The Prodigal Son (A Reverend Curtis Black Novel) by Kimberla Lawson Roby Page B

his laptop computer in the bedroom that Melissa had turned into office space. Actually, it was sort of a family room, too, and it was a little overcrowded, but this was where he spent a lot of his time when he needed to think and didn’t want to deal with her. However, his locking himself away never seemed to stop her, and when he looked up, he saw the door opening.
    “Can I get you anything, baby?” she asked.
    Dillon turned back to his computer screen. “No.”
    “Are you sure? I made some shrimp fettuccine, and I know you like that.”
    Dillon ignored Melissa’s last comment, pressed a few buttons, waited for the Google search engine page to appear, and typed in the words Deliverance Outreach .
    “Baby, what’s wrong?” she continued.
    Dillon sighed and then frowned at her. “Melissa, why can’t you just take a hint? Why do you have to keep harassing me when you know I don’t wanna be bothered?”
    “I’m sorry. I’m only trying to be here for you.”
    “Well, right now, I wanna be left alone.”
    Melissa eased the door closed. She was starting to irritate Dillon more and more, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could take it. He didn’t want to kick her out on the street, because he knew she had no place to go, but eventually something would have to give. What she needed to do was find a job and find her own place to stay.
    Although he understood all too well what it was like to not want to take just any job that came your way, because he was sick of his father trying to get him to do that very thing. He didn’t want to work at the church, and although he’d never come straight out and told his father that, he wished his father would stop pestering him about it.
    Dillon glanced over at a bronze-framed photo of him and his mom. It had been taken the day he was born. Oh how he wished she’d lived a lot longer and that he’d been old enough to remember her. His aunt had done the best she could for him, and he was grateful for that, but it still hadn’t been the same as being loved and raised by your own mother. He knew this because he’d spent years trying to imagine what it would have been like to receive a mother’s love.
    Dillon pulled up the church’s website and then clicked on his dad’s bio page. The first thing he saw was an official family photo that included his dad, Charlotte, Alicia, Matthew, and Curtina. Of course, this was an older photo, so Dillon was nowhere to be found, and he wondered when his father would have a new one taken. When would he include Dillon so that the world would know there were four children in the Black family and not three? But then, Dillon was sure his dad would never want to take down a photo of his precious Matthew. It wasn’t like he’d be able to get Matthew to take a new one with all of them, not when Matthew wouldn’t have anything to do with them. Which to Dillon was plain ludicrous. He’d been thinking this for a while: why worry about a son that no longer cared anything about you when you had another son who loved you and thought the world of you?
    Dillon stared at the Black family photo and suddenly thought about his aunt Susan. She’d left him several messages over the last week or so, but tonight, he needed to hear her voice. He needed to be comforted and told that everything would be all right.
    He leaned back in his chair and dialed her number.
    “Hello?”
    “Hey, Auntie, how are you?”
    “Dillon? I’m fine. How are things with you, honey?”
    “Okay, I guess. Could be better, though.”
    “Well, that doesn’t sound too good.”
    “I just wish I’d met my dad way before a year ago. It would’ve made such a difference.”
    “I wish you had, too, but at least you were able to meet him when you did. And on top of that, everything turned out fine.”
    “But that’s just it. Everything isn’t fine, and I’m not sure what else to do.”
    There was dead silence, and Dillon wondered why she hadn’t commented.
    “Are you still