Read Online An Inconvenient Friend by Rhonda McKnight - Free Book Online Page B

cut into her thoughts.
    â€œWhy do you think I struggled and scraped to send you to Spelman? You think it was about your education? No, I wanted my daughter to meet and marry a Morehouse man. A man who would be successful, and you did that. I wanted to make sure you didn’t end up with someone like your father. Someone who couldn’t find a job.”
    Angelina resisted the urge to speak her mind, to say, Daddy left, but it wasn’t just because he couldn’t find a job. The letters he’d written to her when she was in college told his side of the story.
    â€œMen cheat,” her mother continued her lament. “But at least you don’t have to worry about paying your mortgage.”
    Angelina stretched her legs out. “I don’t need a man to pay my mortgage. You sent me to Spelman, remember?” Her words were an attempt to counter the argument her mother was making. “I was earning good money before—” She didn’t say it, but she meant before she’d quit to take care of Danielle.
    â€œYou want children. You can’t do that by yourself.” Her mother knew how to turn this argument around. Neither of them said anything. Not for a long time. A child—the potential for a child was the big guns. “You are a black woman. You have to be strong, not emotional. Your husband is a surgeon. That man makes more money in one year than I’ll make in ten. Do you know how lucky you are? You’ve got to keep your eyes on the prize.”
    Sorrow filled Angelina’s throat, and she choked out her words. “If a cheating husband is the prize, what do the losers get?”
    â€œThey get old and alone like me. They have to work until they’re seventy, and even then they may not have a good retirement,” her mother snapped. “You need to figure out how to pull him out of that woman’s bed, if he’s in one. Who knows? You’re so paranoid. Always have been.”
    That would be because I was raised by you. Angelina closed her eyes and rubbed her temple with her free hand. “I have to go. I’m starving, and I’ve got a big day tomorrow, so if there’s nothing else ...”
    Good-bye hung in the air until her mother spoke. “Nothing else. Just remember what I said.”
    They didn’t say good-bye to each other. They never did. All their chats ended this way. Ended with her wishing she hadn’t taken the call.
    Angelina put the phone on the base. Remember what I said. How could she forget? They’d been having the same conversation for years. Don’t let go of the “ideal black man,” but Angelina wondered how she could keep something she wasn’t quite sure she’d taken a hold of yet. She was starting to believe nothing good would ever come of her union with Greg. Until this very moment, the only thing she could look back and see that gave her real joy in the last five years was her baby.
    She reached into her nightstand and pulled out the picture of Danielle. She looked at her daughter’s beautiful, angelic face. She’d been four months old in this picture. If Angelina had known she didn’t have much more time with her, she would have taken a thousand pictures like this.
    â€œLook at those eyes,” she whispered. They were like her eyes, so dark they were nearly black. A startling feature against the baby’s cocoa brown skin. From the time that Danielle could open them, she always seemed to be looking right into Angelina’s soul. Wise old eyes.
    Her mother had commented, when she’d met her granddaughter, “That child been here before.”
    Was that why God had taken her away? Was her daughter a mistake from heaven that had to be corrected? Tears returned, but this time they fell like a rain shower down Angelina’s cheeks. She pressed the frame against her chest and rocked back and forth on the bed. She did want another chance to be a mother. She wanted