A Million Blessings Read online

  Dara fell in love with the quaint and neighborly feel of downtown Decatur. It was the kind of city she’d read about in the novels of her childhood. Blossoming little girls could express their creativity by wearing a pair of angel wings strapped to their backs and red and black ladybug rain boots on a perfectly cloudless day if they so desired. Nobody would look at the girl twice, except to comment on how adorable she was. Then there were the things that made the town perfect for families—like the annual beach party on the square when the city dumped sixty tons of sand out for families to romp through.

  It was a life that seemed worlds apart from the community where she regularly visited with the outreach team from church. Sometimes Dara’s hearts ached for the people, and she wished her parents could see the passion she held not only for her concierge business but for the street evangelism that she enjoyed. Dara found pleasure in leading wayward souls to Christ. And even if they rejected Him at first, she knew love could melt even the most cold and stony heart. While her parents tended to the physically dead, Dara ministered to those who were spiritually dead.

  Hunter and Thelma Knight thought that Dara could best serve her calling within the four walls of the church, or at least a ministry they considered to be safe. Her mother had admonished her to take part in serving at the homeless shelter instead. For years, Dara was expected to follow “the rules.” And the rules didn’t include riding a motorcycle.

  As a teen, Dara was called the “P. K.,” or preacher’s kid. Now at thirty-five, the initials have taken on another meaning. Dara’s love of riding motorcycles ran a close second to her first love for evangelism. To her pleasure, she’d been able to marry her two loves with a unique new ministry at her church—The Kingdom Knights. Thus her name, Pink Knight.

  Dara had shirked her parents’ conservative expectations. She’d once overheard her mother call her rebellious, but that didn’t make Dara give up the speed of her custom-painted, pink Honda Crossover.

  It wasn’t easy being the daughter of a preacher who owned a funeral home. And as popular as she was, Dara was still the source of teasing and sometimes cruel taunting, like her mama used embalming fluid as perfume. On days when it felt like too much to bear, she’d pour out her thoughts on paper. Dara had been keeping diaries and journals for as long as she could remember. Flipping the pages of her treasured books could transport her back years. She could usually tell by her handwriting whether she was having a good or a bad day—either her i’s were dotted with smiley faces or there was chicken scratch scribbled across the page. Like all children, she bumped heads with her parents, but they provided her and her brother with something the world couldn’t take away—morals and memories.

  The thought of her family made her want to call home. So when Dara finished her prayer and devotional time she called her mother at the funeral home.

  Thelma Knight answered the phone in her signature grace-filled and peaceful voice. It was the kind of voice suited to calm storms, erase fears, and bring solace to families who were facing the daunting and draining task of preparing for the burial of a loved one.

  “Hey, Ma,” Dara said, wishing she was there to get one of her mother’s squeezes.

  “Dara? Is that you?”

  “Yes, Ma. Who else do you think it is?”

  “Nobody, honey. I was just playing with you. You know I know my own child’s voice.”

  “I was about to say…”

  “Say what? Say you’re moving back home?”

  Here we go again, Dara thought.

  Chapter 4

  Dara was barely ruffled by her mother’s comments because she’d heard them so many times. She thought that after living in Atlanta for more than twelve years, her mother would get the point that she wasn’t moving back to Augusta.

  “What are you up to?” Dara said.

  “Waiting for your father to come back from the church. We have a family viewing hour at two o’clock and your brother’s handling the funeral for a young man that died in a car accident. Such a tragedy,” she tsked.

  Some would think Dara would be used to it by now, but death—more so the grieving families—always burdened her heart.

  “But enough about that,” Thelma said, probably sensing Dara’s mood. “How was your vacation?”

  “Sooooo nice, Ma. Me and India had a great time. You and Dad should take a few days and go down to Destin. He’d love staying at one of the golf resorts.”

  “I can barely get your father to leave Augusta,” her mother said. “I told him I’m going to start traveling without him.”

  “You should,” Dara said, remembering the time she’d convinced her mother to fly to New York for a few days so they could shop and go experience The Color Purple while it was on Broadway. It was her mother’s first time in the Big Apple, and Dara could barely keep up with her.

  Dara assumed her mother would tire of the constant walking and attempts to catch cabs, but she’d packed her walking shoes and gotten her full money’s worth and then some out of them.

  “Maybe he’ll consider it if you tell him,” Thelma said.

  “You’re his wife. You have more pull than I ever will,” Dara said.

  “I think if you tell him in person, he’ll be more apt to think about it. Why don’t you come up here this weekend?”

  “I can’t, Ma,” Dara said, walking back inside from the balcony. “I have outreach on Saturday.”

  “Oh, Lord.” Thelma sighed. “Are you still riding that bike out to that side of town?”

  “Yes, Ma,” Dara said. Yes, for the five hundred and eightieth time, she wanted to say.

  “Aren’t you scared somebody’s going to try and hijack you for that thing? You know with the economy the way it is, people are acting real crazy. Crazier than they already were. Even doing stuff in the middle of the day.

  “I saw on the news how these boys kicked in the door of this family’s house in broad daylight. They didn’t even care that the security cameras were around the house. I mean, they didn’t try to cover their faces or anything.”

  Dara had seen the story on the news, too. But she couldn’t live her life in fear. She prayed, tried to use caution and common sense, and went about doing what she needed to do.

  “I’m always safe, Ma. And the other riders make sure we keep each other covered, especially in prayer.”

  “That’s the other thing I don’t like. You riding around the city with a bunch of grown men. That doesn’t look right. And as much as I taught you about etiquette and carrying yourself like a lady, and you choose to ride with your legs sprawled out over a motorcycle seat. Those things were meant for men. Not women.”

  Dara chose to keep her comments to herself. She had her viewpoints, and no matter what she said it wasn’t going to make Mrs. Hunter J. Knight take off her traditional blinders.

  Dara heard her brother’s voice in the background. James didn’t know he’d swooped in yet again to save her.

  “Give me a minute,” her mother said to James. “‘I’m talking to your sister.”

  Dara heard some more muffled words in the background, then the next voice she heard was her brother.

  “What’s up, Cookie?” James bellowed into the phone. Dara pulled her ear away from the phone.

  “If you call me that again, I’m hanging up the phone,” she threatened.

  Dara’s father had given her that nickname when she was a toddler. He said it was because she was the sweetest girl he knew. They used to tease that Dara was her mother’s competition for her father’s affection, doing things like bringing him his house shoes when he walked in the door. Dara carried the nickname Cookie in her family until she reached her thirtieth birthday. After that, she forbade everybody but her parents from calling her that.

  “What do you want me to call you?” James asked.

  “By my name, big head,” Dara said.

  “If my head is big, so is your mama’s,” he said.

  “I know Mama didn’t hear you say that.”
/>   “Of course not. I ran her out of here to go and make sure the limos were cleaned out.”

  “Where’s my nephew and niece?” Dara asked.

  “At camp until three. I had to get them out of here so they could burn up some of that energy. Especially since I found Kendrick using one of the caskets as a makeshift basketball hoop.”

  “Shut up,” Dara laughed. She remembered those boring days at the funeral home. She and James had been just as inventive when their parents dragged them to work because they weren’t old enough to stay home alone. She lived for the days when her Aunt Latrice would take days off from her job so she could bring Dara and James over to spend the day with India.

  “I’m serious,” James was saying. “Your niece and nephew are off the chain. And Amber? Talk about high maintenance.”

  “You started spoiling her from day one so it’s most of your doing that she expects—and deserves—the best,” Dara said, taking up for her diva-fied niece. “By the way, did she get the necklace I sent her for her birthday?”

  “You’re talking about that necklace that her and her mama had a falling out over this morning because she couldn’t wear it to camp? Yeah, she got it. And a spanking to match it.”

  “Don’t say that. I’ll feel like it’s all my fault. She really wanted a necklace like mine with her initial on it.”

  “She didn’t want that necklace as much as she wants to see you for her birthday. We’re having a party tomorrow.”

  “Who has a child’s birthday party in the middle of the week? It’s not normal.”

  “It is if you’ve got funerals to handle on Saturday. Plus, it’s only her best friend from school and a couple of the girls from church.”

  Dara filled a glass with water and went over to soak her house plant that had sagged to the side in thirst. “Well, she won’t miss me then,” she said, moving the plant near the sunshine. “Her little buddies will be there.”

  “You can convince yourself to think that if you want to, but she keeps talking about her Auntie Dara coming for her birthday.”

  Dara reminded herself that she had to be more careful with her words. She’d told her five-going-on-twenty-five-yearold niece that she’d come and see her around her birthday.

  “I just got back home from being away for a week. I can’t come to Augusta tomorrow. I’ve got work to do.”

  “All right. I’ll tell her,” James said. “And when she falls out on the floor crying I’ll let her call you so you can explain.”

  Dara knew James was exaggerating. Neither he nor her sister-in-law would let that go down in their household. True enough, Amber was high maintenance, but even that had its limits.

  James knew which guilt buttons to push with Dara. As her older brother by four years, he knew all of her buttons to push. He knew how to irritate her until she’d finally give in. He knew how to anger her to the point that one time she’d thrown a drumstick at him. She missed him, but not their twenty-gallon fish tank. It hadn’t been a pretty scene when her father returned home.

  Dara closed the online file she’d opened for Cassius and clicked open her personal folder. Everything she needed to do for herself and for her clients could be handled by telephone. The beauty of being an entrepreneur with a business like hers was that as long as she could pack up her laptop and make the necessary phone calls, business could basically move forward without a hitch.

  Maybe India will ride with me.

  “If I come tomorrow, you better not tell Mama and Daddy. Let it be a surprise.”

  “Unlike you, I know how to keep secrets. Hold on a second,” James said, and seemed to cover the phone receiver with his hand.

  Whatever, Dara thought. I can keep secrets better than you think.

  India was still the only person who knew about the tattoo of a cross that was inked on the lower section of Dara’s shoulder blade. She’d made sure the tattoo artist positioned it where it wouldn’t be visible even if she wore a spaghetti strap tank top. Her parents were bent out of shape by her riding a motorcycle—she could only imagine the ruckus if they knew she had a tattoo. She’d never seen her father walk on water, but by the way he acted sometimes a person would think he performed the miracle on a daily basis.

  “Hello,” James said, coming back to the phone.

  “I’m still here,” Dara said. “But I gotta go. Remember what I said. You better not spill the beans, Big Head.”

  “Cookie, if I’ve got a big head, then your mama’s got a—”

  Dara hung up the phone on James before he could finish his sentence. She knew she’d pushed his buttons with that one. But he deserved it. She’d warned him not to call her Cookie again.

  Chapter 5

  Dara realized that she should really go home more often. The ride actually wasn’t that taxing, and she could make it to Augusta in less time than it took most people who lived in the outer suburbs to make it to their downtown Atlanta jobs.

  India flipped her cell phone closed. “I could’ve been showing a million-dollar house right now, but I’m on my way to a six-year-old’s birthday party. Something’s wrong with this picture.”

  Dara put on her turn signal so she could merge into the right lane. “I thought you said they were free tomorrow morning. The house will be there tomorrow.”

  India scrolled through the messages on her BlackBerry. India worked hard so that she could play harder, she always said. “You don’t keep people with money like that waiting. The money itches their palms, and you have to be on the top of their list when they’re ready to spend it.”

  “Relax,” Dara said. She turned her pearl white Mercedes-Benz into the H. J. Knight Funeral Home. After being around black limos and cars most of her life, Dara had vowed that she would never purchase a dark-colored vehicle. Thus the reason for her white Benz and hot pink motorcycle.

  India slipped her feet in her sandals and finger-combed her short cropped hair. “Take me through the side door so I won’t have to pass by any rooms with bodies in them. I can’t deal with that today.”

  “Come on, scaredy-cat,” Dara said. She pushed the button above her head to close the moonroof. She waited to pop the trunk until she was ready to catch a possible runaway balloon from the seven pink ones she’d bought from the grocery store down the street. The seventh balloon would either be a “one to grow on” or the extra to replace mishap.

  India started to lift the Easy-Bake oven out of the trunk. She hadn’t bothered to wrap it, but at least she’d found a gift bag for the child-sized apron and chef’s hat she’d also bought for Amber. With cooking clearly the theme for India’s choice of gifts, Dara didn’t see the connection with the cheetah-print child-sized purse she’d couldn’t leave the store without.

  “You can leave that stuff in there,” Dara said, wrapping the ribbons from the balloons tightly around her hand. “The child’s not having her party at the funeral home.”

  Dara entered the employee security code to unlock the side entrance door, then pushed the balloon bouquet through the door.

  “Well what in the world?” Dara heard her mother’s voice say.

  Dara pushed the balloon bouquet aside so that her mother could see her face. “Hey, Ma,” she said. “Surprise.”

  Thelma’s mouth dropped open. She looked back and forth between Dara and India as if trying to determine if they were flesh and blood or a figment of her imagination. “I ought to whip y’all,” she finally said. “Pull your pants leg up so I can get you real good.”

  Dara’s mother clutched a stack of programs and funeral home fans to her chest until India brushed past Dara and peeled them out of her aunt’s hands.

  “I don’t know about Dara, but I’m a little grown for all that,” India said.

  “You’ve always thought you were too grown for something.” Thelma held her arms open for Dara. “I have to hug my daughter first or she’ll pout all the way back to Atlanta.”

  Dara got the hug from her mother that she’d been thinking about the day bef
ore. Her meaty arms felt like the perfect body pillow that allowed Dara to sink into the contour of her mother’s body.

  Thelma was the kind of old-school woman that most people talked about as if they were an extinct species. Dara wasn’t sure that anyone outside of their household had ever seen her mother’s knees. Her skirt hems skimmed no less than two inches below her kneecaps, and the same was said of the capris she liked to wear on weekends. Her hair was impeccable, styled by her longtime beautician, Shirley, and between her biweekly visits she pinned it back into a tight chignon. Dara’s mother still sent handwritten thank-you notes and didn’t let the empty nest that she’d had for over a decade change the fact that she still cooked on Sundays like she had a crew to feed.

  Thelma kissed Dara on the cheek, then wiped away the light pink lipstick smudge that Dara knew had stained her. “That’s a cute blouse,” her mother said, running her hand along the sheer fabric of the sleeve.

  “An Atlanta shopping spree is calling your name,” Dara said. “You could even pack your clothes this evening and come back with me until the weekend. I’ll bring you back on Sunday evening after church.”

  “And what am I supposed to do all day on Saturday while you’re in the projects?”

  Dara took a deep breath. How could she want to lie on her mother’s shoulder during one minute and walk out the door the next?

  India pulled at her aunt. “I’m still waiting for my hug,” she said, putting her arm around Thelma while they all walked into the administrative offices. Dara knew her cousin and best friend was taking her place in the verbal boxing ring so she’d be the subject of her mother’s soft uppercuts.

  “I still can’t believe you cut all of your hair off,” Thelma said, turning India around so she could inspect the shaved nape of India’s neck.

  “What, Aunt Thelma? You don’t like it?”

  “Too short for my taste,” she said. “But I guess that’s how they wear it in Atlanta.”

  “This is a popular style everywhere,” she said.