She wouldn’t trade her children for anything. But there were days that she wished she could trade their sorry excuse for a dad in for a better model. “Yeah, Barbara, I’ll be in on Tuesday.” She hung up the phone, then swooped her hair into a ponytail. Turning towards her son’s room, she exhaled and then walked down the hall to tell Shawnee and Isaiah that mommy would be taking them to football practice today.
“Where’s Daddy?” Shawnee asked the moment she opened the door.
“I don’t know,” Lily answered truthfully.
“But he said he would pick us up for practice,” Isaiah said.
“I’m sorry, boys, I can’t reach your father. So, we need to get going if we’re going to be on time for practice.”
Shawnee stomped his foot and folded his arms in front of his chest. “I don’t want to go to football practice with a girl.”
“Look boy, do you want to go to your practice or not?” Lily hated losing her temper with her children, but they were treating her like mommies-don’t-matter, and she simply wasn’t having that. Not when she went through nine hours of hard labor pulling Shawnee’s big head out of her too small canal. Naw, she wasn’t about to let her kids treat her like some second rate parent. “I’m going to the car. If you’re not there in two seconds, practice will be cancelled for you.” She swung around and marched out of the room.
She was not about to be played like that by some five, almost six-year-old and his little three-year-old co-signing younger brother. Mama is here and Daddy’s not… deal with it.
Her boys swung open their door, ran down the hall, bumping into her as she was descending the stairs. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Mom. If Dad can’t go, then we want you to take us,” Shawnee said.
Lily smiled at her boys. She still came in second, but who could blame them? Their father was a football superstar in this town… and she was just mom. She put her arms around her boys as they walked down the steps and said, “I’m proud to be a stand-in for your father. Come on, let’s go.” Rah-rah and all that.
She grabbed her keys off the table in the foyer and opened the front door, preparing to leave. But a woman with a three-toned dye job was standing at her front door. The hair was blond on the tips, reddish-orange in the middle and brown at the roots, but that wasn’t the only thing Lily noticed. The woman was holding a baby carriage.
“I guess you’re happy that Paris won’t be bothering you anymore,” the woman said, the look of scorn on her round face.
“Excuse me? Who are you?”
“I’m Vivi, Paris’s best friend. And this right here,” Vivi tried to hand Lily the baby carrier as she said, “Is now your responsibility.”
Lily turned to her boys and said, “Go sit down in the living room, Mommy needs to talk to this woman for a minute.” When the boys walked away, Lily turned back to Vivi. “I don’t know what kind of game you and Paris are playing, but I’m not about to take this baby.”
“Paris ain’t playing no games. Shawn Morrison killed my best friend.”
“What did you say?”
“You heard me. The police have that no good dog in custody and I hope they keep him there.” Vivi put the baby carrier on the ground in front of Lily and strutted off.
“Hey, wait a minute. You can’t just leave this baby with me.”
“You wanna bet? Paris don’t have no family. But since you’re Shawn’s other baby mama, I figured you’d want to keep the family together.” Psychedelic head jumped in her 90s model Ford Taurus and said, “I don’t care what you do. I’ve got my own mouths to feed.” She then sped off without so much as a backward glance.
Lily’s hand flew to her mouth as she recalled the hysterical phone call she had made to Shawn just three days ago. Paris and Shawn had become her enemies, but she never would have wished the girl dead, nor would she have wanted Shawn to be blamed for something she knew with certainty he didn’t do.
***
“Okay, we need to talk,” Isaiah said to his little brother. They were at Shawn’s three million dollar home. Shawn brought a pair of crutches out of his garage and was now slowly making his way to the guest bedroom on the first floor.
“I need to get some sleep, Isaiah. Can’t we talk about all this later?” He stopped walking and waved a hand to indicate the expanse of his house. “Mi casa es su casa. The master bedroom is upstairs. I’m going to sleep down here until my knee heals.”
“That’s all well and good, but we still need to talk,” Isaiah said as he continued to follow his brother. They entered the guest bedroom; Shawn sat down on the bed and propped his crutches against the wall. “You’re holding out on the police and I want to know why.”
Scrunching up his nose, Shawn asked, “How do you know I’m holding out on the police? Matter of fact, how did you know that the police were holding me in the first place?”
“One of Eric’s college buddies works in that station. He called Eric and let him know what was going on.”
“Big brother is always watching,” Shawn said as he shook his head in disgust.
“You need to be glad that somebody has been watching out for your sorry behind. Do you know what this will do to Daddy if he finds out that the police think you had something to do with this young woman’s death?”
That shut Shawn up for a moment. He rubbed his hand across his mouth and then looked at his brother. “I didn’t kill Paris. And I agree with you about Dad. I don’t want him to hear anything about this, but I just can’t talk to the police, not yet anyway.”
“Why not, Shawn? This woman was the mother of one of your children. Why wouldn’t you want to help the police find out who killed her?”
Because the mother of my other children may have been the one who killed her. “I have my reasons.”
Isaiah shook his head and threw up his hands. “I don’t even know why I left my family to come down here to see about you. Same ol’ Shawn.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It is what it is. You hurt the people who love you the most and you couldn’t care less what happens to people once you’re done with them.”
In an outrage Shawn jumped to his feet and immediately regretted his actions as his knee buckled and pain shot through his body. He climbed back into the bed and lay down. While sucking in air he said, “Go home, Isaiah. You don’t want to be here anyway. Just leave me alone.”
Isaiah said a silent prayer for patience as he realized that he had deliberately tried to provoke his brother. He walked over to the bed and put his hand on Shawn’s shoulder. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you hurt yourself again. But Shawn, I really need you to think about our family and make the right decision.”
“I am thinking about my family,” he said through clenched teeth. Once the pain subsided he added, “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but my family is very important to me… and that includes Lily, Shawnee and little Isaiah.”
Isaiah thought he caught a glimpse of what was at issue here. “Does Lily have something to do with this? Is that why you didn’t want to talk to the police?”
Shawn didn’t answer, but his mind turned back to the two most recent times Lily had called him, upset about something Paris had done. The first time had been when Paris tried to get Lily involved in some whacked out reality show. And then a month later, Paris had called Lily when the DNA test on Imani had come in. She’d told Lily that she didn’t need her help to get the green light for the reality show about football wives, because she was now officially the proud parent of Shawn Morrison’s child herself.
Lily had been hysterical when she’d called him. She said, “If you don’t do something about that woman, I’m going to end up in jail because I’m going to hurt her.” Those words haunted Shawn. If anyone found out that he went to see Paris because Lily had threatened to harm her, it would not look good for Lily. Shawn would give up his football career and go to prison himself, before he allowed the woman he loved to spend one night in jail
—just because he had a zipper problem.
The worse thing about the entire ordeal was if he hadn’t been so upset and distraught after Lily broke up with him, and then his brother found out about the one-nighter he’d had with his wife, when she had only been his girlfriend… then he never would have gotten involved with Paris Holmes in the first place.
“Did you hear me, Shawn?”
“What? Huh?” Shawn said as his mind jolted back to the here and now.
“Does Lily have anything to do with what happened to Paris?”
Shawn opened his mouth to deny, deny, deny. But somebody started leaning on his doorbell.
“What in the world?” Isaiah said.
“Probably some groupie. I’m going to take a couple more pain pills and go to sleep.”
“All right. I’ll see who’s at the door and then I’m going to take a nap myself. But we are not finished with this conversation.” Isaiah walked down the hall. The doorbell was still ringing. He wondered who could be crazy or angry enough to ring Shawn’s doorbell like that.
As he reached the door, he reminded himself that he was in town because of a dead girl, so he decided to use some caution, and not fling the door open and demand that the rude person stop laying on the doorbell. Instead he looked through the peephole. Lily and the kids were on the porch. He opened the door.
Lily barged in carrying a baby carrier. “Hey Isaiah, where is Shawn?”
This was no groupie, so he wasn’t about to run interference for his brother. He pointed towards the guest bedroom. “He hurt his knee, so he’s sleeping downstairs.”
With purposeful strides, Lily headed towards the guest bedroom with the boys following behind her. When she entered, Shawn was swallowing down some pain pills. She lifted up the baby carrier and said, “I brought you something.”
The pain pills were taking affect, Shawn was getting drowsy and he couldn’t think straight. He pulled the covers over his body and snuggled in. “Let’s talk later, Lily; I messed up my knee again today and need to get some sleep.”
“Daddy, Daddy,” the boys screamed in unison as they entered the room, ran towards their father’s bed and attempted to tackle him.
“Boys, calm down. Don’t jump on that bed. Your father has been injured.”
“Is that why you didn’t take us to practice today?” Shawnee asked, leaning against the bed.
“Huh? Practice?” Shawn’s eyes were glazing over as he tried to focus on his son.
“What kind of pain pills did you take?” She picked up the pill bottle on his nightstand and then she understood why Shawn was drifting so quickly. The one time she’d been given Percocet, she’d been out before her head hit the pillow. Putting the pill bottle down, she told the boys, “Come on, Daddy needs to get some rest.”
“But Mom, we haven’t talked to Daddy all day,” Shawnee bemoaned.
“No Daddy talk,” Isaiah said in his best three-year-old language.
“We’re not leaving the house. You boys go play in the family room. We’ll be here when Daddy wakes up.”
As Lily said those words, Shawn’s hand brushed against hers. He whispered, “Thanks.” And then rolled over and started snoring.
She walked out of the bedroom, following her sons, who were running through the house like mad men. She was carrying a baby that didn’t belong to her, and wondering if she was about to play the fool for Shawn Morrison once again.
CHAPTER FIVE
“How are you holding up, Lily?” Isaiah asked. They were in the family room, lounging on Shawn’s monstrous sectional, watching reruns of Welcome to Sweetie Pies on the OWN network.
Lily was rubbing Imani’s back, trying to get the baby to burp. “Not too good, seeing as how I just changed and fed a baby that belongs to my ex.”
“I hear you, but at least women don’t have to worry about some man trying to deceive them into believing a baby is theirs when it’s not.” He shook his head at the memory of discovering that his precious child was not his biological daughter.
“I was sorry to hear about all the drama that went on over Erin, Isaiah. I know that Shawn was sick over everything that happened. And I have no business taking up for him, especially since I’m holding his new baby. But he truly regrets doing that to you.”
Isaiah leaned against the cushiony back of the couch and said, “The thing that bugs me most is that as a preacher, I talk to people about forgiveness all the time. But it has taken two years for me to come to terms with what Shawn did to me.”
“I’m no preacher,” Lily said, watching her children set their toys up in a far corner of the family room. “But I am a child of God and I still haven’t come to terms with all the mess Shawn has done to me.”
The boys ran upstairs to get more toys and bring them into the family room. Isaiah smiled at how full of life his nephews were. They reminded him of him and Shawn at that age. Isaiah had been Shawn’s hero. He was always underfoot, trying to see what Isaiah was doing, so that he could copy. Isaiah had loved and cared for his brother… always looking out for him no matter what. But then Shawn grew up and became his own hero. “I will admit that forgiveness has been helped along since Shawn was proven not to be Erin’s father. The fact that I don’t feel any differently towards my daughter now than when I thought she was biologically mine, I think helps also.”
“I’m glad that your love for Erin hasn’t changed. That would have been an awful blow for a young child to deal with.”
“Erin knows that she is my special love. And now Erin and I have Ramona. And Lily, let me tell you, that woman has more love in her than I could acquire in a lifetime. But enough about me… I hear that you’ve joined a church down here.”
With a smile that came from way down deep, she said, “All I can say is thank you Jesus, for mothers who love the Lord. Because Ruth Ann had my back while I was going through all that drama with Shawn. She kept praying for me and inviting me to church. Finally one Sunday I just went. My life hasn’t been the same since.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Now if only we could get my knucklehead brother to see the truth, then my visit would not have been in vain.”
They watched television for a while, then Isaiah played with his nephews while Lily put Imani to sleep. When Isaiah sat back on the couch, he looked at his watch and said, “How long is that boy going to sleep?”
“Considering the pain pills he took, I’d say he’ll be up in about an hour or so.”
“He’s been asleep for almost four hours now. I need to catch a plane out of here tonight. I’m scheduled to preach the sermon tomorrow.”
“I’m sure Shawn will understand if you need to leave. And don’t worry; I won’t kill your brother while he’s sleeping.”
Isaiah laughed. “That’s the least of my worries, but I can’t leave without talking to Shawn because the bonehead is trying to ruin his life. And that would simply destroy my father.”
“What has he done now? I mean, besides having a baby by some woman who has gotten herself killed.” Lily shivered at those words and then confessed to Isaiah, “I will admit that I didn’t like Paris Holmes one bit. But I wouldn’t wish death on her or anyone else.”
“I know; it’s really tragic. You’d think that Shawn would want to help the police find the person responsible for this woman’s death, but he has flat out refused to even talk to them.”
“What kind of information are they trying to get out of Shawn?”
Isaiah hesitated for a moment, but then he realized that he was safe discussing this with Lily. And she might even be able to help him get that bonehead to talk to the police. “Apparently, the police have him on surveillance tape going in and out of Paris’s apartment the day she died. They said he looked angry both going and coming.”
“Don’t tell me they think Shawn killed that woman?” Lily asked, remembering what Vivi said as she left Imani on her doorstep.
“Thankfully, the surveillance tape also shows Paris leaving her apartment about an hour after S
hawn stormed away. So, they don’t believe Shawn killed her, at least not at her apartment, anyway. The problem is that Shawn won’t tell them why he stormed into Paris’s home the other day. So, he’s making himself look guilty when he doesn’t have to do that.”
Shaking her head in sorrow, she turned to Isaiah and said, “This might be my fault.”
Isaiah jumped up. “I knew this had something to do with you. Before Shawn went to sleep, he said something about family meaning everything to him… and that included you and the boys.”
“I just wish we had meant as much to him when it counted.”
“Men are slow sometimes,” Isaiah admitted. Then as he sat down and moved closer to Lily, he asked, “What does Paris’s death have to do with you?”
“Nothing.” Lily lifted her hands. “I promise; I had nothing to do with that woman’s death. But I’m the reason Shawn went to see Paris.” Her eyes took on a look that showed the pain her love for Shawn had caused her. “That woman called my house the other day gloating about the DNA test she’d just received back.” Trying to shake off the memory, Lily closed her eyes for a second. When she refocused on Isaiah she said, “Anyway, I called Shawn and told him if he didn’t do something about the woman that I was going to hurt her.”
“Then that’s why he won’t talk to the police.”
“But I didn’t do anything to Paris. I was just talking smack.”
“Talking smack or not, Shawn is afraid that if he tells the police that he went to see Paris because you were angry about Imani being his child, the police might start sniffing around you.”
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