Family Affair: A Smokey Dalton Story Read Free

has no friends. That loser isolated her from everyone she
knew when he took her to Madison. She wouldn’t know how to start a new life.”
    “Actually,” I said, making sure I kept
the same tone, “Helping Hands was teaching her how to make a life for herself
and her daughter.”
    “Exactly,” Valentina said. “I got a
postcard from her daughter Annie two weeks ago. She sounded happy. Linda added
a sentence thanking me. She wouldn’t just give up. Not now.”
    “You spoke to her about this?” I asked.
    “No,” Valentina said. “But leaving now
just isn’t logical.”
    Neither was staying with a man who nearly
beat her to death, but I wasn’t going to argue that point with Valentina.
    “Val,” I said, “a lot of women do things
that aren’t logical.”
    I winced as the words came out of my
mouth. I should have said “people,” but it was too late to correct myself.
    “Women are not illogical creatures,”
Valentina snapped.
    Marvella had come out of the bedroom. She
was wearing an orange dress with a matching orange and red scarf tied around
her hair. She had heard the last part of this conversation, and she was
grinning now.
    She knew the mistake I made.
    “I didn’t mean it that way,” I said. “I
just meant that people can be irrational.”
    “Linda’s not irrational,” Valentina said.
    I was already tired of this fight. “You
mean the woman who wouldn’t get into the car with me and Marvella because she
was afraid of black people? That Linda?”
    Valentina made a sound halfway between a
sigh and a growl. “Smokey, look. You have to trust me on this. I got a real
sense of her. It took her a lot of guts to run away from Duane. It took even
more to go to Chicago. But she knew it was right for Annie. Linda wasn’t going
to go back to him. Not ever.”
    “I didn’t say she would,” I said. “Maybe
she thought she could do better on her own.”
    “She knew she couldn’t,” Valentina said. “She
was terrified of being on her own. That’s why she didn’t get into the car with
you. She knew she couldn’t defend herself and Annie, and you — I’m sorry,
Smokey — but you look like every white person’s nightmare. I don’t think
she’d ever spoken to a black person until she spoke to me. Asking her to go
with you and Marvella was one step too many for her. But she did go to Chicago,
she did get her GED, she did start over.”
    “Yeah.”
    I must have sounded as skeptical as I
felt because Valentina added, “You have no idea how hard all of that was for
her. She wouldn’t be the kind of woman who would do it all over again all on
her own. Especially not with Annie.”
    I sighed. Marvella crossed her arms and
raised her eyebrows, as if asking if I was going to finish soon.
    “All right,” I said. “Let’s say I grant
you that she wouldn’t run off. What then, in your mind, could have happened?”
    Marvella rolled her eyes.
    “I think the husband found her,”
Valentina said. “I think she’s in trouble, Smokey. Both her and Annie.”
    “And this is a gut sense,” I said.
    “Stop patronizing me!”
    I almost denied that I was, but then I
realized that I would have been lying.
    “I need to know if you have facts to back
up this assumption,” I said.
    Valentina didn’t answer for nearly a
minute. Finally she said, “No.”
    “So,” I said. “It begs the question. How
could the husband have found her? Is he particularly bright?”
    “I don’t know,” she said.
    “Did you tell anyone where she went?”
    “Not even the folks here at the hot line.
Only one of the women knew what I was doing, and all she knew was that I was
going to take Linda to some of my friends in Chicago.”
    “So,” I said, then winced again. I was
even sounding patronizing. “Would she have called this man for any reason?”
    “I don’t think so,” Valentina said. “No.”
    “Then how could he have found her?”
    “I don’t know,” Valentina said. “I just
want you to check on her.