Voodoo Queens of New Orleans - Vol. II | In Progress

Chapter Three: The Long Road

Still in Aza's POV. If it doesn't say the name at the top, then it carries on from the POV of the last chapter.

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I felt like the spirits were trying to tell me something, but I was being too stubborn to listen.

I was an older woman. Wiser. Smarter than before. Yet the way my mind was perceiving things, you'd think I was still in my early twenties, brushing off the truth if it was too scary to accept.

Something had happened to Lisa. I wasn't sure on what, or who might have done something to her, but I was certain something had happened to her. I wanted to be wrong; I wanted my denial to be right. But this time, I couldn't brush it off. It sent chills up my arms when I thought about it. The girls were right, and so was Mikael. Should I let them know?

I had arrived at my house, but I just sat in the car. I didn't move or even turn the car off. I just sat there, trying to put the pieces together in my head and trying to make up the story: if something happened to Lisa, then Abraham was to blame. And if Abraham was to blame, then Hezekiah was, too. That was the story. The explanation. It hurt to come to terms with it—that Hezekiah was that far gone to the point that he would do something to Lisa, despite the way he knew her; longer than anyone of us have known her. This was the story that Sajida wanted us to believe. And even though Sajida was wretched and wicked and rotten all around, me and Alize both knew her to be anything but a liar. Even before Sajida's mind went left and she became someone completely different, she was honest to us even if it hurt. I wanted her to be a liar this time, though. A big, fat, damned liar.

But Sajida wasn't no liar. We all knew that.

I saw Ben's car parked across the street—that old beaten up Caddy our daddy gave to him right before he died. I didn't know if Ben kept that thing because it was cheaper to hold on to or harder to let go of; I bet it still had our papa's scent—cigarettes and cocoa butter.

I finally turned the car off and got out. I felt heavy walking up to my door and opening it. I just felt like my entire body was burdened by something. All of them were in the living room when I came in—the girls, Mikael and Ben. They all got up when they saw me, eyes wide like I was a ghost waltzing in.

"What happened?" Kizzy asked me. Kizzy, the oldest and most mature one out of the lot, seemed to speak for them a lot. They all probably thought that I would be more open with Kizzy 'cause she was eldest. But even with her, I couldn't be open. There would be panic and all sorts of emotion if I told them what Sajida had said and where Alize had gone with her.

So, I didn't answer her question. I only looked to my brother, his face as hard as stone but his mind showing something completely different.

"Ben," I said to him, nodding towards the staircase. Without a peep, he followed me up the stairs to my study.

I shut the door behind me. Ben didn't bother to sit, and neither did I. I did walk around, though. I couldn't get my thoughts together, so I thought pacing around my study would help. And when it didn't, I decided to just spit it out.

"Something happened to Lisa," I said to Ben. His brows went deep into a frown.  "Sajida came by Alize's. She said her goonies found Lisa's car wrecked on The Long Road." 

"And you believe her?" was his first question. 

"Sajida a lot of things, Ben. But she ain't no liar. Never been a liar."

His hand ran over his eyes, then over his mouth. He sat down, then. On the arm of one of my chairs.

"She think Abraham might have had something to do with it." I bit my lip hard enough to taste blood. "You don't think...would Abraham be stupid enough to do some shit like this?"