A haunting past

13.4 Leroy Cage

Spring 1997, The Mudhole

This saturday Delilah had sent Leroy with his friends to dance. She told him he could use a break, too. At first he had hesitated to leave her home alone with the baby, but she assured him she would be fine, and now he was glad he had listened to her.

Mae was there, too. At the party for his son, Leroy's friends had gotten along really well with her.

So they ended up going out to the night club together.

Mae was about to get married, and of course she had to talk about it a lot. Leroy remembered the time before his own wedding, Delilah had been the same.

"You really want to do all the food alone?", he asked her, knowing from his own experience working at a catering company, that it took a lot of effort to prepare so much.

"I have to show off my cooking skills!", she laughed.

He was curious to see how she would pull it off.

And Mae had spontaneously invited them all, so he would.

Just when he wanted to say something again, he saw his brother storming in.

"Get out, we have to talk!", Frank snapped at him.

The same second they were in front of the door, Frank shot at him: "Why did you give my phone number to that woman?!"

Ouch.

Leroy knew it might not have been a good idea, but she had asked so nicely.

"She called me just earlier! And why did you even call her?! You did, no?"

Frank was really angry.

Leory guessed his brother had thrown down the phone the same second he heard her voice, and rushed here.

"Well, I wanted to tell her what has happened so far" , Leroy tried to explain himself.

"She's our mother, so deserves to know...", he tried to continue.

But Frank interrupted him.

"She deserves nothing! Look, if you want to play happy family with her, go for it, but leave me out of it, okay?!"

Then he left.

Leroy knew that his brother wasn't on good terms with their mother... well, if you wanted to put it in a nice way.

But Leroy didn't expect he would still hold the old grudges.

On the other hand, Frank had suffered from her... bad side much harder than Leroy himself.

Only much later, when he was older, and they were taken long time to foster care, Leroy had understood that his brother also had always tried to keep the worst from him.

Somehow Leroy had forgotten of that, until now.

Leroy didn't want to dance anymore.