Read Family Ties for Free Online

cleaning up for dinner. Crystal promised to help Brianna set it up after they ate.
     
    “Are you staying for dinner?”
     
    “No, I have to get up early tomorrow. I’m gonna hop my butt back on this train and go home.”
     
    “I hear ya. So, how was she?  Did she talk to you?”
     
    I took a seat on the couch and peered towards Brianna’s bedroom before responding. “Yes, it took some coaxing, but she finally opened up.”
     
    Crystal sat across from me on the loveseat.  “Well, what’s going on?”
     
    I took a deep breath.  “Brianna has gotten it into her head that you’re dating someone and keeping it a secret.” 
     
    Crystal blinked twice, took a deep breath of her own, and leaned back, pressing her back against the chair.  “What makes her think that?”
     
    I eyed Crystal skeptically and wondered if I should continue.  Although my relationship with my mother was a contradiction, I didn’t think mothers and daughters should have secrets from one another.  I felt bad, like I was about to divulge Brianna’s confidences. Then again, I reasoned that I was grown and Brianna wasn’t. It was best that she and her mother got everything out in the open. Never mind what my mother thought of grown folks business , Brianna was dealing with some heavy feelings and Crystal needed to reassure her.  She couldn’t do that if she didn’t have the full story.
     
    “She says that you’re acting differently, that your voice changes when you’re on the phone during what she perceives are secret conversations, and she feels like you’ve recently had less and less time for her.”
     
    At that last part, Crystal squeezed her eyes shut.  I knew the news hurt and I didn’t like being the one to say it. There was one last thing I didn’t want to say, but Crystal had always been a private person and I felt like admitting that I knew about the man being in the apartment was borderline dipping in her business. I did it anyway.
     
    “She also says that once she woke up in the middle of the night to find you with some man.”
     
    Alarmed, Crystal sprang forward.  “Did she see him?”
     
    All acts of decorum and minding my business flew out of the window.  “Girl!  Who is he?”
     
    “Chloe, I really don’t want to get into this. I didn’t mean for Brianna to get suspicious. I needed more time to tell her, or maybe no time at all since I hadn’t even made up my mind what I’m gonna do yet.”
     
    “What are you talking about?  You’re not making any sense. Tell her what? Who is he?”
     
    Crystal cast a guilty glance at the coffee table and I noticed two near-empty wine glasses. The John Legend song had faded into a track by Luther Vandross. I took in the low lighting of the room and my mind quickly did some basic booty-call calculations. I suddenly recalled the man I’d seen leaving the building not a few minutes before and I knew where I had seen him before. 
     
    “That was Jermaine!”
     
    Crystal looked at me wide-eyed.  “You saw him? I was hoping you’d missed each other when you didn’t mention it right away.”
     
    “Oh, I saw him alright. I didn’t recognize him though. He looks older, different.  Crystal, where did he come from?  How did you find him?”
     
    She looked over her shoulder and, from the sound of things, Brianna had ignored her mother’s instructions of setting up her gift after dinner and was busy learning all there was to know about Jupiter. For once Crystal looked as if she didn’t mind the disobedience. It made it easier for her to explain how it came to be that she was sipping wine with the man who had left her pregnant and alone all those many years ago.
     
    “I didn’t find him.  He found me.”  Crystal sighed and sat forward with her hands folded between her open legs. With her head bent, she continued. “Remember I told you a few weeks ago that someone had been calling and hanging up?”
     
    I just nodded.
     
    “Well, after a few days