Without Faith (4 page)

“You should try the salmon. I know how much you like seafood.” Leon's bald head almost glistened in the glow of candlelight at the Harbor's Edge Inn. The color of dark chocolate with undertones of copper, Leon's strength surpassed his sculpted frame. Strength exuded in the slight tilt of his head, whispered in the tenor of his voice, the gentle smile of his eyes.

Why couldn't I simply let this man love me and I love him?

“Mmmm. Yes.” I smiled. “I have heard about the salmon here.” I felt like hiding behind the menu. I did not want Leon to see the bad nerves that had taken root, grown a stem, and pushed out buds in me ever since Brayden and Jenellis had left my office.

The stack of bills was still tucked away in the back of my notepad. I hadn't even bothered counting it yet, but I knew that whatever the final sum was the cost of trouble.
What am I supposed to do?

“Here's your appetizer.” A middle-aged woman with graying blond hair and a black apron put a steaming plate of maple-broiled scallops between us.

“Thanks.” Leon smiled up at her. I did not miss her blush. The man's smile could trap any woman. He used to wear a gold cap on one of his teeth, but after he chose to let go of the painful history behind it, his pearly whites had a golden quality all their own.

When he looked back at me, his smile was gone.

“Sienna, I know we haven't finished ordering yet, but I need to at least let you know why it was so urgent we talk.”

“Okay,” I squeezed out, trying to remember all of a sudden how to breathe. Leon had stopped looking at me, was studying the etched leaf pattern of his salad fork. Time ticked by and to alleviate the agitation that was threatening to swallow me because of his silence, I escaped into my comfort zone.

“Whatever this is about is difficult for you to share.” With my therapist hat on, I had the courage to look him directly in the eyes when he finally looked back up at me. Focusing on his feelings kept me from feeling my own.

Leon was not going for it. “Look, Sienna, I'm not one of your clients. I'm . . . I—”

“Are you ready to order?” The waitress was back, all smiles at Leon.

He looked at me and shrugged. “I guess that's what we need to do next. I'm not that hungry, so, Sienna, please get whatever you want. This appetizer will fill me.”

“What would you like, hon?” The words were friendly, but the waitress was looking at me disapprovingly, as if Leon's poor appetite was my fault.

“I'll try your grilled salmon entrée.”

“Mmm, hmm.” She scribbled on her pad and took off, but not before frowning at me and smiling at Leon again.

“And I'll try this again.” Leon sighed. “Look, Sienna, our friendship has really grown over the past two years. You know that—”

My cell phone chimed. I did not recognize the number.

“I'm sorry, Leon. I forgot to silence it. Let me do that now.” I slid it to vibrate and pushed it to the side of the table.

“No problem.” Leon was ready to begin again. “Um, like I was saying—”

My cell phone buzzed, sending the silverware that lined our table into a vibrating chorus. It was a different number. Still did not recognize it.

“I'm so sorry. I probably need to shut the whole thing down. I tend to keep it on in case a client calls, but I'll deal with it later.” Brayden and Jenellis crossed my mind. As much as Leon was scaring me, the thought of them frightened me more. I hoped to goodness that was not them trying to call me. I reached out to turn my phone completely off, but then a new number, and one that I recognized, jumped on the touch screen.

Yvette Davis, my younger sister. Leon saw the name too.

“Go ahead and answer. I know how your sister gets.” He sat back in his seat, staring off into space as he stirred his iced tea with a straw.

“Hello, Yvette?”

“Sienna, why haven't you been answering your phone?” she yelled in my ear.

“Um, hello, how are you, um, is that too much to ask?” I rolled my eyes. My sister was always in the middle of some drama.

“I don't have time for your sarcasm any more than you seem to have time to pick up your phone.”

“You just called me. I just answered.” I looked up at Leon to offer him a smile, but he was busy flipping through the menu.

“Your home phone? You haven't been answering that.”

“Obviously I'm not home, Yvette. Did it ever cross your mind that I might actually be out somewhere and can't talk to you?”

“Well, I gave them your cell phone number and you obviously didn't answer it either or you wouldn't be talking to me.”

“Them? Yvette, really, I don't have time for this. What are you talking about? What is going on? Who is ‘them'?”

“Reverend Howard and Tridell's mother.”

My heart skipped a beat. “What? What happened?”

“They gone!”

Her words didn't make sense. “What? What happened?” I asked again.

“Your son, my son, and that prissy Tridell Jenkins—along with Reverend Howard's rental car, might I add—are all gone from that desert campground you talked me into sending my child to!”

“Gone!” I hollered into the phone. An elderly couple at the table next to us gave me a look of displeasure. Leon's eyes were wide as he leaned closer to me.

“You heard me!” Yvette hollered back in my ear. “You got my son out there missing halfway across the country.”

“Yvette, you know good and well I did not do anything to your son. He makes his own choices, just like
you
chose to send him on the trip on
your
own accord—even before I signed the permission forms for Roman.” This direction in conversation was not what I needed. I needed answers, not Yvette's perpetual blame-game drama and her act that Skee-Gee was the perfect child, the innocent one. For anything, a year Roman's senior in age, and a decade his senior in street knowledge, I knew one thing for certain: wherever they were, it was Skee-Gee's doing—or that darn Tridell Jenkins. “I'm not doing this with you right now, Yvette. I need to know what is going on. Where is my son?”

Leon was at full attention on the other side of the table. “What's wrong, Sienna?”

I held up a finger, shaking my head at him. “I can't . . . I don't know what's going on. Yvette, where is my son?”

“That's what I'm trying to tell you. They gone, Sienna. Roman, Tridell, and Sylvester took off in Minister Howard's rental car, and don't nobody know where they are right now.”

“Okay,” I said, hanging up the phone. There was no point in trying to continue a conversation with her. I dialed Roman's number and his voice mail came on immediately, letting me know his cell phone was turned off.

“Roman,” I shouted as if he could somehow still hear me, “you need to call me as soon as you get this message. I'm not playing with you. Call me!” I hung up and put my head down.

“Sienna, let's . . . let's just go.” Leon's voice was gentle, soothing in my ear. I realized right then that he was rubbing my shoulder. His touch had been so natural, I hadn't even noticed it was there. Awareness of this subtlety made me stiffen up my shoulder under his fingers. He felt the tension and backed away, but his tone stayed soft.

“I know from your words that something is going on with Roman. Let's get you home and we'll figure out what to do.” He left a fifty on the table though we had not yet eaten. As we headed toward the parking lot, I recalled that we had driven in separate cars. I wished right then that I had taken Leon up on his offer of picking me up for our non-date. How was I to ever drive while not knowing where my son was?

Our non-date.

Leon had wanted to meet for a reason, I remembered.

“Leon, I'm sorry about—”

“Not right now, Sienna. We'll talk, but this is not the time. We've got to find Roman first. And we will.”

Roman was AWOL on the other side of the country, and yet Leon, who was standing right beside me, felt even further away.

I was losing all the men in my life.

I knew it.

Felt it.

But I still did not want to believe.

My wedding ring from RiChard had been a simple one: a white, ivory-like rugged circle he said was crafted in the tradition of some indigenous village he visited during one of his many trips to South America. He put it on my finger as we stood in the marriage ceremony room at the Baltimore County Courthouse. There were no witnesses present as my parents were infuriated that I was taking this step, and his parents, he said, were “in their own worlds” in other parts of the world.

I found out later that the ring that symbolized our hasty commitment was actually made out of bone: a piece of a vertebra from a small rodent-like mammal that ran through the floors of the rainforest, feasting on even smaller animals. This crude bit of jewelry was in stark contrast from the lion's head ring, the heavy golden orb with eyes made out of rubies and sapphires and a mane edged with diamonds. The lion's head ring had belonged to the son of an African chief whom RiChard had befriended when both were studying abroad in Europe.

Kisu.

RiChard was gifted with the heavy ornament after he avenged Kisu's murder during a political rally effort he planned in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

That was years ago.

The last trip I took with him.

To my parents' dismay, I'd given up my full ride to college to follow him on his social justice mission around the world. What could I say? I was eighteen and in love, as I thought it to be, and that bull carried me for a while.

But something in me changed when I saw the blood on his hands.

He said he'd killed a man for killing Kisu.

I couldn't put my finger on it then, but I practically ran from his side, packed my bags, got on the first plane out of there, and landed in my mother's living room, not knowing I was pregnant with RiChard's son.

Random gifts through the years, inconsistent phone calls.

Roman.

The only three proofs that a man named RiChard St. James had loved me.

I guess.

“Sienna, did you try the church number again?” My mother's sharp voice cut through my thoughts. She was a highly respected principal at what was once a struggling Baltimore City elementary school, and although we were all sitting in the basement of my parents' Randallstown home, she was in full authoritarian mode.

“Mom, I've called the church secretary, Pastor McKinney's wife, Elder Nance, and Sister Henry, who heads up the church's crisis line. Like I said before, nobody has any additional information. We only need to let the authorities do their job.”

“Authorities?” My sister yelled from the dark brown leather loveseat across the room. “I thought we all agreed to let Minister Howard handle this.”

“Minister Howard doesn't even want the rental car company to know the boys took the car, although I'm sure the company would be able to track down the car's GPS.”

“Minister Howard is trying to avoid getting the authorities involved, remember?” Yvette snapped back. “The boys left on their own accord, so it's not like they're in some kind of trouble, kidnapped, or something like that. They'll resurface when they're ready. We just need to wait it out, that's all.”

Yvette glared at me and I glared at her, knowing that the only reason she did not want the police involved was because then it would have to be reported to Skee-Gee's probation officer. I'd listened to her beg and plead on the phone with Minister Howard that very point, and for some crazy reason he went along, agreeing with her that the boys were up to a harmless adventure and would surface soon.

I started to say something about her beloved son, the eldest of her five children, but I did not have the energy.

Years ago, watching RiChard disappear down a path with Kisu for the last time, I'd had a sick feeling in my stomach, like my insides would cave in and disintegrate into acid.

I had the same feeling now.

RiChard.

The lion's head ring.

I had been thinking about him and that. And now I remembered why.

“Yup, if someone calls demanding a ransom,” my father was saying for the umpteenth time, “I'll cash in my highest value cards and signed baseballs and that should do it.”

“There will be no ransom because there's been no kidnapping!” Yvette sighed and huffed and puffed.

My father, Alvin Davis, a truck driver for a bakery in Little Italy, had the most extensive sports memorabilia collection this side of the Mississippi, or so it seemed. A local newspaper had once featured him surrounded by the baseball bats, boxing gloves, jerseys, and other pricey artifacts that made up his cache; but few people had ever laid eyes on the smallest, yet most expensive treasures he kept locked in the basement safe.

“Even still, I'm sure I have something that would be enough to save three boys caught in mischief.” He kept eyeing the corner of the basement where the safe was, hidden cleverly behind a small fridge in the wet bar of the wood-paneled den.

I'd pushed the massive jewel into that same safe nearly two years ago. I needed to get it out before it was noticed by my dad or anyone else. I did not want any questions.

I'd never gotten the answers I wanted two years ago when the ring had shown up in an urn mailed to me from the other side of the world.

The urn, I would later find out, had actually been mailed by Kisu.

Who clearly had not been murdered like RiChard claimed.

The letter. The e-mail. The picture. The unconscious Kisu lying on a hotel floor, found by authorities in Portugal two years ago.
The questions I'd left unanswered. The answers I did not want to know.

I swallowed hard and squeezed my eyes shut while another piece of my stomach collapsed into the acid pit.

“Sienna, it will be okay.” Leon's fingertips brushed over the back of my hand. “I'm sure Roman will show up real soon. He's a good kid.”

We were all crowded in my parents' Randallstown basement: Leon, Yvette, my parents, and a woman named Sadie Spriggs, the self-appointed church comforter who showed up at all homes of the newly departed and recently ill with a box of tissues, a hymn book, and a tambourine.

Her presence was not comforting to me at all.

And not just because she was studying me and Leon with her mouth moving and no words coming out.

“I have some friends on the force who may have some helpful connections if it comes down to it.” Leon's voice was a whisper, for Yvette's benefit I knew. He glanced uneasily at my sister, who was staring angrily at us. Good thing he was not in uniform. Then again, the way she was glaring at us, maybe he needed to be.

Yvette, her son, and their bad history with police.

And her son was with mine.

I swallowed hard as the acid in my stomach seemed to be turning into a hot, roiling boil.

“If you want connections, why not talk to Brother Tyson? Doesn't he still work for channel 55?” Sadie Spriggs's suggestion surprised me. Aside from the fact that I thought she was sitting out of earshot from us, I was not sure how I felt about her offering advice. Prayers, hymns—those I was used to hearing come from the elder, turban-wearing church mother; but suggestions and directions seemed out of the normal realm of her ministry scope. Besides, a media spectacle didn't seem like what was needed.

My sister, for obvious reasons, immediately agreed with my unexpressed thought.

“The media?” Yvette gasped. “No, we don't need any extra attention right now. Let's just wait until the boys finish their fun and then they'll call home.”

Mother Sadie had her left eye squinted and her mouth was moving silently again as she looked back and forth between me and Yvette.

“Okay, I'm going back upstairs.” I stood up, ready to get away from all of it, all of them.

I sat back down, knowing that I was going to have to figure out a way to get that ring out of my father's safe before he started rummaging through it as a heroic gesture. I say gesture because everyone in the room knew that Alvin Davis wasn't selling any of his beloved baseball cards or other prized possessions, didn't matter what kind of trouble his grandsons were in.

“Sienna,” Leon began, his hand, I suddenly noticed, locked over mine. “I think, I think—” His cell phone interrupted him with a soft wind-chime ring. I didn't recognize the ringtone. I'd been around him long enough to know the falling-rain ring had been his late grandmother who raised him; the bullhorn was his current supervisor; the drumroll was his best friend, Benny. And I had managed to squeeze out of him that a robin sang when I called.

But wind chimes? I had no idea.

“I . . . I have to go. I'm sorry.” Leon glanced at the screen of his phone and mumbled something else, but I could not make it out. “I'm sorry,” he mumbled again, shutting the ring off without answering. “I'll check in with you soon. Keep me posted.”

He was leaving so quickly, I was halfway up the basement steps behind him before I realized that I was following him out. “Leon, wait.”

“I really need to go.”

“I know. I only wanted to thank you. For everything.” We were standing on my parents' front steps, right under the porch light where a circus of moths was circulating. Leon stopped and turned around to face me.

“You know I am here for you.” He spoke soft and low. I had to move closer to hear him.

Any thoughts I'd had about him trying to avoid eye contact with me were dissipated as his eyes pierced mine. We were inches apart, the closest I could ever remember being to him. And the longest we'd ever been that close.

“Roman will be okay.” His voice could have been fingers massaging my neck, loosening the knots and kinks that were tightening it. That's how warm and amazing and comforting the sound of his voice was to me at that moment. He took a step closer to me, as if there really was more room to fill between us. His face was now inches from mine, our eyes still locked, the smell of his cologne intoxicating.

I became aware of the rise and fall of my chest, the breaths I was taking, the quickening pace of my heart.

This feeling.

So foreign and yet so familiar.

RiChard.

A literal pain flashed through me from the base of my skull to the tops of my knees. My eyes dropped. I backed away.

“I need to go back inside.” I studied the words on my parents' welcome mat. E
NTER WITH
L
OVE. EXIT WITH
C
ARE. “
That's kind of a weird welcome mat message.” I chuckled.

Leon was not laughing. In fact, he wasn't even standing where he had been. I watched him look up at the unusually bright moon before the wind-chime ring of his cell phone interrupted whatever thought he was having, whatever moment I was trying to avoid.

“I have to go. Call me if you hear anything.”

Down the steps. Car door slam. Engine roaring. Gone.

I had not felt that emotionally and physically close to a man like that for sixteen years. And RiChard found a way to ruin it for me.

Now it was just me, the bright moon, the flutter of moths overhead, and the lingering scent of Leon's cologne.

I didn't have time to answer that question. I had my son to think about. My son and that lion's head ring I wanted to recover before it was discovered.

“Good, you're back.” Sadie Spriggs nodded as I descended into the basement once more. “I told you he still worked for channel 55.” She was pointing to the television that someone had turned on in my absence. The eleven o'clock news was on.

“Yes.” I nodded back. “I knew that Brother Tyson . . .” The rest of the sentence became lodged in my throat as I tried to make sense out of what was flashing on the television screen.

Oh my, Jesus, what is going on?
I prayed in horror, not believing my eyes.