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refused to leave his wife. On the other hand, D’Andra didn’t know anything about her father aside from the few photos of a medium-height, golden-brown man holding her when she was a baby, and a name, Orlando Dobbs. Her mother would shut down every time she inquired about him and after a while, she stopped asking. Especially after eavesdropping on a conversation she wished she’d never heard.
    “If I’d met you first, you would have been the father of both my girls. Cassandra is the pretty one, looks more like you every day.”
    Sam must have said something because her mother was quiet a moment.
    And then: “Orlando? I don’t know where he is. He can be dead for all I care.”
    D’Andra’s hopes of ever meeting her father, at least with her mother’s help, faded to black.
    “Humph. I don’t care how long it’s been, she’s still a bitch.”
    D’Andra’s mouth fell open. Even at nine, D’Andra knew that little bitch was not a term of endearment. She ran to her room and hid in the closet crying.
    That’s where her mother found her hours later, asleep. “D’Andra! D’Andra, wake up! What in the hell are you doing sleeping in the closet?”
    For a moment, D’Andra forgot what had brought her to her favorite hiding place. “I-I-I don’t know.” She chewed nervously on her lower lip.
    “And stop gnawing on your lip. You look like your crazy ass da—just don’t do that.”
    Her comment brought the memories back; her father, how her mother felt about him in contrast with Cassandra’s father, and in turn her, the reason she’d hid in the closet. Had she thought to ask, she would have learned that the bitch Mary referred to was her true love’s wife.
    As soon as her mother left the room, D’Andra raced and grabbed the picture on the nightstand. It was one of a handful she had of her father and her. In this one he was holding her; she was about two years old. She looked to find the part of her that looked like him, the part her mother didn’t like. Aside from them both being big, she didn’t see much. Her mother was big too, so was that even a trait that Orlando Dobbs had passed on to her? D’Andra didn’t know, and even now, all these years later, she still wanted to find out.
    By the time D’Andra cooked dinner, cleaned the kitchen and put her nieces and nephew to bed she was exhausted. She pulled out the sofa bed, her new sleeping quarters since Cassandra and family moved in and, at her mother’s suggestion, claimed D’Andra’s bedroom for their temporary stay. The thought of taking in a movie or shopping at the mall had long been forgotten, and even an apartment search on the Internet was too much additional work for the night. The special way Night had made her feel and the satisfaction that had come from working out was a distant memory as well. And though her mother knew she’d joined a gym and scheduled her first workout today, not one question had been asked concerning it. Without Elaine’s encouragement or Night’s support, D’Andra had lost the battle to resist her own good cooking, and before she knew it had finished off two large pork chops, a mound of potatoes and two helpings of greens. At least she’d passed on the gravy and hoped that counted for something.
    I’ll just go to the gym an extra day , she thought as she tried to find a comfortable position on the lumpy, pullout mattress. She was trying not to beat herself up as the book Elaine had given her on relationships encouraged.
    “You’ve got to love yourself before you can love anybody else, or before anybody can really love you. Remember that,” Elaine had reminded D’Andra just last week.
    D’Andra was willing to make what would undoubtedly be a long journey to self-love. She knew it wasn’t a trip that one made overnight, and that sometimes it was an entire life’s journey with forks in the road, or as this evening had so aptly illustrated, a fork in hand…one full of greens and potatoes and good