“Good!” They both answered.
“Daddy,Muffins with Momsis coming up soon. Will my mommy be able to come?” Fee asked.
“We will have to tell her about it when she calls,” I answered.
I knew that Bee was out of jail because one of my people at the jail told me she’d been released. I hoped that the first call she made was to me about the girls, but I hadn’t heard from her.
“What if she don’t come? I don’t want to be the only ones there without a mommy,” Skye said.
“We will work it out, munchkins, okay?”
The rest of the ride home was quiet. I would call Bee later. If she didn’t answer, I was going to go and find her. We needed to have a face to face conversation and end this stupid shit once and for all. If she didn’t plan on being in the girls’ life, I needed to know. I was tired of covering for her.
I pulled up to my complex and saw Tony’s truck parked in the visitor’s parking space outside the gate. I looked at the girls in the rearview mirror, they hadn’t noticed their mother getting out of the truck yet. I pulled into the parking space next to Tony’s truck.
“Mommy!” both girls screamed when Bee opened the back door of my truck.
“Hey, babies!” she smiled as the girls raced to get out of their seatbelts to get to her.
I got out of my truck and rested on the driver door watching the girls with Bee.
“Morris,” Tony nodded his head.
I looked at him then turned back to watch my girls. I didn’t have any words for a nigga who got his girl locked up but couldn’t get her out.
“You both have gotten so big and even more beautiful! Look at your hair! It’s so pretty!” Bee gushed.
The girls soaked up Bee’s compliments like two little sponges. She hugged, kissed, and doted on them before she got up the courage to speak to me.
“Hey, Moe.”
“Beatrice,” I responded. “Why didn’t you call first?”
We had rules about her just popping up at my complex. She knew she wasn’t supposed to be at my apartment without calling first. Before the rules were in place, I’d given her a code to enter the security gate. She’d popped up one time just as my property manager was leaving the apartment. Maria had stopped by to check on some repairs the maintenance crew had just completed. Bee cussed Maria and me out and accused us of being inappropriate in front of the girls before I was able to tell her that Maria was the property manager. I revoked her access to the security gate, and I put rules in place after that run in.
“I haven’t gotten all my numbers out of the cloud yet. I picked up a new phone and came right over here to see my babies.”
“Would you like for me to program it in there now? That way, we won’t have this issue again?” I offered.
“Yeah, you always was better at the technical stuff than me.” She gave me her phone. I typed in all my numbers and saved the information for her and gave the phone back to her.
“Thank you, Moe, and thanks for earlier. Here is everything back,” she said while handing me a white envelope.
I tucked the envelope in my pocket.
“We need to have a conversation, Bee.”
I saw Cam’s matte black Charger with pink rims, pull up to the gate, and slowly enter. She smiled as she proceeded through the gate.
“I know we do, Moe, and we will, but I wanted to take the girls to dinner and maybe by the store?” Bee responded.
“It’s a school…”
“I know it’s a school night, but I’ve missed them, and I want to spend some time with them, please?” Bee pleaded.
I looked down at the girls who were both holding their breath, waiting for me to answer.
“Fine. They need to be back here by nine, so I can go over their spelling words with them and check their homework.”