Sweet Violet and a Time for Love Page 19

  But then a walk-in came in, her eyes dripping tears as she screamed uncontrollably. What was I supposed to do?

  I’ll be there as soon as I can, I texted. He didn’t text back.

  Over two hours later I entered the pink and purple–painted diner that had velvet-covered benches for seats. A couple of patrons sat chatting in the booths and a single waitress joined in gossip as she floated from table to table.

  No Leon.

  “Cancel my appointments for the afternoon,” I told Darci over the phone. There were only two clients left, old customers who had a history of being no-shows anyway.

  I drove downtown to his bakery and saw through the window that he was serving platters of his finest pastries and cakes. A little larger crowd than usual filled the space as what appeared to be a busload of Inner Harbor tourists had discovered his bakery, hooked in by the tray of samples being passed out at the front door.

  He couldn’t leave work now, I knew.

  And I understood. I appreciated what he did, how he had to be present to run his business. Why couldn’t he give me the same courtesy without trying to make me feel guilty? I could not stop the question from forming in my head. I could not stop the sudden irritation that jolted through my system.

  I took my business seriously and he needed to respect that. There were no easy decisions, even when those decisions had to be made on my birthday.

  With an unexpected free afternoon and nobody to share it with, I decided to park my car near a street vendor not far from the courthouse. Hot dog and soda in hand, that’s how I ended up in the War Memorial Plaza.

  That’s how I ended up running into Sweet Violet.

  It would be the first of our several run-ins in the wide grassy plaza that sat between Baltimore City Hall and the War Memorial building.

  “That ain’t much of a lunch right there.”

  I recognized the voice, the smell, even before I turned around. “It’s better than no lunch at all,” I mumbled.

  Leaning against the gray half wall that bordered the plaza, I looked down at the greasy hot dog I balanced in my hands. Could have had a sit-down meal with my husband. I swallowed down the piercing thought with a swig of soda and looked up at the elderly woman who now stood in front of me. Today she had on a familiar outfit: the pink running suit I’d given her to change into the night I drove her from the hospital to the shelter.

  “Where are you staying these days?” I asked, taking a bite out of the hot dog, taking a chance with a question.

  I had nothing better to do.

  The woman didn’t answer, just stared at me with an unreadable expression on her face.

  “Are you hungry? Have you eaten today? I can get you something if you like,” I tried.

  Still silent.

  “Is your name Frankie Jean or is it Sweet Violet?”

  A dark glimmer washed over her eyes.

  “Well?” I asked, wiping some mustard from my lips with a tip of a napkin. That one bite was enough to make me feel nauseous. I quickly took another sip of soda with the hopes that it would calm my churning stomach down. Or maybe it was the smell that was making me feel nauseated. The woman smelled worse than spoiled pig’s feet on a hot summer day.

  She mumbled something I could not make out and turned away.

  “Wait,” I called after her, tossing the half-eaten hot dog in a nearby receptacle. “I’m just asking your name, but if that upsets you, no worries. Let me get you lunch.”

  The woman kept mumbling. Her step quickened as she looked over her shoulder at me. I decided not to follow her, went back to my spot on the wall. The woman stopped walking, her back still to me.

  Then she turned around and scurried back in front of me. “Why you asking me so many questions? Are you a cop or something?”

  You a cop? The question jumped out at me, reminding me of the young boy child with old eyes who’d asked me the same thing the morning Ms. Marta was found shot dead.

  “I’m a social worker. Remember we met at Metro Community? I gave you the outfit you’re wearing now and dropped you off in front of A New Beginning House shelter.”

  The woman looked down at her pink outfit, looked back up at me. “I remember you.” She smiled. “Forgive my manners. Sometimes I forget things. Life ain’t nothing but constant details to remember.” She stared off into the sky, shut her eyes, smiled, and started humming. Then frowned.

  “What time is it, sugar?”

  I checked my phone. “Four-nineteen.”

  “Less than an hour,” she mumbled.

  “What’s less than an hour?”

  “What time is it, sugar?” she asked again.

  Alzheimer’s? Dementia? Liquor? Drugs? Some kind of game? I wanted to make sense of this woman. Maybe that’s why I could not just let this go.

  “Do you need a watch? I found your pocket watch, remember? In your purse?”

  Her eyes narrowed and I had the sudden urge to take a step backward, but I was already leaning against the wall. Nowhere to go.

  “What did you do?” she hissed.

  “What did I do? You mean with your purse or the watch?” I took a step to the left, as another dark wave rolled through her eyes. Mental illness? There were so many possibilities with this one. “I tried to give it back to you on New Year’s Day, remember? You said you didn’t want it, so I left it by that rose you planted, by that bottle of Old Grand-Dad you left in the dirt.”

  She smiled and began humming again. I watched as she closed her eyes and raised her arms as if she was going to start dancing.

  “You like music. Did you used to be a singer? A performer?”

  She ignored my question as she stepped from side to side, did an exaggerated plié. “Let me give you a tip for life, sugar.” Her movement and tone changed instantly as she stood still and glared at me. “Don’t ever try to mix business with pleasure. People say that phrase but don’t understand what it means.”

  She began breathing hard, as if smoke would come out of her nostrils, steam out of her ears. I took another small step to the left.

  “It won’t work. It will leave you. It will just leave you.” She shook her head, looked saddened. “There’s a time for everything. That’s what people don’t understand. I learned that the hard way. There’s time; and then it’s gone. Poof.” She clapped her hands and then wiggled her fingers.

  I tried to understand her words, tried to find meaning in her statements; but I didn’t know what was flashing through her head. I didn’t know if she knew what was flashing through her head. She wasn’t finished.

  “It was a gift.” The woman shook her head, sorrow in her voice.

  “What was a gift? Time? Business? Pleasure?” I tried to keep up.

  “That watch, stupid.” She glared at me again, and then smiled. “It wasn’t supposed to be, but it was a gift.” She lowered her voice. “A very scary gift.” She began dancing again.

  “Who? Who gave you the watch?”

  I knew there would be no answer. I watched as she continued dancing, swaying in the January sun. She swirled and spun, taking broad steps away from me. At one point, she stopped and looked up at the sky and laughed. Then she frowned again and walked away. I watched as she picked up a discarded bag of chips from the grass. She shook it, stuck her fingers in to grab some crumbs, and then went back to dancing.

  “I’ll look for you whenever I come by here,” I called after her. “I’ll get you lunch next time.” If she heard me, she gave no indication, alternating between dancing and glaring up at the sky. She settled eventually on some wall space across the grassy expanse. I noticed a large plastic bag near where she sat.

  Her earthly belongings, I assumed.

  Yes, I would come back from time to time to see if she was here, to check on her; at least until I knew that someone else was looking out for her or until she accepted whatever help or resources I could offer her.

  I was a social worker. My calling, not my comfort, dictated my actions, my being. Why did
n’t Leon get that about me? The thought bothered me again. Was I supposed to change who I was to make him happy?

  There’s a time for everything. I recalled the woman’s words. That’s all Leon had been asking of me. Time. It seemed so simple, yet had been too complicated. Why couldn’t I get this right?

  I got home on my birthday at a quarter ’til six. My heart jumped, sped up a little faster when I saw Leon’s truck sitting in one of our assigned spaces.

  “I’m home,” I shouted as I entered the foyer. He was nowhere to be seen. The balloons, the flowers, the banner from the morning, had all been cleaned up, folded, moved to one side of a kitchen counter.

  “Leon?” I raised an eyebrow when I entered our bedroom and saw him packing bowling shoes into a bag.

  “Oh you’re home.” He zipped up the duffel.

  “Yes, ready to celebrate.” My son had promised a cruise for my fortieth birthday, I remembered, but we hadn’t talked since Christmas. Random thought, wrong time. I swallowed it all down.

  “I was invited to go bowling with Mike Grant, one of my old partners. You remember him?” He looked at me, looked down at his bag. “I figured you’d be working late so I told him I’d come. I had other plans for us, but I already canceled the reservation.”

  “I’m sorry, Leon.”

  “No, don’t be.” He shrugged. “It’s your birthday. You should spend it the way you want to.”

  “I want to spend it with you. I just . . . had a lot to get done today.”

  “I know.” He nodded. “Look, it will be a bunch of guys, but I’ll see if any of the wives are coming. Maybe you can come too. We’ll hang out. Make it a date.”

  “Sounds good, Leon. Sounds good.”

  He looked away, sighed. Shrugged. “Let’s go.”

  As he stepped out of the room, I looked at myself in the mirror. I was just beginning to show, my pregnancy relegated to the prenatal vitamin routine I’d established in the morning and the extra bottle of water I washed down every night. Nothing in my life felt real, settled, or easy.

  Though I was finally going to spend time with Leon on my special day, I knew that I had messed everything up. I wanted him and wanted our marriage to work more than anything, but just couldn’t seem to get it right.

  Old habits, mindsets, fears die hard. I had to work on me, but wasn’t fully sure how. Why couldn’t I just let this man love me?

  I didn’t know how to be Mrs. Sienna St. James Sanderson, Sienna Sanderson, Sienna . . .

  I didn’t even know how to get my own name right.

  Chapter 27

  Mentally. Physically. Spiritually. Emotionally.

  Worn.

  Yvette’s small group session had been a breath of fresh air, but as I closed the door behind me, though I had walked outside, I felt as if I’d just enclosed myself into an airtight room.

  The members of their circle had all said a prayer: a single, one-sentence prayer that kept anyone from taking over, and didn’t allow anyone to feel out of place. The simplicity was comforting to me, necessary, as the rest of my life, my day, felt beyond complicated.

  It was after ten p.m. now on what had to be the longest day of my life. The beating of my son, the supposed overdose of the attorney I’d been witnessing for, and now the mistaken arrest of my husband; one of these events would have been enough to topple a strong woman over.

  And I didn’t even feel strong to begin with.

  I could hear my grandmother singing in my head, her strong soprano voice belting “Maybe God Is Trying to Tell You Something.” I believed it, felt it, knew it, that He was.

  But what was He telling me?

  About Sweet Violet? Or about myself? Maybe both.

  Yvette had given me her car keys after I told her I’d caught the bus to her home. No questions asked, no explanations given. The last time she’d let me hold her car it had broken down in a rural area of Pennsylvania and become part of a crime scene. Leon’s truck was back at the bakery. I guessed she understood that I didn’t want to drive it around until I was sure we weren’t being followed, or something like that. I could hear my own paranoia.

  Maybe Leon had a point. Maybe it was time that I stopped chasing my gut feelings all over the place. The only destinations my instincts seemed to bring me to were ones that were lonely and danger-filled. Terrible places to learn lessons.

  I’m tired of repeating these tests, Lord. I’m going to get this lesson learned once and for all. I will stop going all over the place with my feelings and my caseload.

  I had no idea where Roman was. I didn’t know who picked him up, where he went; and my sense was that was what he wanted. After praying, talking, and fellowshipping with the crowd at Yvette’s house, I’d been encouraged to get rest. “We have your back on this one,” Yvette had told me as she walked me to her front door. “I’ll call Skee-Gee’s lawyer and see if he can help with anything.”

  “But before you do that, let me wait to hear back from some people I know at central booking.” Mike promised to follow up with his contacts at the department, a small comfort that also disturbed me as he winked again.

  Was I supposed to trust this man?

  I just wanted my husband back with me. I didn’t know what else to do, what could be done.

  I went back to the hotel across from the courthouse: my home away from home for the past few weeks leading up to the trial. I’d been worried about the media intruding into my life, but obviously the threat to my person was bigger than just the flash of a camera or an intrusive microphone.

  I could be dead right now.

  The thought sobered me as I stuck the keycard in the hotel room door. Everything in me wanted to collapse. I wanted nothing more than my bed, my husband’s arms, and my son’s voice telling me that everything really was okay.

  I entered the suite, flicked on the lights, and jumped.

  “It’s okay, Sienna.”

  Leon.

  Sitting on a couch that faced the door and dressed in a polo shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes, he looked like he was about to go on vacation and not like a man just wrongly arrested for a crime he hadn’t committed

  “What? How?”

  “It’s okay, babe.” He put his finger to his lips to quiet me. “I was able to finally talk and explain everything to the authorities, but we need to turn the lights back out. We can’t afford to let anyone know we are here.”

  With the exception of the lamp I’d turned on, no other lights were on in the hotel suite. I noticed that even the appliances had been unplugged.

  “What’s going on? Leon?” I stepped toward him, ready to drop in his lap, cry, hold him, let him hold me.

  “Not yet.” He gently pushed me away and stood to his feet. “We gotta get out of here. I would have called you, but . . . Listen, we just need to get out of here.”

  He grabbed the suitcase that sat on the sofa and another bag I had not noticed behind the couch.

  “It’s clean in here,” I noticed just before he turned the lamp back off. The counters on the kitchenette had been wiped down, cleared off. The piles of paper, magazines, and books that had been scattered throughout the living area were gone. I had a feeling that the bathroom counters where I’d put all my toiletries and sundries were all cleared and wiped down as well. But I only saw the two bags Leon reached for. Where are our things?

  The darkness from the snapped out lamp was only temporary. Leon turned on a penlight and motioned toward an internal door that connected to the suite next to ours.

  “What’s going on, Leon? You’re scaring me.” I followed him to the door and we entered the next suite, also in darkness. “Leon, talk to me.”

  “We just have to get out of here. I’ll explain in a moment, but we need to leave quietly.” He shut the connecting door behind us, pulling it until its lock clicked. As he led me through the next suite, I noted that he smelled of soap and aftershave.

  “You’ve showered. Where are we going, Leon? Where are our things?”

 
; He shook his head to quiet me again and then he tried another connecting suite door. “Okay, we’re going to leave out of this one.” We stepped into a hallway, entered a stairwell, and went up a few levels. After emerging from the stairwell, Leon used a keycard to enter another room, this one an expansive penthouse suite that had several bedrooms and living areas. The floor-to-ceiling windows of the corner suite provided enough light from the nighttime cityscape that Leon was able to turn off the penlight. Or, maybe, he was afraid of someone seeing the light from outside the window. What was going on? I felt my heartbeat quicken as Leon led us to a private elevator in the rear of the penthouse.

  “Did someone say we need to leave from here?”

  Leon remained quiet as the soft whir of the elevator took us downward.

  “Leon?”

  “Nobody told us to go, but I’m not waiting either. You saw what happened today.”

  “Sw . . . Sweet Violet?” I whispered her name.

  “No, Sienna.” He frowned at me as the elevator continued its eleven-story plunge. “Please stop thinking that homeless woman is controlling your life and the people in it.”

  “Leon, the timing of it.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Leon, what is going on?” I could feel myself starting to hyperventilate as the elevator neared the ground floor. “You haven’t told me where we are going or why. Please, Leon.”

  “Listen.” My husband pulled me close to him. Spearmint was on his breath. He’d been chewing gum. He only chewed gum when he was nervous. I felt more alarmed. “Sienna, listen.” He held my shoulders, shook me back to attention. “You are going to have to trust me right now.”

  “We’re in danger, aren’t we?”

  He didn’t answer and instead stared at the elevator buttons.

  “What do you know, Leon?”

  He still didn’t answer.

  “If it’s not Sweet Violet, than what is it? What is going on? They let you go and told us to get away? Wait, no, you said nobody told us to go. You decided that’s what we need to do. Leon, you need to tell me something.”

  “Why isn’t our floor lit?” He still stared at the panel. He pressed G for the ground level again. It lit for a moment and then cut off once more.