Where Trust Lies (Love vs. Loyalty Book 3)

by Nia Arthurs

He sighed and fixed his attitude. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m doing fine. I’m eating alright. My work is paying the bills.”

  “That’s better.” She cooed. “You realize that you’re my baby right?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Stephen replied, quickly deciding to try out the new tax filing agency he’d seen online. If he emphasized that money was no object, maybe they’d fit him in during a season when everyone had booked a tax agent weeks in advance.

  He pulled up his email and began a letter.

  TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,

  “Did I tell you that Martina’s pregnant?” His mother said conversationally.

  Only about fifty times.

  “Yeah, you did, Mom.” He quipped instead. His eldest sister Martina was pregnant with her first child. His mother was ecstatic and was constantly ragging him about his single status.

  I WOULD LIKE TO ENGAGE YOUR SERVICES

  “She wants you to come over, you know. Take a look at her computer.”

  FOR THE PURPOSE OF TAX AUDITING

  “Mom,” Stephen replied. “I’m more familiar with the software of a computer than the hardware.”

  FOR THIS YEAR…

  “Bah, a computer’s a computer.” She chuckled.

  DUE TO THE LATENESS OF THE REQUEST

  “I’ll take a look if Martina really needs me.”

  WHICH IS A FAULT OF MY OWN

  “She’s also got someone she’d like to introduce you to. Her name’s Tiffany Fuentes. She’s a gem.”

  ANY COMPENSATION FOR YOUR WORK…

  Wait. What?

  Stephen focused his attention on his mother’s words. “Mom,” He shook his head. “You didn’t.”

  “The girl’s a lovely woman. She’s tall like you and she’s got the nicest hair, really black and glossy. She comes from a great family too. She knew you in primary school.”

  That didn’t necessarily endear her to Stephen. The kids in primary school had been brutal. Albino skin was not the fashion statement that his mother always made it out to be. And his strange appearance made him a prime candidate for merciless teasing and bullying.

  “Mom, I told you and Martina to stop meddling in my love life. Look at what happened to Erwin. Why don’t you focus on him?”

  Stephen’s older brother was recently divorced. His mom had been heartbroken. She’d sanctioned the match.

  “Your brother needs time to grieve after Alyssa. He’s in no way ready to date again.”

  “I’m not either!”

  “Come on, Stephen! Stephanie was years ago!”

  Stephen ducked his head and rubbed at his eyes feeling frustration build in his chest. Stephanie Wilcox had taken him for a ride two years ago and he’d been desperate enough to fall for her mind games.

  She came from the right family. She was well-spoken, ambitious, and sensitive to the limitations of his condition. She’d had them all fooled. The truth was, she tore Stephen apart more than any woman ever had and he wasn’t interested in repeating the mistake.

  “Mom, I’m not going to Martina if she shoves a date on me. You can tell her I said so.”

  “Fine. Fine.” Jenny McCord gave in when she realized that Stephen wouldn’t back down on this one. “I’m only trying to help.”

  Sinking deeper into the comfortable cushions of the swivel chair, the young man ran a hand down his pointed chin. “Like you helped with the fifty blind dates I’ve been on lately?”

  “Stephen, don’t be silly. I suggested a few young ladies that I thought would intrigue you.”

  “You set me up!” Stephen accused.

  His mother tutted into the phone. “Placing blame won’t help any of us right now. Are you coming to church tomorrow?”

  “Why? Do you have someone for me there too?”

  “Stephen, that attitude is getting out of control. You’re not too young for a spanking, you know.”

  He chuckled at the thought. His mom was five feet eight inches but he far outweighed her. “Mom, I’m almost thirty.”

  “I know!” She wailed. “Why do you think I’m trying to get you married? Time is slipping away from you.”

  Stephen laughed because in these situations he could either laugh or cry. “I’ll keep that in mind while I wither away alone over here in this big house that I bought with my boat load of money from my business.”

  “Money doesn’t buy happiness.” His mother pointed out.

  “Love doesn’t either. Just ask Erwin.”

  Sighing loudly, Mrs. McCord cut off that train of thought. “Just have an open mind. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “I’ll keep any eye out for a girl that tickles my fancy. Probably take a look around downtown and randomly pick one out.” He joked.

  “Please do,” Jenny said firmly but there was a smile in her voice. “I’m serious about Martina, though. Phillip can draw a house with no issues, but he can’t figure computers out to save his life. ”

  Phillip, Martina’s husband, was an accomplished architect at a local firm. He still drew plans by hand.

  “I’ll stop by after I go grocery shopping, Mom. Promise.”

  “Okay, bye sweetie.”

  They hung up and Stephen checked his watch. The call had eaten away at his time. Standing quickly, Stephen palmed his keys, leaving the email box open until he got back home. Sliding into his car, he started the engine and adjusted his glasses on his face.

  His genetic deficiency meant that he suffered from near-sightedness but his glasses lens were thick enough to replace a coke bottle bottom and his prescription was strong enough to see objects if he drove carefully. His brother Erwin always joked that Stephen had purchased his license. He’d had a few near-misses in the past, but no one had lost their lives so he hardly felt the accusation was fair.

  The drive to the nearest grocery store took less than five minutes. He hopped out of the vehicle and walked past the automatic doors, striding into the cool atmosphere of the superstore. He tapped his hands on his thighs as he grabbed a basket and headed down the bread aisle. Stephen loved bread, toasted, soft, buttered, spread with nuts or plain. It was a weird obsession that no one in his family shared or understood.

  He ignored the stares as much as he could. Belize City was a predominantly black-Creole community. The whites were sorely outnumbered and people with his shade of skin were extreme rarities.

  Despite his cultural ethnicity stemming more from the Latin community than the European, Stephen was often grouped in as a ‘white man’. He attracted looks wherever he went due to his height, his ghost blue eyes and his extremely fair skin.

  At first the stares had disturbed him. Children would loudly ask their parents questions about who or what he was. He’d felt like a display at the Belize zoo, caged in by people’s judgments about his character because of his skin color.

  At twenty-seven, he was proud to say that he’d finally outgrown the need to fit in. He was never going to magically change. He was stuck with his skin and his face and his eyes and he had learned to be okay with it.

  Stephen’s basket was filled with sandwich meats, a variety of fresh breads, cheeses, and chips by the time he slid behind a young couple holding a baby girl in the line. The child had dark brown hair braided into tiny plaits with green and white beads at the end. Her bright brown eyes regarded him carefully and her thumb was stuck in her mouth. Her brown skin was a beautiful shade of mahogany and Stephen waved kindly at her unabashed appraisal.

  The little girl leaned back, checking him out from head to toe. Stephen snickered beneath his breath. Sometimes, kids would cry when he came around. He could admit that his translucent skin could evoke thoughts of vampires. He tried not to let the reaction faze him. This little child, however, stared him down and then let her thumb free.

  Stephen waited quietly to see what she would do. Her braids clacked noisily together as she smiled wide, revealing two missing front teeth, and waved enthusiastically back at him. His eyes crinkled at the corners from his amusement and he had to r
estrain the urge to buy her a candy for her sweetness. Most parents wouldn’t appreciate that, so he refrained.

  When it was his turn to place his baskets on the counter, the young lady behind the cash register stared at him.

  “G-good night, sir.” She said, her voice trembling.

  He ignored the fear in her tone and responded kindly. “Good night.”

  He began placing his items on the conveyor belt and she kept her eyes carefully away from him as she scanned in his items. When he was a teenager, Stephen would have fled home in tears. He would have railed to the heavens, bashing God for making him this way, for creating him so uniquely.

  He was way past those days and had come to expect the strange looks. His albinism was a skin condition, not a life threatening disease. He’d given up on the hope that people would eventually get used to his appearance. Now, Stephen accepted the comments, the stares, and the discomfort in stride.

  The cashier quietly named his total and he paid in cash, accepting his bags from the boy at the helm of the counter and striding out the door. Beyond his medical aversion to sunlight, Stephen simply enjoyed the solitude of his own house. As blasé as he’d become about being the center of attention everywhere that he went, he enjoyed not being regarded like a side-show attraction.

  He trotted to his car. The farther Stephen got from the store, the more buoyed he felt. His cupboards would no longer be bare. He really should hire someone to go grocery shopping for him so he didn’t have to.

  He’d get right on that.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mali Staine sat in the small, cramped office at the University of Belize. The ceiling fan turned around and around in a circle but she felt none of its effects as sweat beaded on her forehead. The wooden chair beneath her was hard and uncomfortable. She shifted her bum to rest more comfortably and pulled at her blue blouse.

  Plaques on the wall boasted that the University was a licensed educational facility. Personal photos of the Dean with the Prime Minister also graced the cream enclosure. The cubicles had open spaces that allowed private conversations to carry. Mali squirmed in embarrassment as she realized that everyone sitting in the waiting room would be able to hear her plight.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Staine.” Mr. Alamina, the finance officer, plopped his body in the chair behind the small Formica covered desk. His girth jiggled a bit before resettling into place around his abdomen. His greasy black hair was combed to the front of his head and the smell of cheap cologne swirled around her, prompting a cough. “I’ve found your file.” He flipped Mali’s folder open. “It says here that you’ve been late on two payments and you haven’t paid anything down for this month.”

  “I know.” The young woman fingered the tiny string of her backpack. “I’m trying to come up with the money. I need more time.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Staine.” Mr. Alamina said but his face betrayed no such sentiments. “The rules are that you have to pay for the semester or else you will be taken off the class list.”

  Mali allowed the hopelessness to seep into her voice as she petitioned the man for mercy. “I can’t make it this month. I have other responsibilities.”

  He leaned forward, thumping her file closed with his fat fingers as if he were ready to move on from her case. “I’m sure there are other avenues you can pursue. Say, a government grant, a loan, a scholarship?”

  “It’s too late in the semester to qualify for any of those. I thought I could make it but,” Mali lowered her voice. “I just got fired from my job and my mom has hospital bills-”

  Mr. Alamina raised a fat palm. His hand looked as though a rabid mosquito had infected him with a life threatening disease for the limb was painfully swollen. The fat beneath his chin jiggled like a ripple of the tide against the shore. “I wish I could help you. I really do. But rules are rules. When you come up with the money, you can return to class.”

  “But what if I can’t make it by next week? I won’t be able to return to school until next semester.”

  “Hear what.” He jotted something on a crumpled piece of paper. “I’m going to write your name down and lengthen the payment period to two months. If you can’t make the payment this semester, I’ll speak to the Dean of Admission so you don’t have to reapply next year. Okay?”

  Withholding tears, Mali nodded her head, her fat braids bouncing against her back with the movement. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Of course,” he said valiantly as though he had saved the day.

  Rising unsteadily on her feet, Mali trekked out of the open office, glancing at the people who had probably overheard her conversation. They bestowed her with pitying glances and sorrowful eyes. She passed them slowly and walked down the long hall to the gravel road winding down to the University campus. Her arms felt like lead and her feet threatened to buckle at any minute.

  She couldn’t drop out of school now. Her mother depended on her. She only had two more semesters left until she’d graduate with her nursing degree. That paycheck was supposed to be the catalyst the Staine women needed to pay off their bills and get back on their feet. Now Mali was stuck with no job, no way to pay for school, and no way to pay for her mother’s mounting medical debts.

  Mali made it to the bus stop around the corner and wilted against the black iron bench. She was tired and though the hospital was only a few blocks away from her school, she didn’t have the heart or the energy to walk there. A few minutes later, a large bus came chugging down the lane. Mali quietly boarded and took a seat at the front. She didn’t feel like listening to the chatter that usually came from the back rows today.

  As the bus rumbled to life, she set her face against the cool glass and watched the passing scenery roll by. Belize was a melting pot of cultures and the University revealed the cultural diversity. White faces, black faces, tan faces, long hair, short hair, curly and straight waltzed before her, streaming through the tan gates at the front of the campus.

  The lush forests nearby seemed to demand attention, battling with the infrastructure built around it with arrogance and pride. As the scenery changed and the houses grew more numbered, she thought of her mother.

  Mali was Helena Staine’s only child. Her mother and father had divorced some time ago and though Mali had many step-sisters and step-brothers, she felt no urgency to find them or get to know them in any way. They were too numerous to think about. She recalled the words of a poem by L. Goodison describing such a father.

  The man she made him with had more

  like him, he was fair-minded

  he treated all his children

  with equal and unbiased indifference.

  If there was one thing Mali could say about the man who donated his sperm to her existence, it was that he was a very fair man in his indifference which he distributed equally to all of the children who were conceived by him.

  Mali scoffed and tried not to think about that part of her life. She had a Father and He’d been around for longer than she’d been on earth. Didn’t lessen her other daddy issues one bit though.

  The bus cruised down the lane of the hospital and she stood, preparing to disembark. After depositing a dollar into the weathered palm of the driver, she cruised down the bus steps and walked the few blocks to the clinic.

  The Kandy H. Martinez Hospital was a public hospital that catered to the poorer dregs of their Belizean society. People who couldn’t afford the fancy medical center downtown, arrived in droves to seek medical attention.

  Mali flashed her ID at the security guard near the information desk and trotted up the stairs to her mother’s room. The hospital smelled of Clorox and urine. The floors were clean and the orderlies walking around in white smocks seemed confident enough, but Mali ached to whisk her mother to the private hospital where she would have more peace of mind. Alas, this was impossible. She could barely afford to pay the bill collecting at this place.

  Glancing up, Mali read the sign on the second floor and realized that she was in the right place. A burly security
guard sat at the front door.

  “Hey, Al.” She flashed her social security card at him out of habit but Al was used to her presence.

  She was no stranger to this ward. Mali jogged into the wide lobby where nurses and doctors darted in and out behind a huge circular desk. She turned to her left and made her way down the short hall as the scent of Clorox grew stronger. Someone, hoping to mask the scent of destitution, threw a boatload of the cleaner onto the floor and walls. The fumes alone were keeping people sick.

  “Mali,” her mother glanced up the minute she entered.

  “Hi, Mom.” She said bravely walking over to the bed upon which her mother rested.

  . There were twelve other beds in the room. Each one was occupied by a man or woman in some form of pain or need. The woman directly beside her mother had been abused by her boyfriend. Her side and face were badly bruised. The man across from them had an infected stub where his left arm should be. Mali was always uncomfortable when she came here.

  “What did the finance officer say?” Helena Staine asked without preamble, trying to rise.

  The doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. Nausea, dizziness, headaches, and pain in her hands and feet were the symptoms of a myriad of diseases. The Staines were also knee deep in arrears. The hospital’s hands were tied. They had to settle their bill before any major X-rays or scans could be performed on her mother.

  Such was life. Mali Staine could not catch a break.

  “Mom, don’t worry about that, okay?”

  Helena closed her brown eyes and sighed deeply. “They kicked you out, didn’t they? All those schools want is money.” Helena pursed her lips and shook her head, her thin black hair crazily following the movement.

  If someone peeked into the brightly lit room, they would not imagine that Helena and Mali were relatives, and certainly not mother and daughter. Helena always thought her child favored her father more.

  Mali’s skin was lighter than her mother’s dark ebony. Her hair was curlier and longer, thanks to the Mayan blood coursing through the charming man that had pried Helena’s heart and her legs open. Mali’s features were rounder and more pleasant which spurred a constant fear in Helena’s heart.