The Salt in Our Blood by Ava Morgyn

Author:Ava Morgyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

XVIII.

WE SIT IN THE CAR OUTSIDE MY BUILDING. I CAN SEE the lights glowing through the courtyard out my window. Their golden hue highlights the tree branches and casts jungle shadows across the brick. I can see the orange eye of Butcher’s cigarette. I can’t decide if his near-constant presence in the courtyard is comforting or unnerving, but I think my mom is right. He is always watching.

I turn away from the window to face Daniel. I’m not ready to get out of the car. “Your grandmother was different than I pictured her.”

Daniel smiles and nods. “You mean because she’s light skinned?”

“And short,” I add. “And ginger.”

“Well, what she lacks in size she makes up for in personality,” he tells me. “Mawmaw has mixed heritage. Her mother descended from the Louisiana Redbones—a group of mixed race settlers who came here from the Carolinas. The details of their ethnicity are still considered a mystery. And her father was Creole—West African and French. My grandfather was Creole too, but Haitian on that side. And my father is black.”

“Your family is like a history lesson.” I grin at him.

He laughs. “It’s not uncommon around here. New Orleans was such a prominent port for so long, pretty much everybody who hails from Louisiana has a family tree with a variety of branches.”

“Do you see your dad?” I ask him.

He shrugs. “Sure. Always for the important things—birthdays, Christmas, school events. And I spend weekends with him several times a year.”

“Do you miss him?”

“Of course,” he says without hesitation. “But he lives in Shreveport, and he and my mom still don’t always get along. I love ’em both, but they don’t know how not to give each other a hard time.”

“What was it like? Before he left?” I ask.

Daniel grins. “Before the fighting, when I was real young, I thought my dad was a badass. He used to box, not professionally or anything, but I thought he was the heavyweight champion of the world. He would carry me around on his shoulder, like a parrot. It felt like nothing could touch me so long as he was there.”

“What changed?”

“I think he tried for a lot of years. But my mom, she can be tough. Not mean, but she doesn’t take crap from anyone. He loved that about her, but he also railed against the idea of this little five-foot woman checking his ego all the time. The fighting became constant. It was better and worse when he finally left.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell him. I know that conundrum firsthand, when it is better and worse after they leave.

He looks at me for a long moment and then asks, “How about you? Do you see your dad?”

“No,” I admit. “Never.”

“Never? Not even once?”

I shake my head. “He’s not even listed on my birth certificate. I’m not sure my mom actually knows who it is.”

Daniel blows out a long breath. “Do you ever think about finding him?”

I scrunch up my nose. “Not really. I mean, I guess I’m supposed

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