Page 29 of Quiet as Kept
She was his mistress for years, who never seemed to even want a more permanent position in his life. And now that they were both in their fifties, they were getting married? This kind of shit was why my monthly therapy bill was so high. There was too damn much to unpack in just my immediate family.
“Are you guys hungry? Did you want to stop and have lunch?” I asked as I left the interstate at the Jackson Island exit.
“I’m too excited to meet my grand girls to be willing to stop anywhere but a red light,” Vivienne insisted. “And besides that, since the heart attack, Gannon and I eat clean—no fried foods, no red meat, no flour, no bread, no dairy, no rice, no noodles, no corn.”
“And I told you,” my dad said to her, “this boy has similar eating habits. You got groceries at the house, June?”
My father liked to refer to me as June, which was short for Junior. It used to drive Priscilla crazy, but he refused to stopdoing it. I didn’t mind being called June by him. I didn’t mind that he considered me his junior. After all, I was literally named Kept Gannon Boudreaux. It was the fighting that it caused between him and Priscilla that always put knots in my stomach when he said it. Even as a kid, I always felt that my mom caused enough trouble in their relationship for two people. I didn’t want to be the cause of any additional drama. Once he and Priscilla divorced and he moved out, I was able to settle more comfortably into acceptance of his nickname for me.
“Your mother likes to prepare our food herself. She likes to know exactly what’s in everything she eats. Do you mind if she cooks in your kitchen?”
Vivienne cooked? That was a new fucking development. I didn’t remember her even boiling water for tea. That was crazy.
“Nah, I don’t mind.” Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I minded or not. My thoughts were floating somewhere over Jupiter.
As my father and I stood alone at the back of my truck lifting their luggage from the trunk, I spoke. “Yo, Dad, I didn’t know you were bringing . . .” I hesitated, wondering if he expected me to call her mom. I hadn’t called her that since I started talking. I decided not to make things weird and addressed her in the way I always addressed her. “Vivienne. I was going to put you in the guest room near the loft, but it’s kinda small. You and,” I chuckled, “yourfiancéeshould take my room.”
He chuckled too. “Fuck you, June.”
“I can’t believe your ass spun the block on Vivienne. She’s had your nuts in her fist since the beginning of time,” I whispered.
He shrugged. Both palms faced the sky. “What can I say? When you love somebody, you love ’em. What would you do if the girls’ mother was in the hospital and needed you?”
“Tell her to call the motherfucker she skipped off to London with.” I paused. “Or maybe try to figure out if there was a wayto just toss some money at the situation. I would help her out financially, but I don’t want her back. And I damn sure wouldn’t put no ring on her finger.”
He shrugged again. “Guess that means that you don’t really love her.”
I could’ve told him that.
We left the suitcases in the foyer because Vivienne insisted that she couldn’t wait a moment longer to meet the girls. I really wished that my dad had let me know what was up because Dakota wasn’t the type of person you could run to and snatch into a hug while yelling about how happy you were to meet her.
“Uh, before you meet the girls, I want to let you know that Dakota is a lot like me.”
She looked at me with a tenderness in her eyes that caught me off guard. It was both an unfamiliar and foreign expression to me.
“Aww, is she just shy, or does she deal with stranger anxiety?” She must’ve peeped the bewilderment on my face because she kept talking. “I’ve been making Gannon show me every picture and every video he has of them on his phone repeatedly. I’ve asked him every tiny detail about them at least a million times.”
“A billion.” He corrected with a grumble.
“And I’ve been in therapy, June. Do you mind if I call you that?”
I shrugged my shoulders. I wasn’t sure of too much at the moment. My head was still all over the place.
“I’ve had lots and lots of therapy to try to figure out how to get out of the self-sabotaging cycle that I’ve been in my whole life. I understand that Dakota will need to get to know me before she opens up.” She gave me a small smile. “Her dad was the exact same way, though I never got the opportunity to have him open up to me. Hopefully, we’ll get there.” She sighed. “Anyway,I also understand that Destin is a live wire and my best shot at making a quick grandmotherly connection.”
We found them on the deck with Xarielle. They were standing in front of the sensory table that was filled to the brim with a white foamy substance, and the girls were spreading it around on themselves, tossing it into the air, and smashing it between their hands. But what really captured my attention were the shrieks of happiness and laughter. Both of my girls as well as Xarielle were giggling up a storm.
“Hi, Daddy!” Dakota smashed her hands together, sending white foam flying.
“Hi, Daddy!” Destin parroted.
“Hi. What are you doing?”
“Hey, Kept.” Xarielle fought to dry her hands on the apron she was wearing, but the foamy substance wouldn’t turn her loose. She giggled before responding to me. “We’re playing in shaving cream.”
“Shaving cream?”
“Yeah.”