Chapter 19

September 2015

            Karisma logged into Facebook and was surprised at what she found on Amaris’s memorial page. Some quack had done a tarot reading on her dead siblings….and her mother. Why the Hell hadn’t anyone told her that her mother died 6 years ago? Dorinda hadn’t even lasted a full year after losing her two youngest children. Nobody had thought to tell her that Wissy had been found and buried as well. There was a measure of comfort in knowing all three had been reunited in death and would be together in paradise one day though.

            Despite the circumstances, I get the sense that the deaths of Amaris and Machlon were ultimately accidental. The man in shadows represents the suspect who has a sinister aura and something to hide, however the eighth of wands signifies a stunning twist will come to light after 8 years have passed. Since the family believes someone is guilty of homicide, I interpret this to mean that the suspect did not deliberately intend for Amaris and Machlon to die. The fortress and large crowd cards tells me that whatever happened occurred at home, wherever home was at the moment, and was witnessed by multiple people who did not understand the severity of the situation. I believe in 2017 or 2018 one of these witnesses will finally crack and reveal to the family what really happened from October 31-November 3, 2009.

            Karisma was reeling as her brain, exhausted from pulling a double shift at the local ER, tried to process the new information. The level of betrayal she felt threatened to overwhelm her. Ibrahim had no problem calling her to berate her for posting on Facebook things he considered private, yet hadn’t had the common decency to invite her to inform her of their kid brother’s funeral or their mother’s suicide. While it was true that he was the eldest child in the family and the de facto man of the household, nothing gave him the right to deprive her of such lifechanging information.

            Little by little she had told her fiancé of 3 years about why she could not stand to return to Louisville keeping keener details to herself. Ironically, she had met Jarrod during a vacation to Daytona Beach, Florida she treated herself to upon graduating from nursing school with her BSN. He always listened sympathetically although with hazel eyes averted when he came up to Indianapolis to see her. The one thing she still had not told him about was the 10-year-old daughter she had given birth to at age 16 by rape. As much as she resented him at the moment, Karisma also owed her big brother a huge debt for his selflessness in disrupting the life he’d built for himself in Houston to return to Louisville to take care of Hayvn. This was what prevented her from dialing up Ibrahim right then to give him a furious dressing down. Later when she felt calmer and in control, she’d call him. Until then she would glean whatever she could from the page since there was no point in trying to stifle her burning curiosity.

            Thank God, she was in the comfort of her own home when she found out. The memory of how she’d had to stumble into a conference room at the hospital, on the verge of passing out, the last time Ibrahim called her more than 5 years earlier, was as fresh as ever. At work, she had had to settle for two Nos energy drinks to pep her up again to greet patients. An array of adult beverages was available to stabilize her nerves when she was at home and she fixed up her favorite, a long island ice tea, before settling down to conduct her detective work. Long Island Iced Teas, made with top shelf liquor an authentic southern sweet tea, had been one of Dorinda’s favorite drinks too.

            For religious reasons, I don’t get involved with spiritualistic practices such as tarot card reading, however could you please explain to me how a kid being abandoned at a hospital in the middle of bumfuck with a fatal head injury the day before his 17^th birthday could be anything except murder?! And how natural it is for a 15-year-old to stop breathing with enough Fentanyl in her system to kill a horse and lay lifeless on the dirty ground because nobody calls 911 for at least 90 minutes? Please talk to the demons again and ask them what crack they’re smoking before you post nonsense for the world to see!

            “Damn, brut.” Karisma smiled feeling her anger cool. “You ripped them a new a*****e.”

            “How far is Ocala from Tampa?”

            Karisma returned home from work a few days later to find a shirtless, tattooed, somewhat muscular albeit not very tall form in her bed. Jarrod had a key to her apartment and was free to come and go at will, provided he called her ahead of time to say he was coming into town so she did not come home to strange shoes by the door and think someone had broken in. She didn’t fuss about his failure to call ahead this time, because she didn’t want to spoil her chances of getting information from a longtime Floridian to put all that Ibrahim had told her the previous evening into proper perspective.

            “About 90 or 100 miles.” Jarrod grumbled turning over and opening one eye. “Out in the sticks if you’re use to the city. That’s where most of my family lives I thought I told you.”

            Before Karisma could tell him that he hadn’t told her exactly where his family lived, she heard an interesting sound from the living room. Since she had not grown up with pets on account of her little sister’s asthma and allergies, she didn’t have any interest in owning any now. Like her mother, she had come to believe animals didn’t belong in the house. No-No’s asthma had been so severe from the time she was 3 weeks old that their mother gladly purchased a Nebulizer and kept a stock of saline and therapeutic steroids in the refrigerator. She could almost see the little girl now, laid on the couch in front of the TV, with the machine’s mask secured on her face inhaling the white mist.

            “Who the hell is this?” Karisma snatched the blanket off of the small sleeping form on her sofa.

            “Come back in the bedroom and quit hollering and I’ll tell you!” Jarrod called out.

            Throwing the blanket back on the towheaded child, who was staring at her with thumb in mouth and big inquisitive hazel eyes, she stalked back to her room. She had the answer to her pointless question already. What she wanted to know was what the child was doing here in her home instead of in Florida with its’ mother.

            “I’ve been meaning to ask you.” Jarrod said sitting up in bed. “Would you mind if I bring Sydney to get to know you and get used to seeing us together and live with us when we get married?”

            “Kindly tell me who in their right mind is going to think me, a dark skinned blatino chick, is that little blond haired white girl’s mama?” Karisma gritted her teeth. “And where the hell is her sorry excuse for a mammy at?” Here she was trying to think of a way to tell him about her own daughter and he was talking about playing happy home with his own brat as if was the most natural thing.

            “Locked up.”

            “For?” She demanded impatiently.

            “Fucked around and got busted with her boyfriend for drugs.”

            Out of the corner of her eye she saw the little girl in question wandering towards the sound of their voices. Maternal instincts, honed by years of caring for and helping to raise her younger siblings, kicked in. She stepped into the hall and expertly slung her soon-to-be stepdaughter on her ample hip asking in a pleasant tone, “I’m Kari, your daddy’s girlfriend. What’s your name, sweetie?” Though she wasn’t happy with her man, there was no sense in mistreating an innocent child.

            “Sidi!” The toddler chirped.

            “And how old are you?”

            “Thwee and ah haf!” Sydney held up three slobbery fingers. Her other hand reached to explore Karisma’s thicket of raven curls gathered into a bushy bun. She certainly knew how to endear herself to people.

            “I’ll take that as a yes.” Jarrod said tentatively.

            “My own child doesn’t live here, but you’re obviously trying to tell me that it’s a package deal and we’ve already set a date, so……” Her voice sounded resigned though in reality Karisma was relieved to have the perfect opportunity to reveal her daughter’s existence.

            Later she would snag a recent picture from Ibrahim’s Facebook profile and tell Jarrod what she had never told any else, not even her mother who’d been quite close to.

            After nearly 11 years, her family had yet to learn how exactly Hayvn Rosemarie had come to be.

            How could she have told them that her daughter’s father slept in the bedroom across the hall and she was not only mama to her but auntie as well?

            She knew better than anyone what a monster Isaac truly was….

Reviews

[SweetNutmeg]

Oh my. That's an awful revelation. Goodness.

This chapter was clean and well written, although I was confused about who wrote the rebuttal to the Tarot reading.