A Bookie's Odds Read Online Free Page B

on the table while I get ready.”
    Georgia glanced at the picture of the young woman on the wall across from the sofa. It was the first thing her father saw when he woke and the last thing he looked at before closing his eyes to go to sleep.
    “How did you put up with him?”
    She talked to the portrait whenever she was exasperated with her father. She had no recollection of the other woman. However, talking to the picture made her feel closer to her mother.
    “At times he can be impossible.” She sighed. “Of course, considering what you two had to deal with, I guess his behavior was the least of your troubles.”
    Her father never talked about the problems he’d experienced when he became involved with a woman outside his race. However, he gave her the journals her mother had kept from the time she migrated from the Philippines to three days before her death.
    It had taken Georgia several weeks to read through all the pages. Some passages, like the one detailing her mother’s family disowning her because she married a colored man, were so heart-wrenching Georgia had to put the books aside for a day before she could continue.
    Georgia marched down the short hall past the closet where her father hung his clothes. At the end, she opened the door to the bedroom no man had ventured into since she graduated from elementary school. Feeling she was a young lady who needed her privacy, she had asked her father to give her the nightly hug and kiss before she retreated into the room. Though he appeared hurt, he agreed to the new routine, and her bedroom became a man-free zone.
    She kicked off her shoes, then pulled the door shut again and stepped into the kitchen, to the left of her room.
    “You remember William Baptiste?” Her father called from the bathroom.
    “Vaguely.” She raised her voice to be heard over the water he was running.
    Actually, it was kind of hard for her to forget the first young man her father had mentored. Though she had only been four at the time, she remembered the day William collided into their lives.
    On a dare, the boy had snatched an orange from the stand outside the grocery store. Too busy looking back at the store owner yelling at him, he ran into her father.
    After boxing William’s ears, her father made him return the fruit. He then took the boy under his wing. During the school year, he made sure the youngster attended classes and kept up with his work. He also made sure the boy had productive activities to occupy his free time.
    Thanks to her father, William avoided the gangs that destroyed the lives of many young men. He graduated from high school and headed to college, yet he stopped by the bar whenever he came to the city to visit his mother and sisters.
    “He was by the other night. Do you know he’s a lawyer?”
    “Is that so? Ow, mother—”
    Georgia bit back the curse that nearly escaped when she bumped her hip on the handle to the brown refrigerator. In their house, profanity did not get one popped upside the head. Instead, she would have to endure an hour-long lecture on more ladylike methods of expressing herself.
    She kicked the appliance, then instantly regretted her mini-tantrum as pain shot through her bare toes.
    “Are you okay in there?”
    “Yes, Daddy.” She muttered one more curse under her breath before adding, “I just bumped into the refrigerator…again.”
    “Don’t know why you keep bumpin’ into it.” Her father strolled into the room. “It wasn’t a problem when you were younger.”
    “I was a lot smaller back then.” She placed the bag in one end of the double basin sink and opened the cabinet overhead.
    He chuckled. “Yeah, you were a skinny little thing. Looked like a twig with arms and legs.”
    “Thanks a lot, Daddy.”
    “You don’t look like that anymore.” Her father pulled out the chair next to the wall and sat down at the table. “You’ve grown into a pretty young lady.”
    She pulled out two chipped, blue-trimmed white plates