As she stepped onto the bath mat, a sharp, stabbing pain caught her between her legs and ripped up and through her abdomen like a twisting knife. She fumbled through the shower curtain and got out of the water. She broke down on her hands and knees, burying her face in the tile floor, and howled. She crawled across the floor. Blood poured from between her legs. She pulled a towel from the rack and moaned.
Jesus walks . . .
Muddy blood rolled down her legs and onto the floor, staining the grout and tiles. She alternatively grunted and moaned as the pains grew more intense.
“Somebody help me,” she muttered.
Wet and naked, Thandy pulled herself together and tried to clean up the blood with the bath towel. Her abdomen was throbbing. She hadn’t noticed the trickles of blood in the shower stall. She got to her feet and felt her way through the dark bedroom and into the hallway.
“Montana!” she called. “Monty, baby, come quick!”
The music was still blaring. Jesus walks with me . . .
“Monty!” she shrieked. “Uhn!” Thandy doubled over and collapsed.
Montana moved quickly. She dressed her mother in a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, snatched the keys from the hook in the kitchen, and drove her to the emergency room. The University of Chicago Medical Center was just a few blocks away. It was so close that the anesthesiologist who lived next door to them often biked to work. Montana blew through four stop signs and hit a hard right into the emergency entrance. Two orderlies appeared with a wheelchair and helped Thandy from the car.
“I’m coming with you.”
“Stay here,” her mother demanded.
Montana paced the waiting room for hours, stopping only to answer a nurse’s questions.
“She’s thirty-seven,” Montana said. “No allergies. No history of heart trouble.”
“Any history of diabetes? Anemia?”
She apologized, vigorously shook her head, and said she didn’t know much about her mother’s past.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Finding out that her mother had been pregnant wasn’t such bad news. It was just an evil reminder that nothing about this life had been good for too long. Montana went home long enough to retrieve her mother’s nightclothes. At home, she scrubbed the blood from the carpet in the hallway, mopped the tile floor, then returned to sleep the night at her mother’s bedside. Montana had a thousand questions whirling around in her head. She didn’t even know her mother had a boyfriend. She also wanted to know something, anything about her own father. She didn’t even know his name.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The phone woke her, but she didn’t pick it up. Jack was still sleeping. She reached over and took the phone off the hook. She snuggled in close and wrapped her body around his, her generous breasts pushed against his back.
He hadn’t planned to stay the night. But then again, Jack hadn’t planned to get involved with a cocktail waitress who had an overly sensitive nose for old money. But the sex was good and he was too tired to go home. It was still dark when he got up. Her little black dress was on the floor, right where he’d tossed it. She was still naked, Jack was sure of that.
Angel Delafuenta was a mildly pretty but well-stacked girl, with near waist-length hair and grass-green eyes. Streetwise, she was raised in the dirt and weeds of East Camden, New Jersey. Her father, James Bedford, was a retired marine staff sergeant and her mother was a pretty Mexican girl he’d met on a three-day junket to Tijuana. After twelve turbulent years of marriage, he’d abruptly left his family of five girls and one boy following a wild night with a Puerto Rican stripper who had big breasts and a pencil-thin waistline. Angel had helped her mother rear her younger siblings in a two-bedroom, one-bath shotgun house. Risa Delafuenta and her daughters had cleaned houses and put away enough money to send all of the Bedford children to college.
Angel had managed to get an associate’s degree in accounting between scrubbing toilets and dropping her father’s last name. Bedford wasn’t sexy enough. She never forgave James Bedford for leaving and she had never seen him again. When he was murdered during a barroom brawl somewhere near Wichita, Kansas, the Social Security Administration began sending widow’s and survivors’ benefits. The Veteran’s Administration forwarded his retirement payments and the proceeds from his military life insurance policy. Risa gave Angel the first two allotment checks and pressed her to get out of East Camden.
Angel moved to Atlanta in 1999 in search of a new job and a new life. Early on, she slipped into easy drugs and something just short of casual sex. Money was no problem. There was always one man or another willing to pay the rent, and she efficiently fucked her way toward financial stability. When that dried up, she took a job waiting tables at Café 420, a makeshift jazz club on the east side of town that welcomed twenty-something wannabes. She served cheap champagne and Long Island iced teas dressed in a tuxedo shirt, black shorts, fishnets, and stilettos in the velvet-roped VIP section. The tips, like the drinks, were always watered down.
Her luck got better when a physician’s group leased out the nightclub on Sunday nights for a once-a-month social. Jack Gabrielle, the leader of the pack, had been her favorite customer. He always sat in a far corner, above the crowd, where he could watch the beautiful women. His shoes and watch shone with old money. To Angel, it was the best kind. He was obviously out of his element.
The small brick bungalow she lived in was cramped and smelled like cherry incense and candle wax. The furnishings were inexpensive but neatly kept. Everything had a place.
The running shower woke her up. Angel joined him. Her smile was bright and expectant.
“Listen, let’s get one thing straight,” he said as he dried off with a fresh towel he had found in her linen closet. “We’ve got to let things cool off.”
“You don’t have to do this alone,” she purred, wrapping her arms around his still-wet body.
“This won’t help,” he said, easing away. “Look, in another month or so, it will all be over.”
“We’ll have to celebrate,” she cooed.
“Whatever.”
“What does that mean?” Angel asked, trying not to be offended.
“That means when this is over we can celebrate.”
She needed to hear him say it. After the divorce, it’s all yours. Nothing but the best for you, my love.
Rather than a steamy I-won’t-be-gone-long send-off, he pecked her on the cheek and left.
By 6:15 a.m., Jack was standing in line at a crowded Starbucks a few blocks from his house.
“Good morning, Dr. G!” the girl at the counter sang, handing him a cup of relief. “How’s Mrs. G?”
“Just groovy,” he answered as he gripped the hot cup. “She’s just groovy. Visiting family.”
For the first time, he bothered to look at the side of his cup and read the Jill Scott quote: “Embrace this right now life . . . Capture these times . . . because it will soon be very different.”
His eyes were red, his thoughts blurry. But one thing was clear. At some point during the night with Angel, and again as he read the singer’s words, he’d made the decision to find Thandy. He’d take her to a fancy restaurant, get on his knees, and apologize. He’d tell her about Etienne filing for divorce. He assured himself that he could turn everything around. He’d get to know Montana, maybe see her off to college. He’d give Thandy everything he’d promised. Jack had never known someone so beautiful, someone who wanted him for him, not for what he had. He could think of no one else who would hand him back a million-dollar house and a Mercedes-Benz.
Jack drained his coffee as he scanned the morning Atlanta Journal-Constitution and tossed the empty cup into the trash receptacle. He went home and quickly changed clothes.
Wearing well-worn, starched khaki pants, a pullover polo shirt, and a baseball cap, Jack walked into his lawyer’s office. Framed degrees from Harvard lined the walls. The credenza was covered with family pictures in pewter frames. Skip Parham, sitting behind his majestic
carved-wood desk, had been waiting for this day. The retainer had been paid over a decade ago.
He looked down at his notes, sighed, and said, “She won’t sign.”
“What do you mean ‘she won’t sign’?” Jack said incredulously.
“She won’t sign the offer. Your wife wants more money.”
Jack sat up ramrod in his chair and asked, “How much?”
“Triple.”
Jack swallowed. “Fifteen million! For what?”
“She’s not stupid,” Parham said. “Finlayson says if we don’t take the counteroffer, he will amend the filing.”
“With what?”
“Adultery, for starters.”
“She can’t be serious.” Jack’s stomach was doing somersaults off the high beam.
“Under the circumstances, I think we should consider it. Adultery means fifty percent of everything in addition to spousal and child support payments.”
“Half? Half of my money?”
“Finlayson seems to think you’ve got money squired away in the Islands. He mentioned a condominium he believes you purchased for a mistress.”
“Damn.” Jack was sweating.
He leaned back in his chair. His shoulders slumped. Etienne knew about Barbados and she knew Thandy’s phone number. What else she knew was anybody’s guess. Surely she didn’t know where to find his money. That’s what numbered accounts were for. Jack’s eyes began to dart around the room. He nervously bit his thumbnail off and asked, “Where are my boys?”
“My guess is that she’s hiding them. We checked out her mother’s town house. No sign of them. I don’t think they made the flight to Washington. Finlayson filed for temporary custody. The judge is inclined to agree under the circumstances.”
Bitch.
She wants my money and my boys, Jack said to himself. He didn’t need to say it out loud. Parham heard it.
“What circumstances?” Jack asked.
“You work a hundred hours a week and your travel schedule would kill a man half your age. Your wife contends you spend less than ten hours a month with your sons. But the court won’t look favorably on her actions. Judges don’t like it when parents hide children, and she’s doing a mighty fine job of it.”
“Damn.”
“Look, I’ll get our investigator to step up the search for the boys. No doubt they’re still in the city. I’ll need the names and addresses of any family in the area, girlfriends, etc. This afternoon, I’ll file a countersuit.”
Jack leaned out of his chair and took a pen from Parham’s desk. “With what?” he asked, scribbling down the most suspect among her friends.
Etienne’s sorority sister Abigail Stewart topped the list. He had never liked the bitch anyway. Jack had a good mind to drive down to her house, but getting arrested wasn’t on his list of things to do that day.
“We can charge abandonment. You say she drinks like a fish, so we’ll throw in drug addiction and mental abuse. We’ll charge her with hiding the boys and alienation of affection.”
“What’s that?”
“You said there’s been no sex for almost two years. We’ll blame it on her. In the meantime, I’ll get a restraining order barring her from the house.”
Atta boy!
“This could go long. You sure you don’t want to just pay her?”
“Let me think about it. I’m trying not to write a check for fifteen large. I’ll call you before the day is over.”
Parham paused. “Who’s the girl?”
“What girl?”
“The one you bought the condo for.”
The pang of regret came again. “Her name is Thandy. Thandywaye Malone.”
“Where is she now?”
“I guess she just wised up and left me.”
“Don’t tell me this is all about a woman.”
“A man is only as faithful as his options.”
“Or at least the options he thinks he has.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
By 10:00 a.m., he had seen a bevy of patients and waved off a pretty pharmaceutical rep hawking samples of a new wonder drug. She was dressed in a tight blouse and a pair of slacks he was certain she had painted on. He shooed her out of his office and promised to phone in an order. He sat at his desk long enough to log online and order a dozen long-stemmed red roses. He searched the Campbell-Perkins Web site and found the address for the office in Chicago. A photo of Thandy appeared on the home page. He punched the link and a flattering bio appeared. “Thandywaye Malone and her daughter, Montana, reside in Hyde Park,” the last and most troublesome line read. At least he knew where to find her.
He went to flowers.com and plugged in the newly acquired office address and his credit card number. He took the next-day delivery option. He might have ferried them there himself if he didn’t have four days of surgeries lined up. Sandy tapped on his office door to remind him there were more patients. By noon, Angel had called his cell phone three times and left four messages with his office. He pressed ignore, balled up and threw the message slips in the wastebasket, and went to lunch.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The cafeteria at Northside Hospital was brimming with medical staff and patient families looking for a midday reprieve. The room was as noisy as a Wednesday-night happy hour. Jack took his tray and sat next to Seth Martin, a young associate from his practice. He’d been lucky to land a talent like Dr. Martin, he thought.
The young physician, ten years his junior, graduated at the top of his class from Morehouse College and went on to do the same at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. His credentials were impeccable, his passion and zeal for medicine unmatched. Affectionately known as Doogie, Martin had graduated from Marshall High School on Chicago’s South Side at fifteen, college at eighteen, and then went on to medical school, where he simultaneously earned a PhD in biophysics. He later completed his surgical residency at Sloan-Kettering in New York under the watchful eye of Dr. Howard Kellman, himself the father of two physician sons. A compulsive academic by nature, Doogie taught accelerated biophysics to premed students at Morehouse several mornings a week, ran a chemistry tutorial on Wednesday evenings, and was on staff at the National Center for Primary Care at Morehouse School of Medicine.
He had been handpicked by former Surgeon General David Satcher, the founding director of the center and interim president of the medical school. Doogie was president-elect and soon-to-be chairman of the Atlanta Medical Association, a post proudly and previously held by the Great Jack Gabrielle. At thirty-seven, Doogie had written dozens of articles on the disparities of health care for minorities and was appointed by the president to chair a White House commission dedicated to the issue. Two years ago, the Atlanta Medical Association named him “Young Physician of the Year.” More than a physician, Doogie was committed to something far greater. If he had his way, he would increase the quality of and access to health care for every person of color in the country.
Jack believed he could do it from the moment he laid eyes on him.
Their conversation meandered around minutia as they ate cold-cut sandwiches and gulped down Styrofoam cups of lemonade.
“I hear you’re getting a divorce,” Doogie finally said.
“Yeah.” Jack paused. “Long time coming.”
“These things can get nasty. Are you ready for that?”
“No one is ever truly ready.”
“Do you regret it?”
“Regret what?”
“Getting married.”
“No. Not really.” Jack shrugged.
“What’s it like?”
“Doogie my man, marriage is like having a very wonderful dessert, before a very long, tortured dinner.”
“Can’t be that bad, can it?” Doogie asked with hope.
“They all look good on paper. She’s holding out for more money,” Jack threw out.
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe.” Jack shrugged.
“I’m sorry to get in your business.”
“Shit happens. What about you? Aren’t you engaged?”
“Yeah, I am. I just hope that I picked the right one. I burned through a lot of women before I met her. My mother is still trying to hook me up with some woman from her church.” He laughed.
“What does your fiancée do for a living?” Jack asked.
“She’s a writer.”
“Out of work, huh?”
They laughed.
“Stephanie says I work too much.”
“She might have a point. Never believe you did the picking, Doogie. They always pick us.”
“True that. She’s fantastic. You’ll have to meet her.”
Jack finished his sandwich, dabbed the crumbs from his lips, said good-bye, and headed for the elevator. He took the pedestrian bridge back to his office. His heavy soles slapped the marble tiling liked a rapping drum, his heart thumping. Sandy had the afternoon fully booked and put him right to work. He slid into his lab coat.
“Let’s get to it,” he said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
A young woman strolled into the office like she owned the place.
“Do you have an appointment?” Sandy asked, peering over her wire-rimmed glasses.
“I’m a friend,” Angel said dryly.
Sandy frowned. “He’s in with patients right now. Can I take your name and give him a message?”
“Just tell him I’m here.”
“He’s in with a patient,” Sandy pointed out again. “You’ll have to make an appointment.”
The young woman would be cute, if she had any class, Sandy thought. As Angel removed her sunglasses, Sandy was struck by her deep green eyes. They were smart, mischievous eyes. Yet Sandy knew her type by her cheap “come-fuck-me” pumps. Why Dr. Gabrielle would waste his time, Sandy didn’t know. But this was her turf and the nurse wasted no time letting the young woman know it.
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