“Wats asked me to be his partner in his office. Are you going to be all right with that?” Rayne told her she was, that she was family now. “I guess I will be. Josiah, he was certainly confused. But he was really nice about not giving us up about the lie. It was nice, too, being called Mrs. Wilkerson.”
“It is. Very nice. And you couldn’t be joining a better family.” Rayne called in the staff to make sure they started an IV for her, and told her that she’d let her know when Booker was out. Then when she left Charlie to her nurse, she stopped at the desk and asked if they could put Booker into the room with Charlie. “They’ll be roaming the halls if you don’t.”
“We can arrange that, Dr. Wilkerson. My goodness, there are going to be a lot of you Wilkersons around here, aren’t there? We’ll have to make sure we use your initials, or we’ll all be messed up.” Rayne nodded and left to find Wats. It was the first time she’d been called Doctor Wilkerson by staff. It felt damned good.
As they waited for Booker to come out of surgery, Rayne made a couple of phone calls. One to her aunt to let her know where they were, and the second call to Josiah. He had asked her to call when they found out anything. He told her that he’d be right there. Wats went home to get Louis so that he could hang out with the others. He was becoming a wonderful part of the family quickly.
Rayne’s phone rang, and she almost didn’t answer it. Her aunt had called her several times over the last few days, and she wasn’t ready to talk to her yet. But this time, armed with her anger that her newest family members had been hurt, as well as liking Charlie, she answered the phone with her title and Wilkerson.
“Where is Selma?” Rayne asked who it was, knowing full well that it was Aunt Becky. “Don’t be a smart ass. Tell me where that sister of mine is. I have a mind to give her a piece of my mind.”
“I’m sure you couldn’t afford to give her any of your mind. You have seemed to lost your marbles anyway if you think that she’s going to forgive you for treating her and me the way you did.” Becky snorted. “You think I’m kidding? I’m not. I’m happy. I have children that I love and Aunt Selma to talk to when I need an adult. You were never there for me. While you didn’t beat me, you were so verbally abusive to me that it made me feel like shit all the time.”
“I kept you in line.” This time she snorted. “Where is she? I want to know why she’s changed the locks on our house. I need to get in and get some things out of it.”
“Not without the police and Aunt Selma there you’re not. Besides, it’s not ‘our’ home. It’s Aunt Selma’s. She told me how you moved in with her like she needed you.” Aunt Becky said she had. “Nope. Aunt Selma is a good deal stronger than you’ve ever given her credit for. Besides, I’m thinking you need to find yourself a home anyway. She’s selling that one soon.”
“Why would she—? You did that, didn’t you? Just to see me on the streets. Well, I have money, so I can buy any home I want. You just wait and see.” Rayne told her she didn’t care if she had a house or not. “What a rude person you’ve turned out to be. My goodness, I should probably have beaten you once or twice to get that nastiness out of you. You should be nicer to me. I’m the only relative you have besides Selma. Did she tell you that she’s dying? Well, she is.”
“We’re all dying, Aunt Becky. And you both being in your seventies isn’t a big stretch in knowing that you’re going to die too. But if you mean the cancer, yes, she told me about it. She also told me she’s in remission. I have a feeling you would have left that part out had I not heard.” Nothing. Not a denial or anything. “By the way, Grandda is fine as well. He’s been having fun with our children. He said it makes him feel decades younger to be a great grandda.”
“He should have died long ago, the old buzzard. He’s just hanging on because he wants one of us to die first.” She thought that was as good a reason as any and told her aunt that. “Have you always been a terrible person, or am I just noticing it?”
“Always have been. Always will be.” She saw the surgeon coming down the hall. Charlie was just joining them in a wheelchair when he stopped to talk to them all. “I have to go. I’m not asking you for permission to hang up, Aunt Becky, because I know you well enough to not allow it. But I’ll talk to you some other time.”
Simply closing the connection, she stood up when Doctor Moran Davis sat across from Charlie. Since he and everyone else was going on the notion that she was Booker’s wife, he was going to speak to her first.
“He’s come through well. The bullet didn’t do much damage. But he will need to rest up and behave himself for the next week or so. He had a lot of injuries and is lucky his head is hard.” He looked at Wats. “I did take a look at his head. You’re right. It was a good sized gash. I opened it up while I was
