Sweet Violet and a Time for Love by Leslie J. Sherrod Page A

leaving tonight. His plane leaves tonight. I can’t let him take off like this.” I turned toward the crosswalk intending to cross the street to get to my waiting son.
    But Roman had just hailed a cab.
    I had taken only two steps away from the car when it happened.
    He hadn’t just been looking away, I realized. He had been flagging down a ride.
    Roman didn’t want to talk to me.
    Leon was right. Roman was a grown man making his own decisions. And right now, he’d decided that he didn’t want to talk to me. The weight of that realization pressed down on me more than the eight-month-old baby sagging down my forty-year-old belly.
    I was supposed to have a fortieth birthday party in January. Roman had promised to plan it, take care of all the details. Was even going to send me on a cruise and had taken pride in being able to pay the hefty bill himself, despite my own newfound fortune.
    But the party, the cruise didn’t happen. All plans went out of the window during his Christmas break.
    The dinner that turned disastrous.
    â€œSienna, you need to eat before court resumes; eat and sit somewhere comfortable.” His eyes were on my stomach.
    His child.
    My child was now a man and he was about to get into a taxicab, on his way to a flight to another life that left in just a few hours.
    The new life inside of me gave a hard kick to my ribs and I realized I only had about forty-five minutes left to eat with no idea where Leon had made reservations.
    â€œOkay, I’m ready. Let’s go.” I turned back to Leon, took his extended hand and sat down next to him in the back of his old friend Mike’s car.
    Joe Koletsky shut the door for us and walked off, disappearing into the crowd. He was a quiet man who always dressed impeccably in a black suit. His suits matched his black hair, which he kept parted and gelled down.
    â€œNext stop, my dining room.” Mike Grant smiled and winked at me in the rearview mirror, and I had a sudden memory of why I’d always felt ambivalent about hanging around him.
    â€œI thought you made reservations, Leon.” I didn’t even bother whispering now as we sped up Calvert Street. Mike drove like there were lights and sirens going off on his car although we were in his personal vehicle. We were already three blocks away from the chaos.
    â€œWe do have reservations. Just had to be creative about it. Mike and Shavona have lunch waiting for both of us. All three of us.” He gave a half nod, half smile at my belly. “We don’t have much time and I’m trying to give you some kind of peace and privacy.”
    Peace and privacy?
    With Mike and Shavona?
    Peace and privacy were the last two words that came to mind when Mike and Shavona Grant were any part of the sentence. I would have said so with my eyes—I’d become an expert with the nonverbal talk since my wedding date—but after our quick spat over my insistence to talk to my son, I decided to let this one go.
    I was hungry, and, from the kicking going on inside of me, so was the other person in our party of three.
    This was not how I pictured this pregnancy going. I sighed, as Mike pulled his car up in front of a large row home facing Patterson Park. Court case, chaos, continual spats with Leon, Roman leaving, and the nagging feeling that I was missing something important.
    You livin’ life with your eyes closed, thinking you’re awake.
    That woman’s words held as much potency as her wretched breath. How I had managed to sit next to her the few times I caught her downtown in the War Memorial Plaza would forever remain a mystery.
    Lord, I hope Sweet Violet had nothing to do with this series of deaths for which I’m serving as a witness. It was a silent prayer, but one I found myself praying weekly. Actually, now daily, since I hadn’t seen her in a while.
    She couldn’t be involved, I assured myself. I’d gone over everything with Leon: my