Chapter 12

The office of Rachel’s OB-GYN was located in College Park, just off Old National Highway. Joshua’s parents lived less than ten minutes away, so he decided to visit them before he met Rachel for her two o’clock appointment.

His growing awareness of her deception simmered in the back of his mind. He wanted to do something about it—but he wasn’t quite sure what he could do without creating a more troublesome situation.

Old National Highway, the city’s main drag, was a winding, four-lane road of strip malls, fast-food joints, nightclubs, pawn shops, currency exchanges, barber shops, hair salons, and liquor stores. The dome of a mega-church rose in the distance, resembling a pro sports arena.

Farther along the highway, retail gave way to residential development. Builders had recently discovered the area and were busy erecting the same sprawl of cookie-cutter subdivisions that consumed much of metro Atlanta.

Joshua’s parents lived in an older section of town, in a neighborhood of Craftsman bungalows, ranches, and old Victorians. Oaks, elms, and maples stretched bare branches into the cloudy afternoon sky.

He parked in the driveway of their ranch house. Although it was mid-day, his parents were retired, and usually home.

The garage door was open, so he went in via that way. His father had his head stuck under the hood of a yellow Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight that looked as if it hadn’t burned gas in a decade.

“Hey, Dad,” Joshua said.

His father slid from under the hood like a man extricating himself from the maw of a whale. With skin the color of aged oak, he was a small, compact man, standing about five-six; Joshua had inherited his size from his mother’s branch of the family.

A dirty cotton towel peeked from a pocket of his dad’s jumpsuit, and he grabbed it and wiped off his hands. He had used to work as a mechanic at the local Ford plant before it closed, and though he had retired four years ago, he wore the oil-stained gray jumpsuit almost every day. It was a family joke that he would be buried in the uniform.

“What you know good, boy?” Dad asked in his gruff voice. A toothpick dangled from the corner of his mouth, dipping up and down when he spoke.

“I was in the area and wanted to stop by to say hello.”

Dad grunted, used the same soiled towel to blot sweat off his face. He nodded at Joshua’s Ford Explorer, brown eyes shining. “How that truck holdin’ up? ‘Bout time for an oil change, ain’t it?”

Joshua visited his parents every couple of weeks, and every time he saw them, his dad suggested that it was time for an oil change. The mechanic in his father couldn’t resist the compulsion to fix every car he encountered; Joshua was certain that the Oldsmobile his father was currently diagnosing belonged to someone in the neighborhood.

“I’ll bring it by soon for you to work on,” Joshua said.

Dad grunted, and his eyes dimmed. “Mama’s inside,” he said, turning back to the car.

It was an ordinary exchange with his father. Beyond the subject of automobiles, they never had much to talk about.

Joshua went inside the kitchen. A gigantic pot seethed on the stove, filling the house with the delicious aromas of chicken, broth, dumplings, and vegetables.

Curious, Joshua lifted the lid off the pot—and hissed when the heat stung his fingers. The lid slipped out of his grasp and clanged onto the floor.

“That must be my baby in there,” Mom said, coming around the corner. “Clumsy as ever.”

“Hi, Mom.” Joshua kissed her on the cheek, which required him to barely bend at all. His mother was a shade less than six feet, her body as thick as a tree trunk. Gray-haired, she wore a shapeless blue house dress, an apron, and threadbare slippers. A pair of reading glasses suspended from a lanyard rested on her broad bosom.

Without the glasses, though, her dark eyes were as sharp as ever. They cut into Joshua with the precision of surgical scalpels, and he felt himself weakening under her gaze, swiftly regressing in age from thirty-two—to twelve.

“Pick that lid up off the floor, boy,” she said. “And don’t be a dummy—use a mitt this time.”

Obediently, Joshua grabbed the oven mitt off the counter and used it to pluck the lid off the tile.

“Wash it off ‘fore you put it back on my pot.”

Joshua took the lid to the sink, rinsed it with cold water, and then carefully placed it over the pot.

“Come in my kitchen snoopin’ and messin’ up,” Mom said. “Shoot, if you kept in touch with me like a good son should, you’d know I was cookin’ chicken and dumplins. Sit down.”

Joshua sat at the end of the kitchen table. Mom shuffled to the stove, lifted the lid off the pot, and stirred the soup with a big spoon.

“I was in the area and wanted to stop by to say hi,” he said.

“Wanted to stop by to say hi? Like we just acquaintances or somethin’. You ain’t been by here in a month.”

“It hasn’t been that long, Mom. I visited last week.”

“Maybe you did. But I ain’t seen that heifer you married since Thanksgiving. That’s plain disrespectful. You come to see us, but she can’t?”

Normally, Joshua defended Rachel whenever his mom started dogging her out. Today, though, full of his own doubts about his wife, he couldn’t summon the will to speak up for her.

“Wouldn’t trust that heifer as far as I could throw her,” Mom said, hands on her wide hips. “What kinda wife talks her husband into quittin’ a good job so he could go out there and be unemployed and strugglin’?”

Mom had been against Joshua leaving his job to start his business. Although he was earning more money and was happier being his own boss, in his mother’s mind, he was jobless and broke. She blamed Rachel for it, of course.

It was another point that Joshua typically disputed. But he kept quiet.

“She ain’t an honorable woman,” Mom said.

“Why do you say that?”

“She just ain’t. I feels it right here.” Mom touched her breast. “But you ain’t listen to what I think, oh no. Mama done lived sixty-some years but don’t know nothin’!”

Joshua was quiet. Eventually, her tirade would run its course.

She ladled some soup into a bowl and plinked a spoon inside. “Come here and take this.”

Joshua got up, took the bowl, and returned to the table.

“Blow on it, first, boy, that’s hot,” she said.

He blew on a spoonful, and then tasted it. “It’s delicious, Mom.”

Mom nodded, and shuffled to the garage door. She opened it and yelled at his father: “Earl, get from up under that car and come in here and eat!”

Shaking his head, Joshua swallowed another spoonful of soup. Mom usually had to yell at his father three or four times before his father gave up the joys of automobiles for the company of his family. Theirs was an odd marriage, seemingly devoid of tenderness, but his parents had been together for thirty-five years, a milestone that few members of Joshua’s generation would ever reach.

Although if he was trapped in a marriage like the ones his parents had—who would want to stay?

Mom poured a glass of sweet tea and plopped it on the table. “Drink that.”

He took a sip. “Wow, that’s really sweet.”

“That’s how I always make it, boy. You done forgot? What that heifer been givin’ you to drink—wine?”

Joshua never would admit to his mother that she was right. Rachel enjoyed wine, and she had gotten him hooked on it, too. If he disclosed to his mom that they often drank wine with dinner, she would have branded him an alcoholic and said she was going to pray for him.

Mom sat next to him, the chair squeaking under her weight. She smiled, showing new dentures. “Chaquita came by here yesterday.”

Joshua almost choked on a dumpling. “She did? Why?”

“ ‘Cause she respects me. Unlike your wife.”

Chaquita was his ex-girlfriend. She and Joshua had dated for two boisterous years before she dumped him, declaring him too dull and soft for her tastes.

Puzzlingly, Chaquita and his mother stayed in touch. They sometimes went shopping together or out for lunch, like mother and daughter.

“She asked after you,” Mom said. “That girl still loves you, you know.”

“She broke up with me, Mom. Anyway, I’m married now. Whatever feelings she thinks she has for me, she needs to let them go. I’m going to be with Rachel, for the rest of my life, hopefully.”

“Hopefully?” The gleam in his mother’s eyes bordered on malicious. “You sound kinda doubtful to me. Sound like the bloom is off the rose. What kinda problems you havin’ with that heifer?”

“No problems.” He lowered his gaze to the bowl, shoved another spoonful of soup in his mouth.

“Hmph. What’s done in the dark will come to light,” Mom said, with obvious pleasure.

“Excuse me?”

“You know what I mean! I’m talkin’ ‘bout dirt, boy. Skeletons in the closet. Deep, dark sinful secrets. All that mess—it’s gonna come out.”

“Well, everyone has secrets, Mom. You never . . . you never know everything about anyone.”

“I know everythang ‘bout your daddy!” She pointed to the garage, shaking her long finger. “You know everythang ‘bout your wife?”

Joshua glanced at his watch, cleared his throat. “Mom, I’ve gotta go. I’ve got an appointment at two.”

“What? You just got here!”

“I know, and I’m sorry. I’ll be back soon, promise.”

His mother followed him to the door, muttering.

“Remember what I said, boy. What’s done in the dark . . .”

“Will come to light, I know,” he said.

He gave his mother a kiss, and went to his truck. As he pulled away, she yelled at his father again to come inside and eat. A normal day in the Moore household.

But his mother’s words echoed in his thoughts. What’s done in the dark . . . .

Driving to the doctor’s office, he realized why he had visited his mother. He’d wanted to talk to someone whose doubts about Rachel’s honesty exceeded his own. He’d wanted to talk to someone who would fan the flames of his discontent, someone who would whip his emotions into an uncontainable storm.

Because he’d decided that he was going to confront Rachel, and demand the truth.