Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale by Pugh Shewanda

Author:Pugh, Shewanda [Pugh, Shewanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Delphine Publications
Published: 2014-01-03T17:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Five

Rioting set off the morning of Christmas Eve. Shouts and the thundering of a thousand feet rocked Deena’s bedroom. She had the skull howling pain of a wine hangover, Tak had an attitude, and now this. Ingrates traipsing like a buffalo herd. No question as to who it was.

Deena jammed her feet into slippers and marched out the door.

Tariq’s children were making a racket again. Three of them rushed up and down the hall, hooting in bare-faced glee while banging every door they encountered. They dog piled one on top of the other with Tony at the bottom, toppled into the wall and repeated.

Deena stalked to the end of the hall, where they jammed like 5 o’clock traffic.

“This is ridiculous,” she said. “And I’ve had enough. Enough of—”

“They’re letting dummies into Harvard!” Remy hooted. “Loons into Yale!”

“Hooray one time for Tony!” Lloyd cried. “Hooray two times for a fool!”

Deena blinked. “What?”

Tony stood with considerable effort, shoving older, bigger cousins off his body.

“They mean me,” he said. “I got in. Early decision at that.”

“You got in where? Harvard?”

“And Yale,” Remy said.

“Julliard and Berklee, too,” Lloyd supplied.

Deena stood up straighter. Frowning.

“But how do you know?”

“Pardon me, Mrs. Tanaka, but is it possible—”

Deena whirled to see a tall, slim woman with liver lips and a thin smile. She wore the black and whites of a housekeeper.

“Whatever it is will have to wait,” Deena said.

“But miss—”

Deena turned back to her son.

“How do you know your admission status? I mean, you’re here.”

“That idiot’s been carrying the letters around for days,” Lloyd said, just as the maid departed with a surly look in their direction. “He’s been too afraid to open them.”

Deena shrieked and her head paid the price. Still, she shrieked some more. For Tak, for Mia, she even shrieked for Noah. Then she swept Tony up. He was his father’s height and well over Deena, but she choked him to her bosom just the same.

“Mom, don’t—don’t cry,” he said and twisted in her arms. Even that word, ‘mom,’ made the tears fall freer.

Meanwhile, he’d turned the color of rich rhubarb and stayed like that till Tak extricated him.

“Harvard,” she said. “Yale, Berklee, Julliard.”

Tak let out a low, impressed whistle.

“Top shelf,” he said and messed Tony’s hair.

They exchanged a quiet, intimate sort of smile, before Tak snatched him in, too.

Deena felt it then: the thing always between the two; the thing that had her as a perpetual third wheel, sitting in on a conversation among friends in a language she didn’t know. Words passed between them in their embrace, words that no one else heard, and once apart, Deena saw both their eyes glistening.

She headed back for their bedroom alone.

She loved that they loved each other so. She loved that they were indivisibly close. Whenever contrariness about it came to her, she reminded herself of these facts and repeated as often as necessary.

Deena dropped down at the stool of her vanity and gave herself a good hard look. Her son—and that’s who he was now—was 18 years old and on his way to college.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.