Page 48 of Honey Sugar
The house was quiet and dark but my mind still played the funeral over and over on a loop. I hated it. I knew I needed the memory for closure but if it weren’t for that, I’d delete it from my brain. It hurt too much to think about seeing Mama and Aunt Liv in caskets. Things should have never turned out that way.
I checked with the detectives in New Orleans every chance I got to see if they had a new lead on who killed my mother. Every day it was the same response.
They were working on it.
They’d get back to me.
Bullshit.
Seeing Mario show up after the funeral made me uneasy. I didn’t like the shit he pulled and he needed to know that. Still, knocking him out hours after my mother had been buried wasn’t the right time. I didn’t trust him though. I knew that much.
When I went to New Orleans in the morning I was going to talk to some people and figure some shit out because there was a lot that didn’t add up.
“It’s eerily quiet in here,” Ivy said as she moved past me.
“Yeah, it is,” I agreed. She walked into the parlor and my mind flashed back to the last time I saw Mama alive. She was so happy even though I saw the concern on her face for her little sister. I rubbed my face and let out a sigh.
“You’re thinking about Aunt Sarah, aren’t you?” Ivy asked quietly.
“Yeah. I can’t help it. This was the last place I saw her. I don’t think my chest will ever feel right again. Every time I breathe, from now until I die, will hurt a little bit.”
“Yeah…I feel the same way.” I hated that the thing we had the most in common was losing our parents days apart. Beautiful tragedies.
Ivy gathered all the sympathy cards and walked over to me, draping her arms around my neck. “Come on, let’s get you out of here.” She kissed me quickly and walked out of the room. I followed her because how could I not?
Being in the parlor was hard for me but being in Aunt Liv’s office was hard for Ivy. When she opened the door, she stiffened visibly. I rubbed her shoulders and gave her the same support she gave me. It was unwavering and bursting at the seams with love. When she started rubbing her ear fervently, I pressed my lips against the shell of her ear and said, “It’s going to be okay, baby girl. We’re walking in here together.” I linked our fingers together and kissed her temple. She nodded earnestly and took one step after another until she sat behind Aunt Liv’s desk.
A small stack of folders sat in front of her. She looked at them the day after we found Aunt Liv but neither of us got too deep into them. We only looked enough to find bank information.
Ivy’s fingers moved slowly through the papers as her eyes scanned the lines of typed text before her. Her lips moved quickly while her brows furrowed together.
“Mama laid all this out for me,” she said. Her words were surprisingly steady. She moved to the drawer and pulled out sticky notes so she could write down important things. Her hands moved like lightning. She jotted down numbers over and over until she was scratching her head.
“This doesn’t make sense,” she said, putting the pencil down.
“What’s up?” I moved beside her and looked over her shoulder.
“We should have way more money in the business account, Titan.” She began flipping through the folders beneath the top one but there were just more accounting papers. It wasn’t until she got to the last folder that everything made sense. It was a folder of Aunt Liv’s notes.
“Here we go,” she sighed. “I’m going to be here all night trying to untangle this shit.”
“All night?” I said, trailing two fingers along her neck. She fought off the smile trying to stretch across her face.
“All night.”
“I’m gonna make up a batch of edibles so I have a reason to go to the dispensary in the morning. I need some money until this crop of plants matures.
“You’re gonna be in the kitchen?” She asked curiously.
“All night,” I smirked. “You know where to find me if you need me.” She twisted back and forth in the office chair and I knew she was thinking about how good I felt inside of her earlier. I was thinking the same thing.
Once I was in the kitchen, it was hard to get any work done because I kept thinking about my mother. Since she got killed, my mind had been like a battlefield. Shrapnel was wedged deep into desolate ground. Blood from my broken heart was smeared everywhere and grief hung thick in the air like smoke. It was terrifying and most times I just looked for an escape.
I still wondered why the fuck anyone would want to shoot her. Our neighborhood wasn’t the best but it wasn’t a violent one. We all knew each other and everyone knew who the fuck my mother was and that she wasn’t to be messed with.
I measured out cannabis flour, milk and butter to use in my cookies then I turned on the big black stand mixer on the counter to stir everything together. I stared into the stainless steel bowl while the paddle moved around the bowl. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop wondering what Mama’s last moments were like.
Whoever shot her was a coward and didn’t want their face seen. That meant there was a possibility that she knew the person. Who the hell knew her and hated her enough to kill her?
