No, I had to put on my big-girl panties, tell the truth, and deal with the consequences—however frightening they might be.
43
Paula
RETURNING TO MY NORMAL HOUSEHOLD duties felt strange. With Steven gone, I didn’t think that normalcy would ever return again. It had actually been quiet around here. My children still were away. I’d talked to them this morning. The boys weren’t in a hurry to come home, and Tahiry wouldn’t be back from camp for two weeks. I was going to do like my mom said and enjoy my peace, but honestly, I wouldn’t have minded hearing the chatter of my children.
I was folding the last of the laundry and had just placed a stack of towels in the linen closet when the doorbell rang. I peeked outside and saw the UPS deliveryman.
“Hi,” he said after I opened the door. “I have a delivery”—he glanced down at his clipboard—“for Steven Wright.”
I was momentarily speechless. What was I supposed to say? “Sorry, Steven is dead”? Or, “Sorry, Steven can never sign for another package”? So I just said, “I’ll take it.”
Back inside, I opened the package. I couldn’t believe the emotions that were flowing through me. What had my husband ordered? I slowly pulled the package open. My heart dropped when I saw the blue Tiffany’s box inside.
“Oh, my God,” I said, after opening the box. It contained a beautiful white-gold chain-link bracelet with a dangling heart and the most beautiful inscription: I want to grow old with you. SW. Happy Anniversary.
I fell to the floor in tears and didn’t look up until my mom entered the living room.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
I managed a nod. “Yes.” I held the box out toward her. “I just got this. Apparently, Steven was having it delivered to arrive in time for our anniversary.”
“Oh, honey,” my mom said. She took the bracelet out and examined it. “Oh, my God, it’s beautiful.”
I pulled myself up off the floor. “I guess this is a sign. Everyone keeps telling me to let the anger go, the quest for answers, everything. I prayed for God to send me a sign that that’s what I needed to do. I wanted some kind of confirmation that I was doing the right thing.”
She eased the bracelet onto my arm. “Well, you got your sign.”
I put my hand over my mouth to stifle a sob.
“Paula,” my mother said, “don’t focus on what happened on the night Steven died. Look at the life he lived. And the legacy”—she handed me an envelope—“that he’s leaving you and your children.”
“What’s that?” I asked, taking it.
“Came in the mail for you. It’s from New York Life Insurance Company, so I thought it might be important.”
I frowned as I pulled myself up off the floor. “That’s strange. Our life insurance is through AIG.”
I tore the envelope open and fell back against the wall in sheer shock at the sight of the check I was holding in my hand.
“What is it?” my mom said, leaning over. She clutched her heart. “Glory be to Jesus! Does that say two million dollars?”
I knew that Steven had insurance through his company. But I had no idea that he had taken out an additional life insurance policy.
“What . . . Who? I didn’t even fill out the paperwork.” I rifled through the envelope until I saw a letter. I was reading it when my mom nudged me and said, “Read it out loud.”
I started reading: “ ‘Hey, Paula. I know you are swamped, so I went ahead and processed your paperwork for Steven’s life insurance policy. I know this can’t bring him back, but he loved you and the kids so much and he wanted you to be taken care of. Let me know if you need anything. Love, Carl.’ ” I looked at my mom. “It’s from Steven’s friend, Carl. He’s an insurance agent.” I stared at the check again. “Oh, my God. I had no idea.”
“Wow. I think that’s quite a nice way to say ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
“Mama!”
“I know that’s bad, but it’s the truth.” She looked up toward the ceiling. “Steven, I don’t know if my daughter forgives you, but I sure do.”
“Mama, you are so foul.” I actually managed to laugh through my tears.
“Whatever. Nothing says ‘I’m sorry’ like a two-million-dollar check.”
I held the check to my chest. We’d already received five hundred thousand dollars in life insurance from Steven’s job. We would live off that. This, I’d use to pay off the house, then put the rest up for my kids. “This money is for my children’s future.”
“Okay, okay. It’s for the kids. But let me hold twenty bucks for bingo. I’m feeling lucky.”
I laughed as I pushed my mom out the door. I had so many questions and conflicting feelings about what had happened with Steven, but I felt a lot better. Not because of the money. I hated what he did, but the gift and the supplemental insurance policy announced his feelings loud and clear. My husband loved me—flaws and all. And that is the memory that I would choose to cherish.
44
Felise
YOU CAN’T CONTINUE THIS WEB of lies. My older sister’s words continued to ring in my ears as I watched Greg walk up the path to our house. I’d been watching out for him since he answered my call and agreed to come over.
I said a silent prayer asking God to give me strength to not back out at the last minute.
“Hey,” I said, opening the door before he had a chance to unlock it. I stepped aside and motioned for him to come in.
“Hey,” he dryly replied, walking in. “Where’s Liz?”
“She’s at her friend’s house. I felt like we should talk alone.”
He hadn’t been home in a week. He’d been holed up in a hotel, and I felt like he was sinking into a depression. It was time for this madness to end. It was time for me to tell the truth.
“I don’t know what there’s left for us to talk about.” Greg sighed heavily.
“Now that things have calmed down, I want to tell you everything.”
He had a look on his face like he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it, so I motioned for him to sit down in the living room. “Please. Have a seat.” He did, apprehensively, never taking his eyes off me.
I took a deep breath. God give me strength. “I asked you here because I wanted to tell you why I took the money,” I began. “The real reason.”
“I’m listening.”
Don’t do it—now Fran’s voice was ringing through my head. I shook it away and continued talking. “I was being blackmailed.”
I expected him to balk, drop his mouth in confusion, even call me a liar, but instead he only said, “By whom and for what?”
“By Sabrina Fulton. My old college roommate.”
“Why would Sabrina be blackmailing you?”
I took another deep breath, and a lie slid to the edge of my tongue. But I’d done enough lying. I wanted to come clean. I needed to come clean if I wanted to save my marriage. Because one lie had spawned another, and the string of them was slowly killing me. My gut told me that the truth was going to eventually come out. I couldn’t risk Greg opening his email one day and finding the video. I knew my husband. If our marriage could be salvaged at all, the truth had to come from me.
“There is no one else. I’m not having an affair. I swear.” Could what Steven and I did even be classified as an affair? I shook away that thought. I needed to focus. “I want to be very clear about that.”
He was studying me, trying to detect any lies. “Okay, if you’re not having an affair, then what’s been up with you?” he asked. “What did you do to allow someone to blackmail you?”
I thought about telling him that I did meet Steven and I did go up to his room, but that we didn’t do anything. However, Greg knew that I didn’t come home that night. That story would only infuriate him even more because of how implausible it sounded. He wouldn’t believe anything but the truth. So I simply said, “The night of our anniversary, I was very upset and I went to the Four Seasons to go to the bar. I sat there and drowned my sorr
ows.” I could tell Greg was waiting with bated breath. “Well, I bumped into someone while I was there.”
“Who?”
I had to dig deep inside my soul to utter my next words. “Steven.”
“Paula’s Steven?”
I nodded, and his brow furrowed as if he was thinking. “Wait, that’s the night he died. Did you . . . Were you? . . . You spent the night with him?”
I nodded as my eyes filled with tears.
“Are you kidding me?” he yelled, jumping up from his seat. “You had sex with Steven?”
Again, silence on my end. There were no words to justify my indiscretion, so I remained quiet.
“Paula is your best friend. Steven is . . . He’s like family!”
“I know. I didn’t mean for it . . . I mean, it just happened,” I stammered.
“You don’t just happen to fall into bed with your best friend’s husband!” he screamed.
My shoulders trembled as the waterworks began. “Neither one of us intended for it to happen. We’d had too much to drink, and one thing led to another.” I decided to leave out the information about all the unresolved feelings because my husband could handle only so much.
“Felise, how could you?” he cried. I didn’t miss that, unlike the other day when he accused me of sleeping with some stranger, he didn’t seem angry, exactly. Today, he seemed more hurt. And that hurt my heart.
“It just happened,” I repeated. I did force out a lie when I added, “It meant nothing.”
“So you cheated on me, you hurt me like this, and it meant nothing? Screwing him wasn’t even worth it to you?” he questioned, his voice cracking. “You throw away everything we built over something that meant nothing?”
“We both knew it was wrong. We both swore it would never happen again. Please believe me,” I pleaded.
“Believe you? I don’t know how I’ll ever believe anything you say again. Here I am trying to figure out what’s wrong with me. What I’m doing wrong to the point that you can’t even stomach my touch. And it wasn’t even about me? You were feeling guilty because you slept your best friend’s husband on our anniversary?” He stopped his rant and stood, pensive. “Wait, so . . . d-did you kill him?”
“No!” I exclaimed. “The next morning, I woke up to find he wasn’t breathing. And I freaked out and just left.”
“Oh, this just keeps getting better!” Greg released a pained laugh. “You sleep with him, you cheat on me, and then you leave him for dead? Did you even call for help?”
“He was already dead. I didn’t know what to do.”
He stared through me, totally repulsed. “I don’t even know you.” He headed toward the door. “I wish you were cheating with some random guy.” He spun around to face me. “That, I could handle. That was payback for my indiscretion years ago. I rationalized that. An eye for an eye. But this . . . Our friend? My child calls him uncle!” He shook his head. “I need to get out of here before I catch a case.”
The disgusted look on his face broke my heart. The hurt expression tore at my insides, and the rage in his eyes told me I might have made the biggest mistake ever by coming clean.
45
Felise
I HAD WONDERED IF MAVIS had told her husband, Charles, about my situation. Judging from the look of disdain on his face, I realized she must have.
“Hello, Charles,” I said anyway.
“Umph,” he grunted as he stepped aside to let me in. “Mavis, it’s your sister,” he called out before disappearing back into the den.
Mavis came out of the kitchen, an apron wrapped around her waist. “Hey, lil sis. I was just cooking. What brings you by?”
“I just stopped by to see what you were up to.” I felt so awful about everything with Greg yesterday. I hadn’t slept at all. I’d called in sick to work, and I needed my sister to tell me that I had done the right thing. Not that it mattered now, but I needed to talk to her.
“Just cooking dinner. Phillip will be home for another two weeks before school starts,” she said, referring to my nephew. “You know he doesn’t eat worth anything up at that college, so I’m fixing all of his favorite things, fattening him up before he goes back.”
I glanced back toward the door to make sure Charles was out of sight. “Why did you tell Charles?” I whispered.
She glanced over her shoulder, too, back toward the den, then motioned for me to follow her.
“Girl, I didn’t tell Charles,” she said once we were back in the kitchen. She lowered her voice. “Your husband did. He called Charles last night and told him everything. You didn’t tell me you used Liz’s college money to pay that girl off.”
“I only used some of it. I was going to pay it back. How else did you think I was getting the money?” I asked when I saw the look of shock on her face.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think about it. But your daughter’s college fund?”
“I was desperate, Mavis.” I didn’t expect my sister to understand. Hell, I didn’t even understand. I didn’t know who this woman was that I had turned into.
She gave me a sympathetic look. “I know how hard this is for you, so I’m not going to beat you up anymore.”
“Greg is pretty upset.” I slid into a seat at the kitchen table.
“You do understand why, don’t you?”
“I do. I just hope he forgives me.” Even as I repeated the refrain that had been running through my head all night long, my heart told me it wasn’t going to happen.
“Well, time heals all wounds, so we’ll see. But don’t you feel better about coming clean?”
I cut my eyes at her. This was one time I probably should have listened to Fran. “No.”
“Well, right now you don’t. But think about it. You don’t have to spend the rest of your days wondering if Sabrina is going to pop up out of the woodwork, and you don’t have to build one lie on top of the other.”
I fidgeted with the salt and pepper shakers. “Almost. Paula still doesn’t know.” I knew that she was next on the list. She needed to hear it from me before Sabrina told her.
“I’m going to tell her. I have to. I just don’t know when. You don’t think Greg would tell her?” I asked, experiencing a sudden panic. “I didn’t even think about that.”
“I believe Greg really cares for Paula as well, so he wouldn’t want to further hurt her like that,” Mavis replied.
I nodded. “And he hasn’t said he’s leaving me for good. Greg is the type that if he stays, he wouldn’t want anyone to know. That’s why I’m a little shocked that he told Charles.”
“Well, I’m praying it all works out,” my sister said as she went back to stirring a huge pot on the stove. “I added you to the prayer circle at church. You might want to consider coming.”
“Nah, I’m good. I don’t think the Lord wants to hear from me right about now.”
“He wants to hear from you all the time.” She flashed a chastising look. “Not just when you’re in trouble.” She set the spoon down, wiped her hands again, and came over and sat across from me at the table.
“You know how I feel about what you did,” she said. “But I also believe acceptance is a very important part to being able to move on. Acceptance will put an end to your internal struggle—the one where you keep wishing the affair had not happened the way it did or hurt as many people. Once you stop struggling with what happened, calmness will start to take its place and you can find the peace you need.”
That was laughable. Even if Greg forgave me, I didn’t see how I’d ever be at peace with what I’d done.
“I see your disbelief all over your face,” she said. “God is capable of creating calm in the midst of a storm.” Before I could respond, my sister took my hands, bowed her head, and began praying. At first, I was a little stunned, and then I began listening intently as she prayed for peace. Nothing else. Not for Greg or Paula to forgive me. Just peace.
“What was that for?” I asked when she was done.
46
Paula
IF BURYING MY HUSBAND WAS the hardest thing I ever had to do, this was the second hardest.
I put his Nike T-shirt up to my nose and inhaled. Even though it was clean, it still had his scent. I took a deep breath, folded it, and placed it in the box with the rest of his belongings.
I had been putting off this day since we put Steven in the ground. But sleeping in this room every night, surrounded by all things Steven, was making my healing harder.
I’d gone to a support group over the weekend. I wanted someone who was objective, who didn’t know me or Steven. I needed someone to give me feedback on my grief. I had pushed aside all the things I didn’t know—if he was with another woman, who she was, etc.—and just focused on my grief. I learned that everything I was feeling was natural. Each of the women, and men, in the group had felt the same at one time or another. And while they’d said every person’s length of grieving was different, I sided with those who felt that in order to move on, they had to move out their loved ones’ belongings.
I had to do it because every time I saw Steven’s things, I wanted to cry. And while crying was healthy, it was keeping me locked in place. And for that reason, I knew that I needed to pack up his belongings.
My cell phone rang, and I answered when I saw Felise’s name “Hey, Felise.”
Silence filled the phone.
“Felise?”
“H-hey, Paula,” she said. “Um, what are you doing?”
“Doing what I told you I would do—packing up Steven’s things.”
I had called Felise last night about my decision, and she thought it was a good idea as well. To my surprise, though, she had offered to come over to be here with me because she knew how difficult it would be. She had said she wanted to talk to me, but I wasn’t in the mood for an it’s-time-to-move-on pep talk. I was doing this, but on my own terms.
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