Janet Lee Nye - The Littlest Boss

“Is he okay?” he whispered.

Sadie didn’t answer, but gave a shrug while shaking her head, just barely. DeShawn turned his attention back to the chaplain, who was giving the standard funeral oratory. At the end, Josh stood and approached the coffin. He set a bouquet of red roses on the gleaming wood.

“Be at peace, Momma,” he said, his voice wavering. He patted the coffin. “You’re safe now.” He stepped back.

Mickie and Sadie simultaneously began crying. DeShawn felt his own throat close up tight. He wanted to put his arm around Sadie, but Wyatt already had her. He clasped his hands together on his lap and looked down at the ground.

“It’s okay.”

He looked back up at the sound of Josh’s words. Josh sat back in his chair and pulled Mickie into his arms. “It’s okay,” Josh repeated.

DeShawn reached out and put a hand on Josh’s shoulder. As did Sadie. For a moment, he felt the strength and fierce love that joined them. Sadie. Josh. They’d been his family for so long. And now look at them. Starting their own families. He looked back down. Thought about the phone call from his mother. He shook his head. There’s nothing to salvage from my family.

Josh and Kim had requested to be alone as the coffin was lowered into the ground. DeShawn leaned against his car, watching from a distance. Most the guests had left. Mickie, Sadie, Wyatt, Lena and Kim’s parents remained. They didn’t speak. He went to Mickie and pulled her into a hug.

“You’re looking mighty cold, my Mickie.”

She wrapped her arms around him and pressed a cheek to his chest. “I’m from Minnesota. This is shorts and flip-flop weather. I’m glad you were able to be here.”

“It’s crazy. Is Josh okay? I can’t wrap my mind around this.”

“I think so. She was buried next to her murderer. You know? I can’t even... The anger. He was using it, I guess. It kept the grief down. It caught up with him, though. This morning.” She stepped back and glanced over her shoulder at the grave site. When she turned back, the troubled look on her face deepened just a bit.

“What?” he said.

“I asked Tiana about the project.”

“Great! What’d she say?”

“No.”

DeShawn was taken aback for a moment. Despite all the teasing between them, he thought she’d definitely be interested in his idea. Then he noted the look in Mickie’s eyes. That I’m-waiting-for-an-explanation look. “What?”

“Are you scamming for her phone number?”

“What? No! Is that what she thought?”

Mickie glanced over her shoulder again. “What happened at the grocery store?”

Shaking his head, he lifted his hands, palms up. “Nothing. Never mind. Don’t need her.”

Mickie pushed his hands aside. “Actually, it wasn’t a hard no. She said she’d think about it.”

He tilted his head, scrunched up his chin then looked off to the right.

“Here they come,” he said.

Josh and Kim walked back to the small group. Kim went straight into her parents’ arms. Josh held his hand out to DeShawn for a high-five, but DeShawn pulled him in close and held him there instead.

“You okay, brother?” DeShawn asked.

“Yeah,” Josh said. “I am. Feels good to have it done. I feel as if I’ve... I don’t know how to say it.”

DeShawn put his hands on Josh’s shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “You freed her, Josh. She died because she was trying to save you and Kim. She’s free of him now.”

Josh nodded and looked away as he swallowed hard. “You coming to Sadie’s?”

“Yeah, man. I’ll be there.”

“Okay. We’re going to pick up Ian. See you there.”

CHAPTER FOUR

DESHAWN LOUNGED BACK in a chair around the table in the conference room of the Cleaning Crew offices. He’d spent four years of his life working here. He closed his eyes and tried to put himself back in the head of the young man he’d been when he first walked in here, all those years ago. He couldn’t do it. He didn’t fit there anymore.

What those years had been, for him, was work, hard work. He’d caught a little side-eye, at first, from those who couldn’t see a man in that role. Cleaning houses? But he figured out was that there was a world of difference between just doing the job and doing the job right. You did the job if it was a good day or a bad one. If you were sore or under the weather, you pushed that to the other side of your head and kept going. You learned to see more, to notice, to take pride in that wow in the client’s eyes. Yeah. And the friends he’d made here. The family he’d made.

He felt at home. There was no other way to say it, was there? He smiled. He liked that, a lot. At home.

Sadie came in and sat beside him. He smiled at the sight of her huge cup of coffee, steam still rising. Getting between Sadie and her coffee could drop a guy into seriously dire straits.

“I miss seeing you sitting here,” she said.

“It feels strange to be here. Like seeing your bedroom from when you were a kid. It’s perfectly the same, but somehow looks and feels completely different.”

“How are you doing, DeShawn? I know you’re going to say fine, but losing out on your Army commission was a huge blow. Are you really okay?”

“I am,” he said. He slouched back in his chair, looked up and then back at her. “I know I had a vision of myself traveling the world, building things, experiencing life. It was a hard decision to make, but I’m okay. On a different path is all.”

“You can still travel.”

“I know. Stop. Recalibrate. Make a new plan. I’m good. Actually beginning to feel a Divine hand in it. I feel like I’ve come home. Like this is where I belong.”

“Good. We’re your family. You should be with us.”

“My mother called me.”

And, hell. He hadn’t meant to say that. The words just fell out of his mouth without permission. The small part of him that wasn’t stunned into silence by the unexpected announcement was amused by Sadie’s transformation. She went from relaxed and happy to momma grizzly standing over a cub.

“And?” Just one word, but a word crackling and sparking with little pops of not-so-slight hint of am-I-going-to-have-to-kill-someone around the edges.

“And I don’t know. It was completely unexpected. I don’t even know how she got my number.”

“What did she want?”

Tipping the chair back against the wall, he laced his fingers behind his head. “To tell me she’d been clean and sober for three months. Wanted to talk to me.” He shook his head, still not wanting to believe it ever happened.

Sadie put her foot on the cross rung of the chair and sent the chair back to the floor with a jarring thud. “Told you not to do that to my chairs. Clean and sober? Three months. She’s probably doing that AA step where you’re supposed to make amends to those you’ve hurt.”

He stood and pushed the chair slowly back under the table, his fingers gripping the back. “I don’t know how I feel about that.”

Sadie stood and took his hand. “Come on. Let’s go upstairs and talk.”

It was easier here. Sitting on opposite ends of the couch in the apartment Sadie had built above the office. More like he was talking to his sister than his former boss. “If she is trying to stay sober, then I’m glad for her. That’s no way to live,” he said.

“But?”

“But do I have to go back down that road with her? What’s this amends stuff? She reminds me of all the horrible things she did and said? All the times she made Momma G cry? Dragged me out the house to hide me away with her wherever she was living until...until Momma G gave her money. Money for drugs. That’s what Momma G had to give her to get me back.”

He stood and paced around the living room. It was still right there, always just below the surface. That cool exterior was thin, and all it took was the right trigger—a word, a picture in his head, the whiff of something—to snap it and release all that poison. He’d only been hiding it from himself, pretending he was over it when really, he was just ignoring it. He rubbed at his face with shaky hands and tried to slow the pounding of his heart by taking a few deep breaths.