A. J. came down one step and was nose to nose with me.
“Well, I accept your apology and I respect you sharing all of this with me, but you came all the way over here at eleven o’clock to tell me you’re not ready?” he asked.
I nodded.
“You know this is officially booty-call hour? Especially if I have on nightclothes.”
We looked at his night pants.
“Well, I’m fully clothed,” I said.
He took a deep breath.
“What am I going to do with you?” A. J. said. He kissed me softly on the forehead. “Why don’t you come in and just chill for a while?” he asked. “I can’t have a young lady out on the roads this late at night, now.”
I laughed at him. It was such a line. A bad line.
“What?” he asked, faking surprise. “I’m not trying anything. I’m just being nice. A good, upstanding guy. You just said I’m a ‘great example of a man.’ ”
“I don’t sound like that!” I protested his mocking nasal voice.
“Yes, you do!” he said, laughing. “Look, why don’t you just come in and relax. No pressure. We can make macaroni and cheese!”
“It’s too late to make macaroni and cheese,” I said.
“Not if you want to eat it at sunrise.”
“No funny stuff?” I asked.
“Not if you grate the cheese!”
He put his hand out to me and I took it.
I saw the curtain in the living room window moving when I pulled into my mother’s driveway. There was a little brown hand against the glass. It disappeared when I stopped the car.
I got out and trudged up the walkway with the keys in my hand, ready to open the front door.
The sun was rising, but our Indian Summer was wrapping up and the cold blew right through my clothes. I felt a chill and hustled to the door, but right when I got to the steps, I stopped and turned around to look at the street.
It was so quiet out there and nothing was moving. It looked like a picture. Houses and cars. Trees and fences. Flowers. Grass. I unfolded my arms from a protective embrace over my chest and inhaled the crisp morning air. I felt a rush vibrate through my body and thanked God that I was there to feel the world. To see it. And in my clear mind, I imagined that it was fresh and new and I was the first person to pull it all in. It was the start of a new day. It was my start of a new life.
“God,” I said. “Thanks for helping me.”
When I walked into the house, I heard a creak on the stairs and looked up quickly to see a brown foot hanging from pink pajama pants turning onto the upstairs landing.
“Cheyenne Loren,” I called softy.
The movement stopped. I imagined that she was standing at the top of the steps against the wall.
“Cheyenne Loren,” I called again. “I know you’re up there.”
I sat on the couch and pulled off my shoes quietly. Seconds went by. I sat back and watched the steps. There was no movement.
And then the pink pajama pants came from around the corner.
“I was just waiting for you to come home,” she said softly.
“Come down here,” I said. “I can’t see you.”
She came down the steps slowly like they were covered in ice and stood at the bottom.
“Come sit down next to me,” I said, patting the cushion beside me.
She looked at me and I could tell that she hadn’t slept all night. Her eyes were completely red.
“I’m not mad at you. You can sit down. It’s fine.” I patted the cushion again.
She sat down.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“I was out,” I said carefully. “But now I’m home.”
“Were you driving?”
“Yes,” I answered, putting my arm up on the couch around her shoulders. “Were you afraid that I was driving?”
She nodded and looked away into the living room.
“Chey, I’m not going to mess up again. Look at me.”
She turned back to me.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” I said. “You don’t have to sit up at this window and ever worry about me not coming home, or driving drunk or putting you in a bad situation like I did that night. That will never happen again. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
I leaned over and started playing with her hair.
“Now, things are about to start changing for us. For you and me.”
“How?”
“Well, for starters, we’re going to start spending a lot more time together.”
“Really?” She pulled her legs up onto the couch.
“Yeah. I was thinking, you know how I read to R. J. every morning?”
“Yes, his Goodnight Moon,” she said mockingly. “But he gave that book away.”
“Well, we’ll get him a new one. But, in the meantime, I was thinking, maybe you and I could do something together in the morning.”
“Read a book?” she asked, frowning. “I can read already. Those are kiddie books.”
“There are plenty of other books we can read.” I put my arm over her shoulder and she rested her head against my chest. “We can even read poems.”
“You know any poems?”
“Oh, I meant we need to get some books to read poems,” I said, laughing. “I memorized some poems . . . when I was about your age, but I don’t remember any of them anymore.”
“None of them?”
I looked up and rested my head on the top of the couch.
“Hum . . . There was this one by Maya Angelou that I memorized for a talent show I was in. I don’t know if I remember the whole thing. It was called ‘Phenomenal Woman.’ ”
“Phenom—?”
“Phenomenal.”
“Phenomenal. What does that mean?”
“I means someone who’s special. Not common. Not like everyone else,” I said. “Kind of like you.”
“Really?” She looked up at me. “You think I’m special?”
“You’re strong, Cheyenne. You’re strong and smart. You don’t take any mess. Not from me. Not from your brother. Not from your father. Not from anyone.”
Cheyenne and I started laughing.
“You don’t remember it, Mama? Come on, say it! You can try!”
“Oh . . . it was so long ago,” I started. “It opened kind of like—‘Pretty women wonder where my secret lies . . . I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size . . .” I tickled Cheyenne’s stomach and looked at the ceiling trying to remember the rest of the poem. I got through a good bit of it. I know I left out a line somewhere, but the last, I could never forget the last lines: “‘It’s in the click of my heels/The bend of my hair/the palm of my hand/The need of my care,/ ’Cause I’m a woman/Phenomenally./Phenomenal woman,/That’s me.’”
I smiled at my half-baked sunrise performance and I looked down at Cheyenne expecting a round of applause or a smile, but she was fast asleep. Nestled under my arm and fast asleep.
I watched her and thought to carry her upstairs, but my baby girl, who was soon going to be a young woman, was growing so fast, and even with her lanky arms and legs, I knew we wouldn’t make it past the first step.
I rested my head on top of hers and went to sleep, too.
In Essence® bestselling author Grace Octavia’s most exciting, volatile novel yet, charismatic bad boy mayor Jamison Jackson has finally taken a spectacular fall. But that doesn’t mean he’s going down alone . . .
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His Last Wife
On sale in November 2014!
Driving into Atlanta that morning after refusing the aid of John the Conqueror’s bloom, Val was preparing to cover up a murdered politician’s scandal. Ironically, she’d once been in the same shoes as the woman who was waiting for her in a back booth at the Buckhead Diner. But that was when she was trying to get everything she had. Now she just wanted to protect it.
“So, you’re Coreen,” she said, sliding into a booth across
from a petite, light-skinned woman with a fiery red bob that swooped over her right eye.
Coreen hardly smiled as a response.
Neither woman held out her hand for salutations. They’d slept with the same man years apart, but still there was envy simmering between them. One had the baby. The other had the ring. Neither had the man.
“Do you have my money?” Coreen asked tightly.
“Well, let’s order some drinks, a little food, before we get down to business,” Val said, beckoning the waiter over to the table with a dubious smile Coreen could easily read.
Coreen had seen so many pictures of Val on the Internet. At first, she was standing beside Jamison at the podium after he’d won the election. Val was smiling in her red business suit with the high split, trying hard to look like she was just there supporting her boss, but Coreen could tell there was something there. Something Jamison had to see in her. Her complexion was a milky tawny, just a few shades darker than Coreen’s, and she had a hard body wired into the perfect figure of an S. She looked like the kind of woman a man would brag about sleeping with. The kind a man couldn’t resist. Her assumptions proved correct just months later, when she learned on a gossip Web site that Jamison had married his assistant and was expecting a child. His second child. But she knew better right then. It would be his third.
Coreen sat silent, eyeing Val’s real diamond earrings and Oyster Collection Rolex watch as she ordered a cotton-candy martini and fruit salad. It wasn’t even noon yet.
“So . . .” Val batted her eyes at Coreen, like she was a man who’d asked her out on a date, and grinned. “Remind me of why we’re here. You know, my schedule is so crazy these days.”
“Please stop. You know exactly why we’re here and what I want,” Coreen snapped. “I’m here for my money. The ten thousand dollars Jamison would owe me for this month, the fifty K for the last few months, plus the two he missed before he died. You said you’d have my money.”
“No. I said I’d look into having your money,” Val snapped back, correcting Coreen as the waiter dropped off the drink and fruit tray. “Besides, I can’t possibly have money ready for a child my dead husband never claimed. How do I know how much he was giving you? What you all agreed on?”
Actually, Val was lying. Before he’d died, he told Val all about Coreen and the little boy. Well, she figured it out the old-fashioned way—snooping—and then he’d told her. Jamison admitted that he’d produced a little boy with the mistress he’d run off to California to be with after Kerry found out about their affair. After he’d left Coreen high and dry on the West Coast when Kerry decided to take him back, Coreen kept the child a secret, planned to raise the boy on her own. But then Jamison’s name ended up in the news and . . . well . . . Coreen couldn’t resist coming for what she felt was rightfully hers—or her son’s. A part of Jamison’s growing fortune.
“Jamison loved his son,” Coreen said. “He wasn’t the best father, but he claimed his son. He knew Jamison Jr. was his. He accepted him.” Coreen’s voice faded thin as her statement was clearly meant for her own ears and Val had long blocked her out. But Coreen really needed to hear herself say that to someone other than herself. She hadn’t expected her relationship with Jamison to produce anything. She learned early on after his mother introduced them that Jamison had a pregnant wife at home. She tried to push away from him, to move on, but when he’d come into her life she was splintered wide open from an old thorn in her heart. Her husband had died. She wanted a new start, a new love, and while she knew inside Jamison couldn’t be it, one answered e-mail led to another answered e-mail, and then so went the story. His hands were big enough to hold her. His words were healing. His promises were just endless. And then he left. And then she realized she was pregnant.
“What was he like with him?” Val let out after her third sip of cotton candy–flavored vodka. She was still trying to sound detached and tough, but she had her own needs lingering in her voice.
“Patient. Funny.” Coreen looked away. “They were always in their own little world when Jamison came to L.A. to see him. He’d just take Jamison Jr. and they’d go into their space.”
Val felt a little flutter in her stomach and pushed the fruit tray away from her. She took another sip of the martini, though.
“Look, if you’re not going to give me the money—if you’re not going to give us the money—I’ll just move forward with my original plan. Just like I told Jamison before he—” Coreen stopped. “I know every news station in this country will be happy to hear—”
“No, no, no,” Val said with her full attention on Coreen then.
This was Coreen’s ongoing threat: how she’d gotten money from Jamison and now was working on Val—taking her story of a love child to the media. As dated as this kind of dirt was, it was the sort of information that could start a domino effect that could dismantle the carefully built house Jamison had tendered to the public, his friends, and business associates. All of whom supported Rake it Up, the corporate landscaping and preservation service Jamison opened in lieu of going to medical school after college. Since then, the company had amassed a list of loyal corporate clients whose businesses dotted the entire Southeast. Corporate clients who still maintained old-world values that could mean they would have to disconnect from an evildoer. Though a love child produced in an affair wasn’t nearly a new concept, it was mucky. And in the South, mucky was supposed to stay behind closed doors. Moreover, all those contacts and connections that had made Jamison a rich man wouldn’t think twice about taking their business elsewhere if they had any reason to disconnect from him. And he was black. And he was dead. Or, as Val’s lawyer had put it, “First, the big clients would leave, then the small, then the money would dry up, and then you’ll be broke.” Val had to stop this.
“I need some time to get you the money,” Val said abruptly. “I don’t have it right now, but I can get it. I just need time.”
Coreen sat back in her seat and observed Val suspiciously.
“You’re lying,” Coreen stated.
“No. I’m not. I don’t even know how Jamison was getting you that much cash.”
“He owns a multimillion-dollar company. Don’t play me. I know exactly how much he has, how much Rake it Up made last year alone,” Coreen said.
“Kerry took over fifty percent of the business after the divorce and then Jamison sold her another ten percent when he ran for mayor.”
“That means when Jamison died, he still had forty percent of that company and my son will get his share,” Coreen said. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing—what both of you think you’re going to do?”
“Who?”
“You and Kerry—you think you can get rid of me. Cut me out of the money. But I’m not going anywhere.” Coreen rolled her eyes and looked at the waiter who was standing nearby and clearly struggling to listen in on the gossip. “I don’t know what I was thinking—meeting you. Like you would really be looking out for me. Like you’d understand.” After uttering that last sentiment, Coreen gave Val a long, hard stare and then picked up her purse. “Jamison was right about you.” Coreen got out of the booth and leered down at Val. “You’re a fucking mess.”
Val had to grab the ends of the table in front of her chest to stop herself from going after Coreen. To let her walk away without causing an incident that would shut down all of the Buckhead Diner and end up all over the Internet, like all of the other public battles she’d endured since becoming the lady on Jamison’s arm. Back then, she was a different person. A country girl with a quick temper and a mean left hook. Back home in Tennessee, Val wasn’t ever afraid of a tough fight; in fact, most times she was the cause of it. It just always seemed like someone or something was trying to steal something away from her.
Val gulped down the last of the cotton-candy martini and reminded herself that she wasn’t that person anymore. Everything she’d been. Everything that had happened. She’d come out on top. Maybe Jamison never loved her. He’d j
ust married her because she was pregnant and would add an ugly blemish to his political portfolio. But he was dead now and she was left with the best part of him. All that money. And she was willing to do anything to keep it. Even if it meant shutting her mouth.
Sometimes.
“You know, I don’t give a shit what Jamison said about me!”
Val had run out of the booth and surprised Coreen in the parking lot from behind by pulling her arm and spinning the red head around.
“He wants to call me a fucking mess? No, he’s the fucking mess. He’s the one who was fucking his assistant raw and had a child in another state and wasn’t even man enough to claim him publicly. He was the fucking mess! Not me! Not me!” Val was pointing a sharp finger at herself and tears were coming from her eyes. “After everything I gave that nigga? Everything? And when my baby—our baby—died in a goddamn toilet, he couldn’t wait to leave me in a hospital-room bed. That’s fucked up. That’s a fucking mess.”
“Val, if he did all those things to you, then why are you protecting him? Why are you still out here protecting him?”
“Money. Isn’t that why you’re here? You keep talking about me, but what about you?” Val asked suspiciously.
“I already said why I’m here.”
“A little more to the story, isn’t there?” Val said. “I know about that phone call the morning Jamison died. He was going up to that roof to meet you.” Val stepped in close to Coreen and crossed her arms over her chest.
“Look, I’m telling you, just like I told the police Kerry sent looking for me: I had nothing to do with Jamison’s death. I was not on the phone with him that morning,” Coreen said very confidently.
“That’s really interesting, because Kerry was there with him in the hotel room and she’s sure it was you on the phone.”
“Kerry is in jail for a murder she committed and she’ll say anything to try to peg this on someone else,” Coreen said. “She’s desperate and she hates me. But just like I told her long before you were even a thought, her husband slept with me. He wasn’t my problem, he was hers. When my son was born, I just wanted my money. How was killing him going to get me any more? I loved Jamison, but I didn’t hate him enough to kill him. And you want to know who loved him, but hated him enough to kill him because of those times he lied to her and cheated on her and made her look like a fool? Kerry. She’s looking for the killer? Tell her to look in the mirror. I heard about Jamison’s death just like everyone else—on television.”
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