must’ve picked it up at daycare.
“You know I love you, right?” she said.
“I wuv you, too.” He snuggled in his covers. She tucked the blankets around him.
“Now go to sleep and the morning will be here before you know it, okay?”
He closed his eyes. “Okay. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, French fry.” She flipped the light off and pulled the door to. Downstairs, searching in her purse, she dug out her phone, which was leaning against the business card Detective Freeman had given her and Joey’s face mask and gun from the crime scene. He died for her and she would do whatever she could to protect his name in death. Just like she would protect her own son.