From Cape Town with Love Read Online Free

forget, but like they say, money can’t buy love. The damage between me and April had been done.
    April still couldn’t look me in the eye. “This isn’t about your past.”
    â€œWhat, then?” I said, my voice rising, as close to shouting as I came. “You’ve never had your ribs cracked, so you don’t know how patronizing it is to say I
like
getting hurt. Did you pull that out of a college psych book? Or is it some
Dr. Phil
bullshit?”
    A black African couple at the table beside us glanced over to see what the ruckus was. The moon-faced young woman in sunflower yellow was holding her date’s hand, but he looked bored. The woman’s forlorn eyes begged us to show a better example of courtship.
    â€œDo we really want to make this harder, Ten?” April’s voice flowed like a yoga relaxation tape. She had already started moving on.
    I thought of the old Richard Pryor routine where the calmer his woman got, the more he had a fit. I closed my eyes, forcing a deep breath. “I need to understand,” I said, opening my eyes. The lights stabbed my sudden headache. “We were fine before, and now we’re not? What changed?”
    April stared at her plate of half-eaten food. Our talk should have waited until dessert.
    â€œI’ve really been praying about this, because I started writing you letters and couldn’t find the words. There’s a quality you have—riding the chaos wave, seeing where it takes you. It’s so beautiful and free and brave, just like you. It’s the first thing that attracted me to your spirit. But now . . .” She didn’t finish. When April first met me, I was a suspect in Serena’s death; I’d been a vote against her better judgment from day one.
    April went on. “Some people can handle it—I
know
you’ll find someone who can—but I can’t anymore. I can’t sit around worrying about whether you’re going to get killed, or if you’ll have to kill somebody. I can’t live that way—or raise our kids that way.”
    I was about to promise April that I would never take another case, but the phrase
our kids
nearly made me choke on my bread. I tried to recover before she noticed, but I was too late. April gave me a resigned, heartbroken glance she tried to hide by drinking the last of her wine.
    â€œWe have kids?” I said. I felt like Rip Van Hardwick. Had I missed something?
    â€œIn two years I’ll be thirty, Ten. I want to be headed somewhere.”
    I don’t know how guys feel when they’re ready to discuss marriage and kids, but I wasn’t there yet. I was too tired to keep talking, so I should have kept my mouth shut—but I thought I knew exactly what to say. What every woman wants to hear.
    â€œAll I know is . . . ,” I said, pausing for effect. “I love you, Alice.”
    For the first few seconds, I was confused by the horror on April’s face.
    You called her ALICE,
my memory whispered, and my insides shriveled.
    â€œShit,” I said, honestly shocked. “Jesus.”
    Blasphemy was just for good measure, since April was a church girl. My words were gibberish to me, as if someone had hijacked my mouth. I couldn’t think of an apology worthy of the transgression. I suppose my faux pas could have been worse. We could have been in bed.
    There’s no good way to call your girlfriend by the wrong name—but Alice was a former client from my working days. She was one of my steadiest clients for years, despite an age difference that made her old enough to be my mother—older, really. When she died, she left me her house, and I’d been living there ever since. I’d insisted to April that I’d kept the house only out of convenience; it was worth $2 million even in a recession.
    The past was the past, I had promised April. But it wasn’t. It never was.
    â€œI can’t do this anymore,” April