by E. N. Joy
“Why?” Paige cried out.
Had her daughters been home, Paige’s wails would have probably scared them to death. At the moment Paige would have thanked God the girls were safe and sound at her parents’ house, but she wasn’t about to thank God for a darn thing! All she could fix her mouth to do right now was curse Him.
Paige looked down at the HIV test results. They were the last of the last HIV tests results she and her girls would be having done. She’d made that decision a couple weeks ago when she’d had her blood drawn. Although she felt as though she was safe from not having contracted the disease from Blake, considering the first two tests were negative, she wanted to take another one for general purpose. Third time was a charm . . . and final confirmation. That and the fact that she was getting closer than ever with Ryan. She had no plans whatsoever to give her body to him anytime soon, but they’d kissed and whatnot. And after their date last night, she knew beyond a doubt that one day she’d give him her heart.
If she didn’t know any better, she’d say that last night on their date she’d given him her soul, and he had given her his. Before last night there had been so many details of her life she felt compelled yet scared to share with him, and so she’d kept the details locked and tucked securely within her soul. There’d been so many intricate details she hadn’t laid out, one being the fact that her husband from her first marriage had tested HIV-positive. She didn’t want the ultimate whammy, and the thing that forced her to reveal this detail, to be having to tell him that she was HIV-positive. So, she decided to go ahead and get one last test. Those test results were one of the wrinkled-up documents that now lay on Paige’s bed. When Paige received the negative test results in this morning’s mail, she was ecstatic. She’d done a Holy Ghost dance right there in her living room.
She’d cried tears of joy and then gathered enough composure to go on and read the rest of the mail. Now here she sat still crying, but now, after being greeted in the mailbox by the other document that lay on Paige’s bed, she was no longer crying tears of joy. Just like always, she hadn’t had a tight enough grip on joy and the devil had skipped along and snatched it out of her hand . . . and God had let him.
“No, no, no! He can’t have my daughter. He can’t!” Paige punched the letter she’d received in her mailbox today from Blake’s attorney. They were kindly informing Paige that they’d learned of Adele’s existence. In short, the letter said that they did the math and realized that unless Paige was, in fact, having an affair with Norman during their marriage, then Adele was Blake’s child, in spite of Norman’s name being on the birth certificate. A copy of the birth certificate was attached to the letter.
Paige read the attorney’s letter again for the umpteenth time. Whenever she read the line about them filing an order for a paternity test, she cringed. “I could go away,” Paige spoke. “I could pack up my babies and just go.” She looked over at the family portrait of her and the girls that Ryan had taken that rested on her nightstand. “Isn’t that right, little ones? Mommy can go away and it can be just the three of us. We’ll live happily ever after. Just us. No man.” Paige smiled, visualizing her fantasy. “Maybe a Caribbean island somewhere. We’ll spend days on the beaches building sandcastles.” She talked to the picture as if her daughters might respond. “How’s that sound to you?”
Paige was taking her own thoughts seriously even though she knew one could run but they couldn’t hide. The letter in hand had proven that. She’d tried to run from her problems, yet everything had caught up with her and seemed to be crumbling down. As much as she’d wanted to celebrate her negative HIV test and the positive life she wanted to start with Ryan, she couldn’t because the black cloud of Blake trying to take her daughter away from her had consumed her.
“How did he even know? How did he even find out about Adele?” Paige asked herself. She tried to think of who could have told him, but they didn’t have any mutual friends who could have passed on that information to Blake.
Fear tore through Paige’s heart. “Maybe he hired someone to watch me. Maybe all this time someone has been watching every move I’ve made.” With that thought, chills ran through Paige’s body. She jumped up and ran over to her bedroom window and closed the open curtains after double-checking that the window was locked. Next she ran into her bathroom. Behind the shower curtain was a window that she usually kept open. The sound of running water mixed with the sounds of nature while showering always gave Paige a wave of peace. Now to know that someone might have been right outside her window each time she showered made her skin crawl.
As she approached the shower curtain, it moved and Paige’s heart just about beat right out of her chest. It’s probably just the wind, that voice in her head told her. Had she been watching herself on a theatre screen she would have been fussing and calling herself all kinds of idiots for not turning around and running. But this was reality and the naïve voice in her head was prevailing as she got a grip of the curtain and pulled it back.
She gasped even though there was nothing there. Her gasp was at the wind as if it had taken shape. But that’s all that was behind the curtain: the invisible wind, the window, showerhead, and her brown sugar Soul Purpose shower body gels and scrubs.
After letting out a deep sigh of relief, she closed and locked the window. Next, Paige exited the bathroom and zipped through her bedroom and out into the hall. The hallway bathroom had no windows, so she bypassed it. She went into Norma’s room and made sure the windows were locked and the blinds were closed.
“Ouch!” Paige tripped over one of Norma’s toys and landed flat on her front side as she hurried to leave and go check Adele’s room. Paige stood, brushed herself off, and then looked down at her stinging knee where she’d left pieces of rug-burned skin on her baby girl’s bedroom floor.
Paige limped over to Adele’s room as tears streamed down her face. Sure her skinned knee hurt, but not enough to draw tears. Her tears were a compilation of that physical pain and the pain her heart was feeling. Tears of anger. Mad at God for allowing the pain. Paige sniffed as she checked to make sure Adele’s blinds were closed and windows locked.
She shook her head, wiping tears as new ones followed. She made sure the sliding patio doors were locked, the kitchen windows, the living room windows, and finally the front door. As she turned away from the front door she had a second thought. “The screen,” she said, and then turned back to open the front door to make sure the screen was locked.
Paige swung the door open and was certain that as the scream erupted from her mouth, her heart had stopped. She couldn’t breathe and she had no idea if she’d ever breathe again.
“Arrrrhhhh. Ahhhhhhh,” Mrs. Robinson screamed when she saw her daughter through the screen door. “Oh my God, Paige. What’s wrong? What happened? Is he here? What did he do to you?”
Paige’s heartbeat had once again skyrocketed as her breath got caught in her throat. “Mom, nothing’s wrong with me. What’s wrong with you?” Paige asked through the screen door, finally able to catch her breath. “You’re the one screaming.”
“But I’m only screaming because you screamed.”
“I only screamed because you scared the living daylights out of me when I opened up my door and saw you standing there. Why didn’t you knock?” Paige still had her hand on her heart. She’d been in such a frenzy, running through the house like a madwoman in a horror movie making sure all the windows and doors were locked. When she flung open the door to check and make sure the screen was locked, all she saw was a figure. The tears in her eyes had already blurred her vision. Just the mere fact that she hadn’t expected anyone to be standing there frightened her. The scream escaped before she could even make out the figure to be that of her own mother.
“I was about to knock but you flung the door open like a madwoman,” Mrs. Robinson said, removing her hand from her chest and finally able to get her heart rate back to normal.
Paige just shook her head as she opened the door and let her
mother in.
“Good, Lord, child. You were almost the death of me.”
“Ditto.” Paige was walking toward her couch but then she stopped in her tracks and turned toward her mother. “Who?”
Her mother looked at her with a puzzled look on her face. “Who what?”
“Who did you think did something to me? Ryan?” Paige rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Mom, Ryan isn’t that type of guy. He’s—”
“Blake.” Mrs. Robinson swallowed hard as Paige stared at her. “I wasn’t talking about Ryan. I was talking about Blake. I mean, yeah, at first I thought Ryan might have done something crazy to you, but then when I got that phone—”
“Mom, you know Blake is in jail. Why would he be here?” Paige couldn’t wait for her mother to finish talking in order to get that question out. She had a feeling that her mother knew something that she didn’t know. Paige didn’t know if she wanted to know.
Mrs. Robinson hated to be the bearer of bad news. She took a step toward Paige. “No, Paige, not anymore. I . . . I . . . got a message.” Mrs. Robinson gave off a nervous chuckle and shook her head. “You know me; never checking those voice messages.” She let out a laugh that quickly evaporated, eaten up by the serious glare Paige was giving her.
“Mom, come on,” Paige said, getting agitated. She just wanted her mom to spit it out. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, baby. He’s out. Blake’s out of jail.” Mrs. Robinson immediately walked over and put her arms around Paige who just stood frozen stiff, her eyes staring off into Neverland. “He’s been out a week. I’m sorry, baby. The courts called the house and left a message. It was the only working phone number they had on your contact list. You know you’ve moved a thousand times since Blake went to jail. They called a couple weeks ago. I just got the message. I only checked the messages because I was worried sick about you. We were supposed to take the girls to the park today and then you didn’t show up. You didn’t call. I thought that maybe something had happened to you and then when I got that message I just thought . . . And then I just raced out the house to come see about you. Your father was calling after me trying to stop me but I just had to come see about my baby.” Mrs. Robinson’s words just kept going on and on and on. She was near hysterics.
Paige, in a zone she couldn’t describe with words, patted her mother on the back. She’d ignored the ringing phones while she wallowed in misery after checking the mail. She’d been in no shape to pretend to be having fun with her girls at the park. She couldn’t allow them to see her in this state.
“Mom, calm down. It’s okay. I’m all right. Blake isn’t here.” Paige pulled away from her mother, then turned and walked away in thought. Here she’d been checking all her windows and doors just in case Blake had sicced some private detective on her to watch her every move. All along it could have been Blake himself watching her.
“Baby, are you all right? Do you want to come stay at the house with us for a while?”
Paige shook her head while still dazed. “No, no, Mom. I’m fine. Blake’s not going to bother me.”
“But how do you know? That man is crazy.”
“Because I’m not the one he wants,” Paige hated to say as she turned around to face her mother. “He wants Adele. He wants his daughter and I have a feeling that he’ll stop at nothing to get her.”
Chapter Thirty-three
This wasn’t the first time Paige had found herself waiting in an attorney’s conference room. The last time she sat in one she’d been on the same team as Blake. The woman he knew as his estranged mother tried to sue him for a ridiculous amount of money. Back then Blake had lost that battle. Paige was hoping for a repeat and that she would be the victor.
Paige thought she’d throw up while in the conference room the receptionist had directed her to in order to wait for the attorneys to arrive. No, maybe she’d die of suffocation from hyperventilation, if that was at all possible. Maybe she’d drown in the sweat she couldn’t manage to keep under control. If it weren’t for the fact she needed to live for her two daughters, she’d rather just die. But it was her daughters she was fighting for. Her daughters were the reason why she was going through such agony, at least one of them anyway. Adele. She had to protect Adele from the man she now considered a monster at all cost.
First thing Monday morning after receiving that letter from Blake’s attorney, Paige had called the attorney and set up an appointment for that Wednesday to meet with him. That Saturday upon finding out about Blake’s release and intentions toward Adele, Paige’s mother had calmed her down; well, the two had managed to calm each other down, enough to have a conversation with clear minds. The result of the conversation was the two coming to the conclusion that Paige would stop assuming the worst and just hear the attorney out as far as Blake’s desires.
“Maybe Blake really doesn’t want Adele. Maybe he’s just trying to scare you or get back at you for the years he spent in prison. He really probably just wants all his money back from that divorce settlement,” Mrs. Robinson had reasoned. “You know how that man was when it came to money and the love of it. It truly was the root of all evil in his case. He put that clause in the divorce decree for a reason. He wasn’t going to rest until he found a way to convince the world you’d cheated with Norman, and get his money back in return by doing so.”
That had all made sense to Paige. It absolutely was a possibility. Blake knew that proving that she had committed adultery would void their divorce settlement and Paige would owe the monies back to him. That hadn’t worried Paige. She’d give up that money in a heartbeat if it meant keeping Blake out of the early years of Adele’s life. And that was her goal today. Wednesday could not have gotten here fast enough. Now neither could those darn attorneys.
Keeping hope alive, Paige had abandoned her idea of packing up the girls and leaving the country. But it wasn’t something she wouldn’t revisit if things didn’t go as planned today in her meeting with Blake’s attorney. As a matter of fact, it was still an option. She was alone. She could stand up and walk out of that conference room at any moment without anyone stopping her. Without anyone trying to reason with her. Not even her own conscience and certainly not the voice of God. She’d tuned that out for once and for all.
As if having an out-of-body experience, Paige stood. She walked over to the conference room door and placed her hand on the doorknob. She’d kept a couple gifts from Blake, who was now her sworn enemy. She’d keep one from God as well. She’d keep the free will He’d given her. And she’d use it—now.
Paige ran into her house without even closing the front door. In her four-inch heels, she made her way straight toward her basement door, flung it open, and barreled down the flight of steps.
“Uggghhh,” Paige said as she missed the last step and landed flat on her bottom on the hard concrete. Why hadn’t she gotten the basement finished? Had she, she would have at least landed on carpet with some padding underneath it. Her back rammed into the edge of the step, shooting unbearable pain up her spine. In tremendous pain, she wished she could just sit there and wallow in it until it went away . . . until it became at least bearable. But she’d tried that in life before, and each time the pain never seemed to go away, or was replaced by something even more painful. Besides that, she had no time to spare. Once her attorney arrived in that conference room to find that she was no longer waiting, he’d surely put two and two together and come looking for her. But she’d be gone, long gone. Her and her two girls gone forever.
Limping over to the storage area of her basement, Paige proceeded to push, move, and throw boxes and plastic containers filled with out-of-season clothing, Christmas decorations, and other miscellaneous items out of her way. Paige collected the luggage set she’d been digging for. No, it wasn’t Louis Vuitton, but it would hold the small pieces of her and her daughters’ lives that she could manage to fit in them.
With all her strength and trying to ignore the pain in her back, Paige placed the strap of the carryon
on her shoulder while lugging the large and medium suitcases up the basement steps. Right when she got to the top step, the larger one went tumbling back down the steps.
“No!” Paige yelled as she watched it land. Frustrated, her eyes filled with tears of pain, anger, and fear of being caught before she could go to the preschool, scoop up her girls, jump in her SUV, and drive as far away as she could.
She flung the medium-sized suitcase and carryon onto the top landing and went after the large suitcase. With the lone suitcase in hand, she made it back to the top of the steps and threw it down. Paige grabbed the carryon and proceeded to hit the girls’ bathroom and her private bathroom, filling it with all the toiletries and necessities she felt they needed to get through the next couple days at least. Once she’d done that, she dragged the larger suitcase into the girls’ room and filled it with as many undergarments and outfits of the girls she could. Last but not least, the medium-sized suitcase she filled with as many of her belongings as she could.
She carried the overstuffed suitcases out to the SUV with contents spilling through the parts she was unable to zip closed. Thank God she wasn’t flying. She’d have to pay a fortune in overweight and extra baggage fees.
After putting the luggage in the back hatch of her SUV, last but not least Paige went back into the house and randomly gathered some of the girls’ toys. Her eyes did a quick sweep of the house. The kitchen doorway prompted her to go and at least get a couple of snacks and juice boxes to tide the girls over until she found a place to lay their heads for the night. With an armful of toys she walked into the kitchen. Every time she grabbed a box of crackers, cookies, fruit cup, or juice box, an item from her hand would fall to the floor. And each time an expletive would fall from Paige’s mouth. She didn’t care about being a cussin’ Christian trying to stay saved. The only thing she cared about right now was saving Adele from Blake.