Chapter One
Three years later at Tommy Owen’s and Katara Johnson’s Engagement Party
~Mahogany~
Undiluted anguish gripped me by the throat in my chosen seat at the back of the Owen’s Botanic Gardens. Tommy Owens had assigned me to a table at the front of the tract of land that was cordoned off by tall hedge bushes and beautifully decorated for this affair. However, I knew when I arrived at the surprise engagement party for Katara Johnson that I may have to run right back out. Leaving from the back would create the least amount of disturbance, but Tommy and Kat deserved better than me disappearing without saying goodbye. The least I could do was tell them why I had to go, which they would understand.
Before I got there, I suspected I wouldn’t get to stay to help Tommy celebrate the next big step for him. He’d been the most dependable boss and friend I’d ever had in my life, and had been for the last three years. During that time, I never picked up on the fact that he was in pieces on the inside, and he didn’t want anyone to know. When Kat flew in from London, looking for closure, the door to Tommy’s hidden heartache blew wide open. It took ten years for him to get his hands on the real cause of his pain. He found it at Kat’s childhood home in Arrow. It was uninvited there and beaten the hell out of by the time Tommy got through with it. ‘It,’ as in Edison Craft, had the good sense to not show up anywhere near Kat again, uninvited or otherwise. Especially after Edison was the one that thought up the scheme to break up Kat and Tommy in the first place.
Time had finally brought the two lovers back together. Everyone present knew Kat would accept Tommy’s proposal. If she hadn’t, we all probably would’ve called her a fool. Of course, she did accept. Kat was no fool, and I’d give my left arm for their story to be mine: I had the heartbreak and distance apart from the man I loved written in my history already. Yep, I still loved the bastard, but I can count on there being no rekindling of anything between him and me. And that was okay because I’m over it.
What I hadn’t counted on was the call I just received from my daughter’s oncologist pushing me to have to make another call. I had hoped to never have to dial a certain set of digits, but with each bad test result coming back concerning my child’s failing health, ‘never’ had become a pipe dream. Leaving my daughter’s father out her life wasn’t an option, and I was about to ruin this wonderful occasion for Tommy and Kat. There wasn’t a thing I could do about it but give them another few seconds of bliss together before I told them the bad news I just got. They cared for my daughter, and would’ve wanted to hear any news about her health despite the impact it would have on their party. First, I had to give the news to someone else, Chance, and I was going to have to tell him by voicemail.
“Chance,” I whispered hoarsely into the phone I was strangling in by both hands, finding it extremely difficult to get out the words I never wanted to say to him.
For Majestic, I’d force a storm back though, so I pushed through the block forming around my voice and started to speak quickly.
“Chance, it’s Mahogany, and I’m begging you to not erase this voicemail before you’ve listened to the whole thing. This message isn’t about me. I know I’m the last person you want to hear from after I ran out on you like I did three years ago, but it was a matter of life and death then. It’s a matter of life and death now. If it were my life on the line, I wouldn’t bother calling you, but it’s not mine. This is about my... our daughter’s life or death. It was always about her life or death. I know I should be telling you about her face to face, but I don’t have the kind of time it would take to track you down then get through your security to see you in your office. I’m not in Fredrickson, but I’m sure you know that already. I’ve been in Arrow, Colorado all this time, trying not to ruin your life, but Majestic’s life”
A lump that manifested in my throat when I was first informed of my two-year-old’s illness grew to the size of a mountain in seconds and cut me off. I swallowed around it.
“You may not believe me, but Majestic is your daughter and she doesn’t have much time either, Chance. She’s had leukemia for three months and it’s aggressive. Her doctor just called me from Arrow General Hospital with the latest results of her condition. Dr. Blane…” My voice wobbled, making me have to start all over again.
“Dr. Blane has given up on the chemotherapy and finding a marrow donor match for Majestic in time, and it’s because of her rare blood type, your rare blood type is making it impossible to find a match for her. You’re the only chance I have left to s-save my little girl.”
Beep!
I hissed ‘Dammit!’ at the stupid phone as a robotic voice informed me that the time to leave a message, and to convince Chance to be the father I needed him to be for Majestic, had ran out. The automated system didn’t care about that though, it just wanted me to pick normal delivery or urgent. With my table neighbors looking at me as if I’d cursed in church, I punched the digit allotted for urgent delivery then stuffed the phone in my purse.
What my table neighbors didn’t know was that in their hearing distance, I had launched a series of hail Mary passes for my daughter’s only chance at survival, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had changed his mobile number specifically, so I couldn’t reach out to him years later for any reason. Now, I just hoped it was still his number. If it wasn’t, tracking him down was most certainly going to take place—I’d be doing that anyway if he hadn’t called me back within a few hours.
Won’t be hard to find him either, he wouldn’t be far from his office building in Utah, a forty-five-minute and cheap plane ride away mercifully.
Leaping to my feet, I navigated through the throng of guests to find Tommy and Kat, spotting her first near the stage where Tommy proposed. She looked my way, then rushed toward me, meeting me halfway in the midst of the crowd.
“What’s happened, Mahogany?” she asked when she got within speaking distance, then spread her arms wide.
Somehow, she knew I needed a hug at this moment and something had definitely happened.
My sleeveless, simple black cocktail dress allowed me to embrace her back easily. I considered her a friend because Tommy was one, but nothing anyone but Chance did would make me feel better, besides my daughter surviving her battle with cancer and having a full life ahead of her. Majestic wasn’t going to have that at this rate, not with the almost insurmountable odds that were stemming from her blood type. Her own tiny body was working against her, and I hadn’t meant to drench Kat’s bare shoulder in tears or wrinkle her red, halter neck dress with full skirt, but I couldn’t help that I needed something to hold on to. To hold me together while I cried my eyes out.
Bawling loudly, I was falling apart, probably doing it as I searched through the crowd for her and that’s how she knew something had happened. But no matter how terrible I felt, I had to pull it together, so I could do everything and anything to keep Majestic on this side of heaven.
Swiping at my face blessedly free of makeup that I hadn’t worn in years, I stepped back from her. “I’m so sorry, Kat. I just lost it for a minute. Will you tell Tommy that I’m so happy for you two, but I had to go? Majestic’s immune system is getting weaker and they told me to come back to the hospital. They’re not sure if she’ll last… through… the night.”
The second I got the last of my sentence out, I started bawling again, drawing attention that should’ve been on Kat’s and Tommy’s happiness.
She pulled me back into her embrace, hiding my face in her shoulder, letting me cry it out. “I think it’s time to call Chance, Mahogany. He’s probably a perfect match for Majestic since she has his rare blood type, and she wouldn’t have to wait for her name to rise to the top of a donor’s list to get treatment for her cancer. How bad do you want to save your daughter’s life?”
I raised my head, looking her square in the eye. “I’ll do anything for my baby, Kat, that’s why I just left Chance a message about Majestic after the hospital called. I just hope he comes through for his daughter.”
“Me too, Mahogany. Me too,” she said as she cradled my shaking shoulders with her hands. “Now, you have to pull it together before you get under the wheel of your car, or you’ll be just as much a hazard on the road as I was when I first came back from London, where they drive on the left not the right. I thought Astrid was going to take my license the two times she caught me driving on the left here. Good thing Arrow’s traffic is slow even during the tourist season, or the funeral home would be packed, and I’d be behind Astrid’s bars for vehicular homicide or manslaughter… along with aggravated assault for attacking Edison’s wife, Benita the whore.”
From what Tommy says, Kat only got to attack Benita’s wig, then cried afterwards because she didn’t get to punch Benita in the face or anywhere else. Just imagining that scuffle between woman and hair had me snickering behind my palms that were hiding my face from the guests. I was mess, with my world crashing down around me, and giggling.
“Kat, you and Tommy are too much alike. You crack jokes at the worst damn times, like when I’m trying to feel bad for not telling Chance about Majestic before I had her and swearing her cancer is my punishment.”
She pulled my hands down and started wiping my face herself. “Well, I don’t swear that, Mahogany. As far as I know, this type of cancer could be inherited along with her blood type that’s making things so hard for you both. I do think her disease is God’s way of bringing Chance into both of your lives though. Obviously, he needs to be in it for Majestic’s sake if not yours too, but I don’t think Chance is a bad guy who shirks his responsibilities. Hell, he owns a Fortune 500 company. You have to have some ethics to achieve that level of success. Besides, paperwork is boring as hell. Trust me when I say you’ve got to have commitment made out of iron for that too, and I sure as hell don’t think he’d tell you no to seeing if he’s a match for Majestic. If he does, I’ll sic Tommy on him. My guy throws a mean right and he doesn’t like that Chance hasn’t stepped up to take care of Majestic yet. Before we let Tommy instigate another fight though, I say give Chance a chance to prove to you who he really is. That’s what I did for Tommy, and I listened to him. Now, I have not the perfect man but the perfect man for me. Chance might just be that for you and save his daughter’s life, too.”
I wished I had her faith in people, but she had to have that as a corporate lawyer who created business contracts based on what people claimed they were going to do. This wasn’t business for me but personal. “From your lips to God’s ears, Kat, but I doubt if Chance wants to have a thing to do with me. I have no problems with that, not after I broke up with him the way I did. I just need him to step up for Majestic, and I have to go to her. Do me a favor and go enjoy your man tonight. Majestic is not going anywhere if I have anything to say about it, so don’t interrupt your time with each other to run to the hospital. I got her, and I’ll give her your love. Bye now.”
“Bye, Mahogany, and I’ll get my prayer warriors together for Majestic. I know a bunch of older ladies through my mother who are saved one minute, then they’re cursing somebody out the next.”
While turning away, I had a thought that stopped me in my tracks. “Also, wait until after Tommy is done screaming your name tonight before you tell him that I won’t be in to work tomorrow. You know, soften him up for me because I’m only leaving Majestic if I have to catch a plane to Utah, to find Chance if he doesn’t call me back today.”
“I don’t think Tommy expects you to come in to work while your baby is fighting for her life, Mahogany. If he does, he can take that up with me. Let us know if you need anything, at all.”
I knew I liked this woman for a reason.
“Thank you, Kat, but I’m not calling you tonight.” I kissed her on the cheek then left. My car was a few acres away in the parking lot for the Gardens.
I covered the distance between me and my eleven-year old rustic blue Dodge Avenger quickly in my low heels, to get back to my daughter laying on her deathbed without me. I wouldn’t have left her side at all, if Doctor Blane hadn’t insisted I get out of the hospital for a little while. He was sure I was rapidly declining right along with Majestic. As much as I didn’t want to go, he raised a valid point that if I ended up as a patient too, who would take care of my child once they released her to spend her last days at home? If a miracle happened, as in her condition improved or a donor match was found in the next day, I would still have to take her home where she would get better the fastest. Choosing to stay in my best form possible for Majestic’s sake meant attending the engagement party on doctor’s orders.
Dr. Blane swore the fresh air would do me some good and she wouldn’t know I was gone. He lied. I felt worse for leaving, then getting the call that my baby was getting closer to death’s door. It was as if she wasn’t trying to hang on anymore until I found her cure because I wasn’t there with her. Well, I won’t be leaving her again, didn’t want anyone else doing my job. Despite her being in Dr. Blane’s capable hands, I felt like my hands were better for her. However, as much as I used them to hold my child and will strength to her when I wasn’t praying for her, nothing was working. Chance my last resort. Even if I would let someone take over Majestic’s day-to day care for me, I couldn’t: I’m her only living relative who knows that Majestic exists. She won’t for much longer if I don’t find a way to get through to Chance.
Tommy and Kat would probably volunteer to care for her some, but she was my responsibility. Turning Chance’s life upside down with a baby he didn’t want wasn’t in me. Destroying our relationship wasn’t either, but I had to choose, so I chose my child. Plus, I didn’t want to make him feel obligated or guilt him in to taking part in our lives either, which brought on my move to Arrow, a place close to my birth city where I’d been abandoned at a fire department as a newborn.
Shortly after giving birth myself, I managed to hold on to my financial aid and stay in school, which has been a hard hill to hustle even with taking one class a semester online. I could never thank Tommy enough for giving me a job right after I got here. After I told him the truth about my predicament, I think me being a couple months pregnant with no father in sight is why he hired me more than for my experience in restaurants and accounting, as well as computers. He’s been putting up with me and Majestic ever since out of the kindness of his heart. I prayed his heart never shrunk and one day I hoped to return all the favors he’d done for me. Things seemed to be getting harder and harder for me though. The question was when would they get easier, at least for Majestic, only Chance could do that for her. I’d be deceiving myself if I thought he had a compassionate bone in his body concerning me at this point.
When he was mad, things didn’t get easier, they hit the fan then blow back on his enemies.
“I should make a pit stop and buy a rain coat,” I grumbled as I slid into the driver’s seat, but nothing would protect me from Chance, so a ‘pit stop’ won’t happen on my way back to the hospital.
After cranking the car that sputtered to life, I extracted my phone from my purse. No missed calls or missed texts. Or voicemails.
“Shit, Chance! Call me back please!” I pitched the phone and my purse on the passenger seat and sped off.
The sun was reaching its highest point in the sky, traffic nonexistent, the fifteen-minute trip to Arrow General commuted even quicker with me speeding all the way there. Fortunately, Sheriff Astrid Powers was at the party being thrown by Tommy—she’d married his nephew Blake. However, Deputy Cooper Miles, who most surely was on duty, liked to stick to the county limits, and I was heading into the city. Parking was easy to find in the back of the hospital where I dashed through the rear double-sliding doors.
The elevator took its time carrying me up to the fifth floor where my heart was, laying deathly still on her bed. Tubes attached to her in two places too many fed a little more life into her. Paler than usual, she slept but wasn’t resting. As a failure, I stood at end of her bed and watched her little chest expand shallowly but too quickly as if she couldn’t take in enough air. Something deep inside wanted me to believe that if I unhooked her from the machines and ran away with her to home, she would surely get better there, right? Wrong. I had to fly away without her to Utah and bring back what was better for her to her.
With the phone being crushed in my hand, I dialed up the local airport and requested a round-trip ticket to Utah that cost me a third of the money in my bank account. The second I hung up with a customer representative, Dr. Blane walked into the room and stood beside me. His mocha-tinted skin rippled with muscles under his lab coat. Hair cropped close to his head teemed with glossy waves. Empathy gusted off him, along with his natural manly musk tinged with the sandalwood scent that Chance wore. Would’ve driven me crazy if my daughter’s poor state of health hadn’t consumed me from the inside out. I didn’t do reminders of Chance well either, although I swore I was over him.
“Did you get in touch with Majestic’s father yet, Mahogany?”
“I’m trying. I left him a message after you called me. He hasn’t responded back. I’m down to flying to Utah and dragging his ass back here kicking and screaming.”
“When’s your flight?”
“In an hour.”
“You should leave now. You still have to get through security check and the airport is twenty minutes away.”
I have to leave her again, I yelled inside my head before a sob broke from me. I was conflicted: I couldn’t stay, I couldn’t go. Pure misery had me in its grasp, slowly ripping me to shreds one slash at a time. Cupping my mouth with one hand trapped the rest of the moans that would’ve broken free.
“I can’t leave her again, Dr. Blane. Look what happened to her when I left earlier. Maybe I can send someone to get—”
“Her condition would’ve deteriorated with or without you here, Mahogany, and will continue to,” he interrupted with a stern tone. “That’s why I had you go to your boss’ party, to get a break from the torture of seeing your daughter like this. I’m her doctor and this isn’t easy for me so yeah, I’m condoning you dragging Majestic’s father back here kicking and screaming. Kidnap him if you have to. Tie him to a chair and rob him of his blood yourself with a knife and a cup. Whatever it takes... but just make sure to cover the cup with a lid. Oh, and put it in ice afterwards.”
I snorted, humor finding me again when the last thing I wanted to do was laugh.
He whirled toward me with a finger pointed in my direction and a smile on his thick lips. “But if you tell anyone I said any of that, I’m going to call you a bald-faced, delusional liar. I like you and Majestic, Mahogany, but not enough to get fired or do time for you for conspiracy to murder someone.”
“I understand completely that I’m on my own when the cops show up asking questions. You’re silly, Dr. Blane, you know that?”
“Correct.” He returned to his original position, gazing at the toddler in the bed who hadn’t so much as twitched when I walked in.
My voice alone should’ve had Majestic diving from the bed into my arms, after she’d got caught jumping on it still in her shoes though she knew better than to put her feet on anything.
In the corner of my eye, Dr. Blane’s smile slipped from his face. “Seriously though, I got her, Mahogany, but you have to go and do what you have to quickly to keep her here… whatever that may be.”
“I know. I just have to say…” But I couldn’t spit out goodbye. It was wrong somehow, as if once that word left my lips, it’ll be the last time I said them to her and I couldn’t bear that.
Dr. Blane lightly touched my trembling shoulder, getting my attention. “Don’t say goodbye to her, Mahogany. Say you’ll be back because you will.”
“Damn straight I will.”
I approached the bed and kissed my baby girl on both of her sunken cheeks beneath her eyes rimmed in black from her sickness doing its best to kill what was left of her. She resembled Chance so much, sometimes it hurt to look at her.
In her ear, I whispered, “Listen to me, Majestic. I cannot live in this world without you. I won’t, and you can’t leave me either. Give mommy a little more time to get what you need, and I promise you’ll feel better soon. Wait for me, baby girl. I’ll be back, and I love you.”
As I stood up, she made a sucking motion with her lips, an indication that she was hungry though she was being tube fed because she was being kept sedated to ease her pain. Just two-years-old and she could put away enough groceries to make a fat man judge her for it, or she used to. I couldn’t wait until she was eating me out of house and home again.
When I finally left the hospital, in my car, I pleaded with any higher being listening to perform a miracle for her, to give her back her vitality and precociousness. “Or just take what she needs from me, but do something. I need a sign that everything was going to be okay.”
Nothing out of the ordinary happened immediately to represent a glimmer of hope. I beat my fists against the steering wheel and railed at the world. “Just one damn sign is all I asked for and I can’t even get that!”
A sudden roaring above had me looking up to the heavens. For a moment, I was pretty sure I just ticked off someone upstairs and was about to pay for it, but it was a small plane emerging from the clouds, dropping in altitude over Arrow’s Airport tarmac. Someone arriving in Arrow wasn’t the sign I was looking for. People flew in and out of here all the time, mostly filthy-rich someones coming to check into their room booked at the ski resort where they would laze around in the high life for the weekend or reunite with a loved one who lived here while my little girl was dying.
“Fucking typical!” I screamed, growing bitter and angry at how some were favored more than others in this world, although, an orphan like me was accustomed to that.
After being abandoned near a fire station in Spindle and raised by people who didn’t have an ounce of kindness in them, I was personally acquainted with some of the pitfalls in life. That didn’t mean that Majestic should be treated unfairly too because life was a bitch. For the first time ever, I was beginning to hate my position in the world because it didn’t allow for luxuries like family members who lived close by and would return my frantic calls or could also be a match for Majestic. My pitiful excuse for an existence that was chosen for me was about to cost me the most precious thing I had. Before I lost her, I was going to fight tooth and nail for her life.
Short-term parking was available in the front of the old, aero dome-shaped building. I ran inside with just my purse and phone. Traveling light made security check a breeze for me, not so much for the other people who had actual luggage. More people were going out of Arrow than coming in. I was fidgeting in my aisle seat for half an hour before we were cleared for takeoff. When we coasted down the runway, I fell into a light doze instantly, sure I was well on my way to keeping my promise to Majestic, and used to resting when I could since she became ill. It seemed like the minute I closed my eyes, a pretty, red-haired flight attendant shook my shoulder and told me that we had landed in Fredrickson.
“Thank you.” I yawned, moved along the aisle with the rest of the passengers while checking my phone that no one had reached out to.
I didn’t know whether to scream or punch something. Do neither, Mahogany. Now is not the time to catch a disturbing the peace charge.
I dialed Chance’s number again while speed walking through the much classier airport in Fredrickson, getting his voicemail again. “Dammit, Chance, please pick up! I’ll do anything if you help my daughter! I won’t ask for anything else from you! You don’t even have to meet her or see me, just be a decent man and save her! And call me! Please!”
Reaching the exit on the other side of the building before I had even finished leaving the panicked message, I hailed the first cab I saw and gave the driver directions to Middleton Architectural. In the back of the car, I stared at my phone, willing it to ring. It hadn’t by the time we reached Chance’s building. Ten minutes had passed and I was a wreck. Not how I’d want my ex to see me for the first time in years, but my wrinkled cocktail dress and limp hair sagging on my shoulders would have to do.
Outside the building, I urged the cabbie to wait while I ran inside. The middle-aged driver in a colorful dashiki with an African accent promised he would wait because I hadn’t paid him yet. Twenty minutes before closing the doors to outsiders for the day, I skidded to a stop on the Italian tile at the security personnel’s desk.
The uniformed rent-a-cop looked at me suspiciously. “Can I help you, ma’am?”
“Yes, I need to see Chance Middleton. It’s an emergency. Life and death.”
His tanned facial features fell under the weight of his sudden sympathy. “I’m sorry but”
“Don’t be sorry! Just get him down here!” I demanded at the top of my voice.
The man huffed. “Ma’am, I’m trying to tell you that even if I could reach him, he’s not here.”
No, no, no.
I started to pace in circles, slowing losing my mind. “Where did he go?”
He shook his head. “I can’t tell you that.” Not what I wanted to hear, so I rushed the desk, and slapped my palms down on the gleaming brown-wood top with so much force the guard nearly jumped right out of his chair.
“Then get him on the phone wherever the hell he is and tell him I’m here! Mahogany Jefferson! He’s the only one that can help my daughter, his daughter who’s dying from cancer as we speak! She doesn’t have long! Please find him!”
I had to look like a raving lunatic snarling with my teeth gritted, eye sockets stretched to the max as my dry eyes gobbled up the security guard.
“I-I’m sorry, ma’am,” he stammered. “I don’t have a way to contact him. He’s not my boss technically and…” He stopped to pan the lobby as if he was afraid someone was listening in, but there was no one else but us around.
He stood up to lean over the desk, getting so close I could smell the cigarette smoke on his breath. “Mr. Middleton isn’t even in Utah right now. He left for some work emergency I think, about an hour ago. Just took off out the building, yelling at his secretary to call his driver, email him everything he’d need for the trip, to have his pilot get his jet ready, and arrange transportation after he got wherever he’s going. It’s Friday, so he won’t be back here until Monday at least. I’m sorry, ma’am. So sorry about your daughter. I have one too. Can you call his family?”
When did Chance get a jet? Why would life give him a way to escape his daughter’s fate but not her and me? The bottom of my stomach dropped, and the world tilted on its axis.
“No, I can’t call his family,” I said softly with my head and shoulders drooping, couldn’t speak above a whisper. “I don’t have their numbers and I can’t stay here for long.” Was all out of places to track Chance to and had to go home and tell my child that I’d failed her—she wouldn’t make it to three-years-old.