The Other Brother (9 page)

Chapter 14

pdgewood Avenue in downtown Atlanta, recently dubbed "The Edge," was a neighborhood that had seen better days. Part of the Fourth Ward, it had been in disrepair for decades, rife with crumbling buildings, closed storefronts, vagrants, and crime.

But lately, like much of in-town Atlanta, investors had begun to funnel money into the area, birthing an ever-growing community of shops, loft condos, and restaurants. A textbook case of the gentrification trend that was sweeping inner cities across the country.

Pops was holding a business meeting at a coffee shop on Edgewood called Javaology; Gabriel spotted his father's Mercedes parked across the street. Gabriel had been to the cafe before, for a Morehouse-Spelman alumni mixer. He pushed through the shop's new wooden doors and was greeted by the pungent aroma of coffee that, in his current agitated state, only made his pulse pound faster.

The cafe had science-lab-style decor. Sleek track lighting. Wraparound windows. Nests of tables, comfortable chairs, and sofas. Customers enjoying caffeinated beverages tapped away on laptops-the coffeehouse provided free wireless Internet access-and talked among themselves.

Gabriel saw his father near the back of the shop, sitting at a table with a couple of white men in Brooks Brothers suits. Pops was chatting and gesturing excitedly, a sure sign that he was engaged in selling something.

Gabriel tapped Pops on the shoulder. "Hey, Pops"

"Gabriel!" Pops beamed at him, turned to his colleagues. "Gentlemen, this is my son, Gabriel. My VP and future CEO"

Introductions and quick handshakes all around. Gabriel turned back to his father. "Can we talk?"

"Right now?" Pops asked.

"It's an emergency."

Pops straightened his suit jacket. "Well, sure. We were about to wrap up, in fact. Give me two minutes."

Gabriel stepped away and studied the coffeehouse menu while Pops concluded his meeting. Although his eyes skimmed the various offerings, his thoughts were focused elsewhere. How was he going to talk to his father about Isaiah? He'd never had such a conversation with Pops, and had no idea how to broach the subject. He half-wished that he could leave and let someone else have this conversation with his father.

As he was thinking of leaving, Pops touched his arm. "I'm finished. We can sit here and chat"

Gabriel looked at the people clustered around them, and then glanced upward at the loft area, which appeared to be vacant.

"Let's go up there," Gabriel said. "We need some ... privacy."

Pops gave him a questioning look, but followed him upstairs. They settled around a table.

"Now, tell me," Pops said. "What's wrong? Something you need me to help you with?"

Typical Pops. Always ready to solve Gabriel's problems.

Gabriel cleared his throat. He had considered a dozen different openings-and, in an instant, discarded them all and opted to cut to the chase. "I had a visitor at the office today, Pops. He said his name's Isaiah Battle. That name mean anything to you?"

Pops flinched as if sucker-punched.

His reaction answered Gabriel's question: it was all true.

Gabriel felt his stomach roll. "It's true then, isn't it?" he said. "He's really your son"

Pops took out his handkerchief, blotted his forehead, and then held the cloth against his lips as though trying to hold in the words that wanted to spill out.

"He said you paid him fifty thousand dollars to stay away from us," Gabriel said. "Hush money."

Pops wiped his mouth, glanced in the handkerchief, frowned. He put the cloth against his forehead again, sopping up a fresh layer of sweat.

"He and I even have the same birthday," Gabriel said. "He's just turned thirty, too. He's actually a few minutes older than I am. He's your firstborn"

Pops stuffed the handkerchief in his pocket. Drew in a breath, steepled his fingers.

Gabriel paused. "Well?"

"I never meant to hurt anyone," Pops said. "This was very unexpected"

Unexpected. Not, I'm sorry. Gabriel could not believe this.

"How long have you known about Isaiah?" Gabriel asked.

"Since he was born, of course," Pops said, with a trace of annoyance.

"Does anyone else in the family know?"

"No "'

Jesus, Mom's going to have a heart attack.

"You've been hiding this from all of us for thirty years?"

"I never wanted this to happen, Gabriel. That's why I paid him. He was supposed to leave us alone."

For the first time in his life, Gabriel had the distinct feeling that this man who'd named him, who'd taught him how to ride a bike and shave and knot a tie, who'd lectured him about right and wrong, who'd instructed him on how to be a man ... this man, he didn't know as well as he thought he did. This man, his father, whom he adored, was a stranger to him.

And a disturbing question lodged in Gabriel's mind like a splinter. What kind of man would bribe his own child to stay away?

"How could you?" Gabriel asked. "How could you do this?"

Pops glared at him. "Why are you so upset? What have I done to you, Gabe? I've given you and your sister everything you've ever wanted and needed. If anyone has the right to be angry with me, it's your mother, and, possibly, Isaiah."

Gabriel couldn't think of an adequate reply. Tears seared his eyes.

I should have known better, he thought. What kind of response had he expected from his father? A tearful confession? A heartfelt apology? He'd never witnessed his father crying, and his father rarely apologized, even if he was at fault. T.L. Reid was a man's man, and in his opinion, emotional displays were the exclusive province of women. Although Gabriel had patterned himself after his father, his mother had helped to sooth the rough edges of his heart, had taught him that it was okay to behave as something other than an emotional Neanderthal sometimes.

But Pops didn't play that stuff. Gabriel had been a fool to assume that confronting his father about Isaiah would provoke a reaction of genuine contrition.

"You've got a lot of balls to corner me like this," Pops said. "As if I'm accountable to you for my actions. Do you know who I am, boy?"

Gabriel wiped his eyes. Now that he'd asked the questions, he had to endure the browbeating.

Don't ask something if you can 't handle the answer; Pops had taught him.

"Let me tell you who I am," Pops said, squaring his shoulders. "I an your father Gabriel. You may not agree with my decisions, but you have no right to pass judgment on me. You don't know the full story. I did what I did because ... I had to. For you, your sister, and your mother. For all of us"

Liar, Gabriel thought. You didn't do it for us. You did it for yourself Gabriel sniffled.

"I don't know what else I can say," Pops said. "The truth is out, and we'll deal with it as a family." He pushed away from the table. "I'm sorry you had to find out this way."

Pops walked toward the staircase. When he noticed that Gabriel didn't follow, he looked back at him.

"Coming?" Pops asked.

Gabriel turned away.

Nothing's ever going to be the same after this, Gabriel thought. For any of us.

His father's footsteps receded in the distance.

Chapter 15

-heo Reid drove aimlessly, thinking about secrets. He'd planned everything so meticulously over the years. He'd fooled everyone. But as today proved, he'd fooled himself, too.

There was nothing like the power of the blood bond. The blood bond pulled people together that lived on opposite ends of the globe; it reunited families who had been estranged for generations; it never faltered, never faded. He should have known better.

Eventually, blood always won out.

When the boy had contacted him a few months ago, Theo thought he had been prepared. He'd offered the boy a substantial payoff-bribing him, essentially, to stay away from Theo and his family forever. The boy had accepted the money and agreed to the terms. So why had he come back?

And not only had he returned, he'd approached Gabriel first, as though to spit in Theo's face and make sure Theo couldn't arrange another cover-up. Theo's only alternative was to confess the truth to his family.

How could you? Gabriel had asked.

Gabriel, his sweet, innocent son. If only Gabriel knew the truth, in all its vile glory, he would hate Theo forever.

For that reason, Theo despised truth. In seconds, truth could destroy marriages, families, and multimillion-dollar corporations that had been decades in the making. Theo had learned, the hard way, that the path to success and happiness was paved not with truth, but with what he liked to consider "comforting fictions." People didn't really appreciate learning the truth, no matter how much they claimed to want to hear it. Because the truth usually hurt.

The problem was that when you dispensed so many comforting fictions throughout your life, it was easy to become tangled in them yourself, to lose your way, to believe them. That was dangerous. Theo had thrived for years because he'd been careful never to confuse reality with fiction.

This time, he'd screwed up. He wasn't going to let it happen again. There was too much to lose.

His hands-free car phone beeped.

"Answer," Theo said, commanding the system to open the line.

"It's me ... Pops," the caller said, derision in his voice. "How are you?"

The caller didn't announce his name; he didn't have to.

Theo's jaw hardened like cement. "We had an agreement ""

"That's something I'd like to discuss with you. Can we meet?"

Theo didn't want to meet him. He wanted to terminate the call and bury his head in the sand, ignoring the tsunami that was surely rising and rumbling straight for his family.

But the power of the blood bond conquered him, too.

"Where do you want to meet?" he asked Isaiah.

Chapter 16

1n a daze, Gabriel wandered out of the coffee shop and J drove to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, a pediatric hospital on the Emory University campus. He parked illegally and shuffled inside the building.

He found Dana in the room of a patient- a little black girl with Afro puffs, hooked up to a respirator.

"Gabe?" Dana asked. She dropped her clipboard onto a chair. "What's wrong?"

He pulled her into his arms and wept.

Alone with Dana in the hospital staff lounge, Gabriel told her what had happened. He spoke with a fistful of tissue in his hand, which he frequently used to dry his teary eyes.

He hadn't cried like this in years, not since his paternal grandmother had died. He was not the kind of man who typically showed his feelings to such a dramatic extent, but his father's confession had busted open the dam containing his emotions, and in spite of how much he despised weeping, he was unable to hold back the tears.

Dana held his hand. She looked shell-shocked, too, shaking her head.

"Oh, my God," she said. "I can't believe your father would've done that... ."

"He admitted it," Gabriel said. "He even tried to pay off his own kid to make him stay away! Fifty grand!"

"I'm so sorry, baby. I know how you feel about your dad"

Gabriel's head drooped like a lead weight, as more tears poured out of him. Dana cradled him to her bosom and stroked his hair. He held on to her tightly; right now, she was the only stable thing in his life. Everything else he prized had crumbled away.

"He's going to tell the rest of the family, right?" Dana asked.

"He said he would. If he doesn't, I damn sure will. I'm not hiding this from Mom and Nicole."

Dana grimaced. "This is going to get ugly."

"Everything we believed about Pops ... it's all a lie," he said. "I don't know what to believe anymore. This is so fucked up"

"What does this man, Isaiah, want?"

"He wants to get to know us" Gabriel shrugged. "But something about that guy bothers me. I don't know what it is, but I don't like the idea of him being around"

"He's got every right to be around, Gabe. He grew up not knowing anything about his father's people."

"Then why come around now?"

"Put yourself in his shoes. How would you feel if you'd grown up without knowing your father?"

"If I'd known he was doing shit like this behind our back, I wouldn't want to know him."

"Don't say that, babe." Dana kissed his forehead. "I've got to get back to work. Call me later, okay?"

He drew himself to his feet. She examined his hands, scrutinized his face.

"Did you make that doctor's appointment yet?" she asked.

"Honestly, with everything going on, that's been the last thing on my mind."

"I understand, but please do it," she said. "I'm worried about you"

"I'll take care of it, promise."

She hugged him. "Everything's going to be fine. Your family's strong. You'll get through this."

"I hope so," he said.

But he didn't share her confidence.

It was a lovely day for a walk in the park.

Sipping from a chilled bottle of V8 Splash, Isaiah strolled through Piedmont Park, the largest park in Atlanta, located in Midtown. Hardwoods stretched overhead, providing ample shade, and dogwoods and azaleas scented the warm summer air.

In a meadow, Isaiah saw a father and son playing catch with a football. Envy boiled in him like heartburn.

Gabriel and their father probably had used to play catch like that.

Isaiah located his dad sitting on a bench in the cool shadows of a magnolia. Although he had never met his father in the flesh, he recognized him from the photos. He wore an expensive dark suit, loafers. A leather briefcase lay beside him. The quintessential successful businessman.

Head bowed, studying the grass as though it contained the answers to life's mysteries, his father didn't hear him approach.

Isaiah's heart banged. He had been so focused on his mission that he hadn't taken time to reflect on the weight of this occasion. He was meeting his father for the first time. He didn't know whether to be elated or angry. He supposed he felt a bit of both.

"Theodore Lee Reid," Isaiah said, using his father's full name.

His dad looked up.

Damn, they looked so much alike. His father might have ignored him for his entire life, but he could never deny that Isaiah was his son.

His father, too, appeared to be taken aback by their striking similarity. Isaiah wondered if Mama had ever sent his father a photo of him. There was so much his father didn't know about Isaiah's own life that it drove him crazy.

"You look. . " His father started.

"Like your son," Isaiah finished for him. He sat next to his father on the bench. He shivered; he had goose bumps from sitting so close to this man who had haunted his and Mama's lives.

His father studied him. "Christ. I haven't seen you since you were an infant. You're a good-looking kid."

"Good-looking man," Isaiah said. "You can drop that kid shit. Those days are over-you missed 'em, Pops"

Isaiah used the address "Pops" with as much mockery as he could summon. Gabriel called their father that bougiesounding shit. Isaiah had decided to use it, too; every time it would pass his lips, he would feel a twinge of anger and remember why he wanted revenge.

"Fair enough," Pops said soberly. "I thought about you a lot, you know. Wondered how you were doing."

"Give me a motherfucking break. You don't need to tell me that shit to make me feel better. Let's get down to business."

Pops winced, looked around as though worried who might be overhearing them. "Do you have to curse so much?"

"What? You see me for the first time in thirty years and want to criticize my foul language?"

"Forget it," his father said, "You want to talk business? All right, then. Why are you here?"

Isaiah tossed the empty drink bottle toward a nearby trash can. It missed and tumbled onto the grass. "Damn, I'm a terrible shot. Probably because Daddy wasn't around to teach me"'

"Let's not get into that. I don't have time to rehash old issues with you. I want to know why you came. We had an agreement"

"`We had an agreement,"' Isaiah said, mimicking him. "You can't buy me off, man. My life isn't one of your business deals. I don't accept payoffs"

"You took the money"

"Of course I took it. You think I'm gonna turn down fifty grand? As far as I'm concerned, that loot was like past-due child-support payments. My only regret is that it came too late for Mama to truly enjoy it."

His father wiped his lips with his handkerchief. "I'm sorry about her."

"Whatever. You didn't give a fuck"

His father looked pained. Then, "What do you want from me, Isaiah?"

"You really want to know?"

"You want more money, is that it? How much more would it take for you to leave? A hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand? Half a million?"

"It's not about the money!" Isaiah leaped to his feet. He was about to lose control, and he had to catch himself. This wasn't the way he wanted this conversation to go.

"If it's not about money, then what is it?" His father spread his arms. "Tell me-what is this all about?"

His father didn't get it. He thought Isaiah only wanted money, as though money alone could solve life's problems, as though money mattered now that Mama was dead.

Isaiah wished he could kill his father then. But this wasn't the time or the place.

Isaiah sat down again. Counted to ten. Slowed his racing heartbeat.

"I want to be a part of your family," he said softly. "I want to be like you and Gabe are together, want the kind of relationship with you that you have with him." And I want everything else Gabe has, too.

His father looked at him, measuring. "You're serious."

Isaiah nodded.

"Shit." Now it was his dad's turn to get to his feet. He put his fists on his waist, pacing through the grass.

"I'm not going back to Chicago," Isaiah said. "There's nothing left for me there. I want to stay here with you ... Pops"

His father glanced at him, eyebrows arched.

"I have a life here, Isaiah, an image to uphold," he said. "I'm well established in the community, an elder at my church. I'm a role model for a lot of people."

"So now it's time for you to be a role model for me "

Isaiah's words seemed to hit his father like a punch to the stomach. Pops grimaced, lowered his head. Shoved his hands deep in his pockets.

"I'm not the sole decision-maker on this," his father said. "I need to talk to my wife, Gabe ... Nicole .. "

"Come on, you're the man of the house," Isaiah said. "Lay down the law."

"It's not that easy."

"You mean to tell me that T.L. Reid, legendary entrepreneur and millionaire, has to go to his family and ask if his own flesh and blood can be a part of his life?"

"Stop trying to play to my ego" Pops rubbed his lips, pondering. "I'll think it over. I'm going to have a talk with everyone this evening."

"Good enough. What time should I be there?"

"You shouldn't be there tonight. Telling them about you is going to be rough on everyone. I don't think they could handle meeting you tonight."

"Fine. Tomorrow, then"

"I'll let you know."

Isaiah would have to be happy with that. Patience, he reminded himself. Take it slow

Now that he'd set things in motion, why rush?

He had plenty of time to destroy his father's family.