The CEO's Wife

Chapter 23

Discussions 

Kirsnick Ball

I was sitting in the conference room with my uncle, Kiari, and a man we hired that was supposed to be a private investigator trying to piece together everything he had come up with the past few days. At this point, I think I wasted my fucking money.

"So, you mean to tell me a whole week went by, and all you could come up with was a couple picture at the train station?" my uncle asked him.

"The bus station," he corrected. My uncle made a face and rolled his eyes.

"But still, you weren't able to find anything but this. I could have done this myself." I told him.

"This usually doesn't happen like this," he replied. "it's like she just disappeared. She must have bought the ticket under a fake name or something because her name doesn't appear anywhere on their records."

He sat back in his chair and shrugged his shoulders. I don't know why I got so mad; something about somebody shrugging their shoulders during a conversation just set me off. I stood up from my chair and walked over to the door.

"I'll pay you for your time. Thank you for your services." I said to him.

He pressed his lips together and let out a sigh before he got up from the table and left the room with a polite goodbye. I closed the door after him and sat down at the table. "What the fuck am I going to do?"

"I don't know, man; it's been almost a full 7 days. I think if she had gone come back, she would have." My uncle looked at me with sad eyes. I knew he didn't want to say what he was saying, I didn't want to hear it, but maybe it was true. Maybe she just left and wasn't coming back.

"Man, I don't know." I leaned forward and looked at the pictures that were still sitting on the table.

The door to the conference room swung open and hit the wall behind it with a loud bag. I didn't have to look up to know who it was. Only one person in the building is bold enough to walk into a room like that.

"What do you want, old man?" I asked him.

"I have been thinking-"

"Call the news station," my uncle said with a smile.

"Shut up," the old man shot back. He turned his attention to me. "I think she went to look for lyrical."

The room went quiet. He rushed in here like he had cracked the case, and all he had to say was that. "Who the fuck is lyrical?"

"What?"

"Who the fuck is Lyrical old man."

"As much as I talk about that girl's mama, and you don't even know her name?" he folded his arms over his chest and looked at me like I was crazy.

"Melody mama's name is lyrical?" my uncle asked him.

"Yeah, Lyrical Labelle Williams, and we named our daughter Melody Mariah Young," he said.

I was about to open my mouth to speak, but my uncle cut me off again. "Hold on, man, Lyrical LaBelle."

"Yeah, like the group, you know Patti LaBelle and them and then-"

My uncle laughed a little. "Melody like music, and Mariah like-"

"Mariah Carrey,"

I couldn't do anything but put my head down in my hands before the two of them fell out laughing. By the time I looked up, my uncle was on the floor.

"What the fuck is so funny?"

"That's one of the most exotic names I've ever heard in my whole life." Offset sat back in his chair and wiped tears from his eyes.

"Man, both of yall shut up," I said to them. "Why do you think she went to look for her mom?"

"Alright, it might be a long story, so just sit back and listen."

"Oh, this should be good." my uncle leaned forward in his chair with an amused smile. I don't have time for stories, but I know that if I don't listen to the whole story, then I'll never get the information that I need.

"Alright, old man, but make it quick I don't have all day to play around," I said to him.

He led me from the conference room all the way back to my house and to a box that he had sitting at the table. The box had come from the room where most of the stuff from Melody's house was stored. We had gone through everything, but there was nothing in there but a yearbook and some old notebooks from when she was in school.

"What's this supposed to be?" I asked him.

"I was looking through the yearbook cause I wasn't around for much of her high school days," he said.

"Or any of her days, for that matter," I said. He looked over at me and rolled his eyes.

"Shut up and listen, we had skipped all this stuff Cause we thought it was just old school stuff, but I don't know if you noticed, but this was sitting in the middle of the room wide open when we went in there," he said.

"Right," I said.

"We thought it was just school stuff, but I started going through the notebooks, and one of them was like a diary." He grabbed the black composition book and flipped it open to what he was looking for. "She wrote a lot about some boy she liked name Travis, but on one of these paged she talked about a picture of her mom in front of the oasis."

"Right," I said.

"Are you listening or just saying shit?" he asked.

"I'm listening," I told him.

"I think she went to the oasis to find out about her mother," he said.

"So, we need to go there," I said. I looked up at him, and the look on his face was weird. He looked around like his stomach was hurting. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"There are some things about her mother that I never told her. Some things she just assumed, and I went along with it because those things were easier than the truth," he said.

"And what's the truth?" I asked him.

"You should pack a bag," he said without answering my question. "it's a long drive, so I'll have enough time to tell the story on the way."

I nodded. "Alright,"