Then why did I bring her flowers?Why ask her to stay here where I can watch over her? There were other options and I had taken none of them. This distraction was brought on by my own actions. For once, Mikal, you’re not to blame.
As I sat down on the leather couch, my cell phone rang. If it was Burke coming up with some lame excuse to stop by, he could forget it. If she had forgotten anything or he needed to drop something off, I would send Mikal for it. I didn’t want people here whom I didn’t trust, and I did not trust Burke.
Do I trust Alysa?I wanted to say no, yet here she was, at my home. I’d known her for only a week. Some people I’d known most of my life and I still didn’t break down the walls like I had with her.
I was so distracted with thoughts of Alysa that I hadn’t even pulled my cell phone out of my pocket to check who had been calling. It was too late. The ringing had stopped. Let them leave a voicemail.
Instead, it rang again. This time I pulled it out and noticed it was my sister.
“Hello Reesa, is everything okay?” I answered. She rarely called, or as she says, she “doesn’t waste her time checking up on me when I won’t tell her the truth anyway.” She might be older than I, but it was still my job as her brother to protect her.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” she stated. “I heard you were at the hospital. Have you been ill?”
“No. A…an employee of mine was.” Damn it. Why do people have to talk about everything I do?
“And you went to visit him? He must’ve been very sick, because I know you do not like going there,” she said.
“No one likes going to a hospital.”
“True. So how is your friend, I mean employee, doing?”
“Fine.”
“Jasper, you’re talking less than usual. What aren’t you telling me? Did you do something that caused your employee to be hospitalized?”
“What kind of boss do you think I am?” I asked, insulted. I deserved better from my own sister.
“The kind who doesn’t like being lied to, or manipulated or….”
“I get it. You can call me difficult and unreasonable if you so choose, but the people I employ have been thoroughly vetted and I believe them to be honest.” If I wanted to surround myself with pieces of scum, I’d do business like Ocalla. Shit attracts flies.
“You expect people to be perfect. There are no such ones in existence. That includes you, my dear brother.”
“I never claimed to be any such thing,” I said defensively.
“And yet you demand it from others.”
“Reesa, you have been telling me the same thing since we were children.” It got old long ago.
“And yet you don’t seem to have heard any of it. You need to let go, Jasper. Follow your own advice. Let people’s mistakes from their past stay in the past. Give them a chance to do better now. That’s what the Hendersons are doing. They are giving people jobs, even people you wouldn’t hire. But if they screw up again, they’ll be gone.”
It felt like a knife to the gut hearing Reesa compare me unfavorably to the Hendersons. I loved my sister, but she was blinded just like everyone else. Their father, James Henderson, had practically destroyed Tabiq, feeding on the moral turpitude of a few and capitalizing on their greed. I look at his offspring. I see how they do not look alike. I also see how some of them favor a Tabiqian mother. But they’re not Tabiqian. They’re American. And worst of all, they all have that bastard in common.
“Reesa, I have things I need to attend to. Maybe we can pick up this conversation again after the election,” I suggested.
She laughed. “That is in eleven weeks.”
I know.“Exactly. Which means I am a very busy man. Unless you’re going to tell me you will be voting for Ocalla?”
“Don’t even think such a thing. He’s a vile man. If you saw the way he looks at the young girls…” Reesa didn’t finish.
I didn’t need her to. But plenty of people would vote for him out of fear of retaliation. Getting those people to understand that the only way to take his power away is to not bend to it – that would be the work of the next eleven weeks. Easier said than done. I hoped I’d be able to show my countrymen that I was the only choice Tabiq really had.
“Then help me.”
“How?” she asked.
“Tell everyone you know not to be afraid. Go out and vote for me. Let me worry about Ocalla. Once I’m president, he will have nowhere to hide,” I stated.