What Simon Didn’t Say Read online

  What Simon Didn’t Say

  Joy M. Copeland

  © 2018 Joy M. Copeland

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 099973170X

  ISBN 13: 9780999731703

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017919284

  Lunar Tower Press, Oak Hill, VA

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, or to real locales is coincidental.

  Lunar Tower Press

  Oak Hill, Virginia

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank my writers’ workshop crew for “keeping it real” with your critiques, encouragement, and fellowship. Valerie Jean, Sherryle Jackson, Ellon Walker, Christina Northern, and Earl Best—you’re all wonderful writers. Over the years I’ve learned a great deal about the craft of writing from our interactions. Writing, by its nature, is a lonely endeavor. Our Saturday workshops have made it less so. Roger Newell, you read most of this novel before you departed this earth. I speak for the group: we miss you.

  Diane Dix, thanks for your inspired title twist.

  Dennis, I’m grateful for your love, patience, and encouragement, plus your great editing support—things that kept me on track.

  And to Lee, my wonderful daughter, I so appreciate your consistent, enthusiastic support for my writing projects. With you in my corner, I’m always a winner.

  Contents

  Chapter 1 You’re a Winner

  Chapter 2 Daughters, Daddies, and Dogs

  Chapter 3 Thank You, Brothers and Sisters—God Loves You

  Chapter 4 Frances Woods

  Chapter 5 Be Careful What You Wish For

  Chapter 6 The Life and Death Test

  Chapter 7 Not Enough Love

  Chapter 8 The Choice: Spike Lee or Your Nose

  Chapter 9 I Apologize—Well, Sort Of

  Chapter 10 The Mouth of the Metro Cave

  Chapter 11 Mahali Salaam Means Safe Place

  Chapter 12 The Man in the Navy Skullcap

  Chapter 13 A Rose by Any Other Name

  Chapter 14 Equal-Opportunity Harassment

  Chapter 15 Attack of the Clones

  Chapter 16 Don’t Be Afraid to Live

  Chapter 17 You Ought to Know

  Chapter 18 Zen and Now

  Chapter 19 Dog Days

  Chapter 20 Everybody Changes

  Chapter 21 Carmen Silva

  Chapter 22 Guilty Until Proven Innocent

  Chapter 23 Is Hanky Panky a Legal Term?

  Chapter 24 Anybody Home?

  Chapter 25 Dog Eat Dog

  Chapter 26 Bad Mommy

  Chapter 27 Family Secrets

  Chapter 28 Capital Happenings

  Chapter 29 I Know How to Find You

  Chapter 30 Who Can You Trust?

  Chapter 31 On Guard

  Chapter 32 Those You Can Trust

  Chapter 33 Close Like Family

  Chapter 34 Where’s Your Candidate?

  Chapter 35 What’s Going On, Baby Girl?

  Chapter 36 Who’d Want to Burn Down Your House?

  Chapter 37 The Sisters’ Bond

  Chapter 38 Are You Gonna Go?

  Chapter 39 The Plan

  Chapter 40 Peek-a-boo

  Chapter 41 Peach Cobbler

  Chapter 42 I See the Light

  Chapter 43 Maynard Finds His Mane

  Chapter 44 Finding Help

  Chapter 45 Is Help on the Way?

  Chapter 46 The Second Cavalry

  Chapter 47 Those Things Most Precious

  Chapter 48 Near the Tunnel’s End

  Chapter 49 Everybody’s Got Questions

  Chapter 50 Do You Know Who Your Friends Are?

  Chapter 51 What’s Done Is Done

  Chapter 52 Starting Over

  Chapter 53 Cat Cow to the Rescue

  Chapter 54 Some Things You’ll Never Know

  Chapter 55 Choices

  Chapter 1

  You’re a Winner

  The walk from the Farragut North Metro Station to the Crayton Foundation’s offices on K Street should have been an easy one. Alas, the weather had conspired against Zoie Taylor on that day. She heard the rain forecast on WTOP but never heard how hard it would pour. Remnants of an offshore storm would swamp the city in the morning in a fashion usually reserved for DC’s late-afternoon thunderstorms.

  “Who knew?” she said, sighing.

  She struggled with her tiny umbrella. It proved no match for the storm’s ferocity. The umbrella, which she held low over her head, barely protected her hair and shoulders. There was no way around getting wet. The blowing rain threatened to drench her cream-colored pantsuit and to give new life to the alligator DNA in her pencil-thin heels. In a defensive move, she lowered the umbrella to shield her face from the rain’s sting. “Just a couple more blocks,” she muttered in an attempt to convince herself that her mini-ordeal would be over soon.

  At the corner of busy Sixteenth Street, Zoie scanned the street for a puddle-free place to cross. A small river had developed. It flowed efficiently, cleaning the street of garbage on its way to the nearby gutter. She spotted a place where the water looked wide but less deep. Now or never, she thought. With her head bowed under the umbrella, she extended her leg to leave the curb. Before her foot could touch the street, she was snatched backward and lifted like a rag doll, out of the path of a black Mercedes turning onto K Street. At first she was confused, but then she realized that someone had rescued her. She was secure on the sidewalk but shaken. Although the car hadn’t hit her, it managed to drench her with a giant splash.

  “Are you okay, miss?” The voice asking was deep and seemed to come from far away.

  She suspected it had come from a face blocked from view by her umbrella. Looking down, she saw a pair of rain-soaked Oxfords and dark baggy trousers.

  “Thank you,” she said, rubbing her neck. “I’ll be fine.” Her wet pantsuit and a bare foot drew her attention. “My shoe! My shoe! Do you see it?”

  She scanned the wet pavement, the curb, and the street around her. Then she spotted her missing heel. It was a ways down the street, bobbing in the swirling water above the sewer, fighting the river of rain that wanted to wash it down.

  “Don’t worry, miss.” This message came from a different voice.

  A second man, tattered with a wild head full of dreads, sprang from nowhere. With ape-like moves, the second man leaped into the street, retrieved the shoe, and then disappeared.

  “Hey! Where’s he taking my shoe?”

  “Come on, miss.” It was that deep voice again. By now Zoie could see its source, a rich dark-chocolate face framed by a rain-soaked newsboy cap. The speaker’s eyes examined her. In a shoeless hobble, she offered no resistance as he guided her to the protection of a nearby awning. There the wild man waited with her rescued shoe. He seemed a little older than the other one—or was it the aging that comes with life on the street? Zoie closed her umbrella and took her shoe from him. “God, it’s ruined,” she said, stroking its soggy leather.

  “Simon, the girl’s right. ’Cept no point telling God. God already knows the shoe’s ruined. Don’t know why she’s telling God what he already knows. That shoe doesn’t want to be wet. Alligators only like water when they’re alive.” He held his stomach and squealed with delight at his own joke. Still laughing, he leaned into the dry corner created by the awning next to an overloaded shopping cart.

  Zoie didn’t laugh. Neither did the younger man, who responded to his associate’s display of amusement with a shrug. Then he offered, “Miss, he don’t mean no harm. He ain’t the fool you think he is.
”

  With her long-strapped briefcase slung over her shoulder, Zoie balanced herself against the shop window, put on her shoe, and wrung the excess water from the bottoms of her pants. “Thanks for saving me…Simon, is it?”

  The younger man nodded, the corners of his mouth turning up in a slight smile.

  “And thank you too,” she said, turning to the older man, who had claimed the driest spot under the awning. “I don’t believe I got your name.”

  He ceased laughing, buried his chin in his chest, and mumbled to himself.

  For a second Zoie stared at him. He avoided her eyes by staring at the pavement. “Anyway, thank you both,” she said, turning away. She noticed a red donation can marked “Help” against the wall. The homeless. It seemed DC had as many homeless as New York. She fumbled in her bag for her wallet, pulled out a twenty, and put it in the can.

  “Thank you, miss.” It was the younger man’s deep voice again. This time his face bore a broad grin. He grabbed her free hand and pressed a piece of paper into her palm and then forced her fingers to form a fist around it. His grip was cold and hard, his hand more steel-like than flesh and bone. Fearful of possible aggression, Zoie pulled away. Some months ago she had seen a headline in the New York Post: “Attacks by Street People on the Rise.” They were needy for sure but sometimes dangerous.

  “What did you give me?” she said, looking at the folded paper, which was now damp from her still-wet palm.

  “Read it,” he insisted.

  Zoie closed her hand around the paper and glanced at her watch. She was now officially annoyed and running late for her 9:00 a.m. meeting. In New York, attorney business didn’t start until ten in the morning. But DC, the nation’s capital, was an early riser city, even for attorneys.

  “Read it,” he repeated, his tone more commanding and a little scary.

  “I will!” She stuffed the paper into her pocket. “But later. Right now I’m in a hurry.”

  “Humph,” the wild man interjected from his corner. “Hurrying is what almost turned you into mocha mush.” He broke into a sickly sounding fit of laughter.

  Things had become too weird. Zoie decided to make a quick exit. “Got to go,” she said. With her umbrella ready, she stepped from under the awning, half-prepared to fight if they attempted to pull her back. In the still pouring rain, her umbrella did what it could to protect her, which wasn’t much. She moved fast, covering the remaining two blocks to her office in long strides. She was late, and she wanted to put distance between her and the scene of her near accident—distance between her and those creepy guys. All the while, her feet squished uncomfortably in her waterlogged shoes. She never looked back.

  At work Zoie checked her cream-colored pantsuit for signs, other than wetness, of the morning incident. Fortunately there were none. The waterlogged shoe that had sailed to the gutter was definitely darker than its mate. It would survive the day. She borrowed a hair dryer from a colleague to dry her pants and walked into the 9:00 a.m. meeting thirty minutes late, offering a “Sorry!” but no further explanation.

  Instinct told her not to mention her mishap. She was embarrassed about her carelessness and didn’t like to dwell on ugly thoughts of death or injury. The possibility of her death—of leaving Nikki parentless—haunted her at times. She couldn’t deal with those thoughts today. It was not until she was alone in her office after the meeting that she remembered the paper that Simon had pressed into her palm.

  “It’s probably a biblical reference,” she told herself, pulling it from her pocket. The paper was a little larger than the strips found in fortune cookies. The message, handwritten in crisp black lettering, had been unaffected by the moisture—“You’re a Winner.”

  “A winner, huh? Oh, boy, I wish.” She hadn’t played the lottery or anything else that would make her a winner and didn’t plan to. At least the message was positive. Not being hit by that car was positive. She tossed the paper on her desk and recalled her other close calls, like the near drowning at Virginia Beach when she was fifteen. She was trying to calculate what remained of her nine lives when her thoughts were interrupted.

  “Here’s the last three years of grant procedures,” said Regina. Her young assistant placed the ominous stack of folders on the corner of Zoie’s desk. “Oh, and e-mail’s back up,” she added pushing back her short precision cut hair.

  “Oh, I didn’t realize it was down. Thanks, Regina.”

  Regina turned to leave.

  “Regina, wait. Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are Crayton meetings always so dry?”

  “Bored already, huh? Zoie, you’ve only been here three weeks. You can’t be bored already.”

  “Who said I was bored?” Zoie replied.

  “I can tell. You’re having second thoughts about this place. Missing that big-time New York law firm, huh?”

  “Am I missing sixty- to seventy-hour workweeks…I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah, but you’re missing something.”

  “I’ll admit this is different for me.” Zoie spun around once in her chair, responding when she again faced Regina. “Yeah, it’s a little slow…I mean compared with the pace that I’m used to.”

  “I hear you,” Regina fired back.

  “Then maybe it’s the lack of good-looking guys.”

  The two giggled. It wasn’t as though Zoie had dated often in New York. But her retort sounded good.

  “Ooh. That’s cold,” Regina said, gazing at the ceiling. “Haven’t seen anybody here, huh?”

  “Right.” Zoie drummed her pale pink nails on the desk.

  “I know what you mean.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Zoie said, attempting to explain. “I wanted it this way. Things to be slower, I mean. I need more time for Nikki.”

  “Isn’t she out of town or something?”

  “Just until school starts.”

  “Oh, to be child-free for a month,” Regina said with a sigh. Like Zoie, Regina was a single parent.

  Regina turned to leave but pivoted back. “Wait—I forgot! Here’s some excitement for you.”

  “What?” Zoie leaned across her desk expecting to hear some of Regina’s juicy gossip.

  “You won the baby pool!”

  “Me? Win something? No way!” Zoie sat up in her chair with new energy.

  “Rachel’s baby was born last night—a girl,” Regina said, batting her lashes, as proud as if the new child were her very own. “Right on the day you picked. Three days before the actual due date, at eleven at night, just like you guessed. Even your pick for the baby’s weight was close. She weighed seven pounds, six ounces, and you guessed seven, seven.”

  “Are you sure that I won?” Zoie asked with a disbelieving frown.

  “You are ZT, aren’t you? There are no other ZTs in this office.”

  “Wow! What d’ya know!”

  Regina grinned. “What’s freaky is Rachel went out on maternity just before you started.”

  It was true. Zoie hadn’t laid eyes on Rachel. She hadn’t sized up the woman’s belly, if that made a difference. As a newbie she signed up for the baby pool to show support for the office’s social activities—a five-dollar investment for the cause of group acceptance. Somehow, now that she’d won, it seemed unfair to take the money.

  “The pot’s seventy dollars,” Regina continued. “I’ll get your money.”

  Her assistant gone, Zoie again whirled in her chair. Whether the prize was five dollars or seventy, it felt wonderful to win. As far as she could remember, she’d never won anything. Long ago she’d convinced herself that things only came her way from hard work. Luck or divine intervention had nothing to do with anything. Zoie retrieved the paper fortune from her desk and stared at its message—“You’re a Winner.”

  “Wow! What a coincidence. I really won something.”

  Chapter 2

  Daughters, Daddies, and Dogs

  Zoie keyed into her Connecticut Avenue apartment. She u
nloaded her briefcase and the grocery bag she’d lugged from the health-food store onto the kitchen counter, then kicked off her heels, and poured a glass of cold water. Leaning against the sink, she sipped the water and allowed herself to be mesmerized by the suspended dust moving in the last rays of the sun, which flooded her top-floor window.

  This apartment pleased her. It was larger than her Manhattan place, four blocks from the Metro, with easy access to her grandmother’s house on Brandywine. Best of all, the Smithsonian’s National Zoo was a few blocks away, something that especially pleased Nikki.

  Zoie unpacked her groceries and stared at the kitchen’s blank white walls. So far she hadn’t bothered to personalize the place. Not a picture or a calendar on the wall. No window treatment blocked the daylight or the dark, with the exception of the yellowing shades in her bedroom. Decorating wasn’t her priority. Decorating implied commitment—commitment to her new job, to her new life, and to staying in DC. She missed New York’s excitement, that feeling that caused her blood to move faster and her walk to be more deliberate. Despite that it was her hometown, Washington, DC, could be a sleepy place. The city’s political aura was like tuning into CNN more than anything real. She’d never plugged in to the political scene. Her move back to DC was more about Nikki. DC was slower paced and it was near family—what little family she and Nikki had left.

  It had been two weeks since Zoie had driven Nikki to Ohio to spend the summer with Elliot’s folks, the Benjamins. The plan was simple. With Nikki away Zoie would have time to settle into her Foundation job and to find after-school care for Nikki, who would start attending the first grade in late August. Zoie never counted on the teary goodbye on the Benjamins’ manicured lawn. During the first hundred miles of the drive back to DC, she almost turned the car around. But as it often did with Zoie, the logic of the situation prevailed. Leaving Nikki in Ohio for the summer was for the best. Still, Zoie longed to hear her daughter’s elfin jabber and feel her thin-armed hugs.

  Zoie knew Celeste and Phillip Benjamin to be decent, caring people. Perrysburg, Ohio, their home, was a picturesque town near Toledo, where Elliot spent his childhood and Phillip Benjamin operated a successful optometry practice. Celeste was a professional volunteer. The Benjamins tried their best to compensate for Elliot’s abdication of parental responsibility. They used every opportunity to see Nikki, staying in a hotel not far from Zoie’s Upper West Side apartment, taking their granddaughter on outings around the city. Every week Celeste telephoned Nikki, and every few months a package of toys and clothing would arrive. They’d even established a generous college fund for Nikki. The Benjamins were Nikki’s only grandparents, and Nikki adored them.