Just Can't Get Enough Read Free

she left the country. It was past time for her to go to South Carolina and spend time with him. She had to forgive Thomas and allow him into her life in a more significant way before it was too late. And if his letter was any indication, the clock was about to strike midnight.

CHAPTER 2
    Everything seemed to move at light speed after Celina received her father’s letter. Two days after she announced that she was leaving, she was in a rental car turning down Drivel Drive in Elmore, South Carolina, her birthplace.
    Elmore was a quaint little town an hour away from the state capital. Other than the azalea bushes, there wasn’t much going on in Elmore. Many of the people who lived in the town were retirees or lifers, folk who had never gone farther than Columbia.
    The moment Celina’s plane touched down in Columbia, she’d called Rena and told her about Thomas’s letter. She heard her mother gasp over the phone when she told her that her father was dying.
    â€œI’m glad you’re going to him. I thought something was going on when he called and asked for your address,” Rena had said. “He needs you and you need him.”
    Celina had agreed and, as she turned into her father’s driveway, she realized that she did need him. She needed him to answer questions that had haunted her for twenty years. Why hadn’t he fought for his family all those years ago? She parked the car behind Thomas’s beat-up Ford pickup truck. A smile spread across her face as she remembered the days she and her neighborhood friends played on the bed of the truck. It had been her favorite hiding place when she and Darius McRae, her best friend at the time, played hide and seek. He’d always find her, though. Celina hadn’t thought about Darius in years. The last time she’d talked to him was her sophomore year of high school. For no reason at all, the two had lost contact. The last she’d heard he was a hotshot lawyer in Washington, DC. It’s good he’s living his dream too, she thought, as she got out of the car. We were lucky to get away from here.
    The first thing Celina noticed when she stepped off the asphalt driveway was the lush green grass. The lawn looked as if it had been cut with scissors; not a blade was overgrown. The azalea bushes were in bloom and the blossoms were so purple that Celina thought they had been painted. She wanted to capture the yard on canvas and hang it in the living room above the fireplace. At that moment, she realized that Thomas didn’t have any of her work adorning his walls, while her mother and John had several of her prints, including a portrait she’d created for them on their tenth anniversary. Celina knocked on the front door, since she didn’t have a key to her father’s home. A few seconds passed before she knocked again. Worried and fearing the worst, she turned the knob, found the door unlocked, and walked into the house.
    The state of the home where she spent the first eight years of her life took her breath away. The carpet was stained beyond recognition. It was no longer nutmeg brown; it just looked like plush dirt. The yellow paint on the walls had faded and the mantle above the fireplace was sagging and threatening to fall to the floor. “Daddy,” Celina called out. “Daddy.”
    A frail Thomas Hart slowly ambled into the living room. He was wrapped in a flannel robe, despite the fact that it was over ninety degrees outside. Celina studied her father’s face. His caramel skin looked ashen, his face gaunt, and his eyes, black like hers, had lost their sparkle. His hair was completely white and thinning across the top of his head.
    Celina’s bottom lip trembled as she looked at her father. This wasn’t Thomas Hart, a man who had to fight women off with a stick. This man standing before her looked as if he’d given up on life and was waiting for death to take him away.
    â€œDaddy, sit