Latter Rain by Vanessa Miller

He had to put his hand over his mouth so Isaac and Nina wouldn’t hear him. The look on his mother’s face that day was priceless. He’d pay money to see it again.
    Charles had called him a dog. Well, he could call him a stalker now. Mickey liked the sound of that. Yeah, the night stalker. He just never imagined that the DA’s woman would be Isaac’s baby’s mama. Talk about total turn about. This girl needed to pick which side of the law she was going to pull her men from. She was probably a bad mother just like his had been. Maybe she was the informant that got Isaac sent up all those years ago. Maybe offing her would be doing Isaac a favor. Paying him back for all the advice and upstart money.
    â€œDon’t waste tears over that one, Isaac. I’ll have a bullet in her before you send off the next child support check,” Mickey whispered with a smile on his face as he thought of the good deed he was about to do for Isaac. But then the smile faded as he realized that relieving Nina Lewis of her life meant Isaac would have to watch the kid. Isaac had been his mentor. He’d taught him everything he knew about running the streets. Now he was on top. He commanded respect. No way was he going to give the man who helped him get where he was today the full time responsibility of raising Chucky.
    Mickey drove away from the house wondering where Charles’s mother lived.

9
    An hour had passed before Isaac realized that he’d forgotten Donavan. He slammed his fist on the steering wheel. Here he was disappointing his son again. “God, I make my own self sick.”
    Isaac knew the signs of a hoodlum. Shoot, he had given new meaning to the term. And his son was heading in that direction fast. He needed a firm hand. A good beating every now and then would keep him on the straight and unhand-cuffed way. But Nina wanted to coddle the boy. Breastfeed him until he drowned on the eleven-year-old milk she was dishing up.
    He wanted to turn around. Go back and get his son. But he didn’t have the strength to see Nina again. Couldn’t look at that engagement ring and remain calm. He barely got out of there without smashing his fist against the porch banister as it was. If he went back now, Nina would feel vindicated in all her rightness if he lost his cool and got to acting typical; with fist smashing into something.
    Anyway, he was still fuming from her last comment. She had the audacity to tell him to be a man and handle his business . What had he been doing for the last five years? Forget all this drama. He didn’t need Nina Lewis and he certainly didn’t need Usually Wrong.
    Isaac considered that maybe it was time for Donavan to move in with him. He’d approached the subject with Nina on several occasions, but she always resisted. Her son needed his mommy. And anyway, what would she do with all that breast milk if she let her son grow up and become a man? Man, ha. His son was a hoodrat. “Like father, like son. Is that the way it’s going to be, Donny-boy?”
    Isaac was no fool. He’d come from the streets. The streets of Dayton still sung his praises. He knew a potential state employee when he saw one. Donavan might as well have the license plate making tools in his hands right now.
    But Isaac hadn’t said ‘Yes’ to Jesus just so he could stand in a courtroom and watch the gavel come down on his only son. He’d deal with the situation. Put Donavan back on an eleven-year-old good-kid kind of path. But not this weekend. He was drained. He would go home, lick his wounds and prepare his Sunday morning sermon.
    The cushion of his bed did little to calm his troubled mind. He was tired, but didn’t want to sleep. They were on his bed again. Pressing on him, weighing down his mattress. Scream , he told himself. But one of them had clamped his mouth shut. Prickly tentacles massaged his scalp, taking him under. Dragging him into the abyss. One