Tattered Tiara (The Bancrofts: Book 2)

by Barrett, Brenda

  Charlene didn't expect people to adore her and was never disappointed if they didn't. Charlene was comfortable in her own skin. Deidra was sure that Charlene didn't have nightmares about getting a scar on her face or had heart palpitations wondering if she ate something with too much saturated fat.

  For Charlene, life was simple. She didn't have a beauty regimen or was afraid to be seen in generic brand name shoes. She gave Charlene a Hermes Birkin bag last Christmas, that was on the biggish side, and Charlene used it to carry her farming paraphernalia without a care in the world.

  When she approached the kitchen softly, she saw that Charlene had pulled off her ubiquitous hat and had her hair lying in flat curls along her nicely shaped head. She had cooked something, which smelled nice, and she and her Dad were laughing and chatting easily.

  Deidra entered the kitchen reluctantly. She felt like a kid again. She had spent much of her growing up years with Charlene's mother and she could remember settings like this, where her father would come over to the house and he and Charlene would share some joke or the other.

  They shared a special bond and Deidra just felt alone and lonely. She really didn't have anyone in the world that truly loved her.

  She had wanted Micah to love her but she was sure he would never like her much less love her again, not after this whole rape debacle.

  She slouched her shoulders. The mental voice telling her to stop slouching, beauty queens don't slouch wasn't enough to make her straighten her spine.

  "Dad," she said. Her voice had gotten all whispery and tear-filled.

  He looked up and saw her expression and he sobered up.

  Charlene smiled at her sympathetically. "I'll leave you two to talk." She picked up her plate. "Want something to eat Dee?"

  "No thanks," Deidra said sighing. She sat across from her father with her head in her hands.

  He reached over and squeezed her shoulder. "What's up kiddo?"

  Deidra looked at him. Through the tears in eyes, he looked all blurry.

  "I am sorry Daddy."

  Her father cleared his throat. "What are you sorry about?"

  "I made up the allegations against Micah."

  Her father nodded a look of pain across his face. "I know. I called the assistant superintendent to tell him. He was very willing to drop the charges against Micah, and since only two days were wasted investigating this false charge, he will not charge you for making a false report. "

  Deidra sniffled. "How'd you know?"

  "Micah videotaped you confessing," Edward said stiffly. "Dee, you are not going to get away from this scot-free."

  Deidra nodded. "I know."

  "I am cutting you off," Edward said frankly. "You are an adult now and what you did to Micah was unacceptable. It showed me that you are a danger to society."

  Deidra looked up at him worriedly. "I was just angry!"

  Edward nodded. "I know. I know, but anger is never an excuse to do what you did. I am going to have to give you some tough love."

  Deidra gasped. "What are you talking about?"

  "As from today," Edward swallowed, "you are going to have to show me that you can survive in this world on your own and be a responsible citizen before I allow you anymore privileges. You are my only child and I cannot be a senator in the government of Jamaica and raise a dysfunctional brat. I see that now. I complain about young people and their idle ways and yet here I am enabling my own child to be the same. I put no pressure on you to be a better…productive person. I am leaving you to sink or swim, Deidra."

  "What do you mean sink or swim?" Deidra felt an instant headache—her father had never spoken so sternly to her before.

  "You are going to pack two suitcases and no more," Edward said. "I hope you choose whatever you are taking wisely. I am also allowing you to take your cell phone. Your school fee is paid up until the last semester. You have one year left of college, I hope you complete it but I am not helping you after that."

  Deidra gasped. "That's unfair. How am I going to enter the beauty pageant in February without your backing?"

  Edward shrugged and looked at her dispassionately. "Maybe it's time you think about doing something else other than in the beauty line, or you can enter the competition under your own steam."

  "And where am I going to live when you kick me out?"

  Edward shrugged—steeling himself against her pleading expression.

  Deidra got up. "I'm going to call Tabitha!"

  "I already told her not to interfere," Edward said frankly. "I threatened to leave her out of my will if she did."

  Deidra sat back down abruptly, knowing that her mother loved money above all else. She would listen to Edward.

  "So who is going to live here?" she asked, her face was ashen.

  "Charlene and James," Edward said simply.

  "James!" Deidra spat. "That twerp gets to live somewhere while you kick me out on the street. How am I even going to survive?" Deidra asked plaintively. "Don't do this to me Daddy! I promise I'll be a better person!"

  Edward got up. "I'll give you one concession. When you find a job I will match your salary."

  "But Daddy!" Deidra squealed. "Please don't do this to me!"

  "I should have done something like this a long time ago. It took you almost destroying a man's reputation and sending him to prison to make me see the light. Come along, you have your case to pack and you need to tell me where to drop you off. If Charlene lets you back in this house again without my permission I am going to lock up this house and have her and James move out."

  That's when it dawned on Deidra that her father was serious. She thought feverishly. Who did she know on campus? Where could she sleep for the night? Her life was falling apart!

  Deidra went into her room and looked around feverishly. Where did she start? She had so many things. She went to the storage closet and took out her largest suitcases. She walked back to her room slowly. The senator was on his phone. He leaned on her door as he conducted business and Deidra felt one tear and then another dribble down her cheek.

  What was she going to do? She didn't even have a bank account. She had no idea how those sorts of things worked. She just used the ATM and her credit cards. She opened her walk in closet, a sob escaping her; she had rows and rows of designer clothes. She had even arranged them according to color and fabric. She spun around and thought about it. What were the best clothes to carry?

  "What are you going to do with my clothes when I am gone?" She choked out in her father's direction.

  "Give them away," he said dispassionately. "Maybe some preteen girl can have them. They are too short and tight for you anyway. Which baffles me since you are doing a course in fashion design, surely you should know how to dress by now!"

  "Am I even going to be allowed to come home for Christmas?" she sniffed.

  Edward tapped his cheek. "I was thinking of going to New York this Christmas. Your grandmother is having a get together. If you can afford the flight you can come."

  "But...but..." Deidra screamed, "This is barbaric!"

  "You can always tell your grandmother what you did to warrant this punishment," Edward said. "Tell your gentle Christian grandmother that you almost sent a man to prison just because he did not want to have sex with you."

  Deidra closed her eyes and grabbed some t-shirts and blouse from the hangars. She had to think about this carefully. She had only two suitcases.

  "This is all your fault," she said cramming her odds and ends into the suitcases.

  "I know," Edward sighed. "I spoiled you, now I am fixing it. Let it not be said that I am not the type of person who works on his mistakes when he is aware of them."

  Deidra sobbed, "I don't know you this way." She fell on the bed crying.

  Edward leaned over her and hugged her while she sobbed. "Hush my little girl," he said in the silence as Deidra sobbed. "You'll one day thank me for this."

  Deidra got up unsteadily. "I'll never thank you. You are mean and terrible."

/>   Edward glanced at his watch. "It will be night in two hours."

  While she was trudging her suitcase downstairs James stepped into the house and looked at her tear strained face. "Where are you going?"

  "Don't know," Deidra said hiccupping.

  "James," Edward came behind Deidra. "I'll be back to hear about how you are doing in school. Maybe you can show me some of those animations of yours."

  James swallowed and watched as his stepfather held the door open for Deidra and watched as she struggled to put the over-packed suitcases in the back of the SUV. When she started struggling to heave the second one into the back of the vehicle James ran out to help her.

  She fell on the suitcase, crying.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Deidra sat in the restaurant in the business center counting her money. Her father had handed her a wad of cash when he dropped her off at the dorm where she was staying with her friend Tiffany, but only for the next two nights.

  After that she had to find somewhere else and she had to find a job. She had cried for almost half the night and her eyes were swollen today. She wished she had packed her Louis Vuitton Evasion sunglasses. It covered nearly half of her face and would shield her puffy eyes from the public.

  She had just enough money to pay rent for a furnished apartment for the next month but if she did that she would have no food and she could not even afford to buy toiletries.

  She shoved her money back into her wallet. How ironic that the wallet probably cost more than the cash, she thought.

  Her father was being unjust she thought fiercely. The punishment was nowhere close to what she deserved. Hadn't she told him that she would not do something like this again? How dare him! Casting her off to fend for herself.

  She grabbed her tablet computer and went on the school's site, determined to find a job. She knew she was at a disadvantage. As Tiffany had said last night, all the well paying jobs were usually gone by the first week in September.

  She scrolled through the student vacancies and found that most of them were in the Science department. They wanted test subjects for their various projects. She saw one from Media and Communications for a presenter on MFTV for the program Sound Bites of Faith.

  Deidra winced as she read the job description she would have to read daily devotional thoughts. She had come to a Christian school but had tried to avoid all the little Christian-like stuff that they did, but this job was putting her squarely into the fray.

  The pay wasn't bad though. It was enough to pay half her rent if she decided to stay at a furnished apartment and her father had promised to match her pay so she would be able to afford the rent. Food and other necessities would be another matter.

  She jotted down all her aunties and uncles names and numbers. She would call them later and have them send her some money. The thought made her happier and she ordered a small soup from the counter. She had to pinch her pennies until she knew how she would end up.

  "Deidra." She whipped her head around and there was Natasha Rowe behind her, with a soup in her hand.

  "Mind if I join you?" she asked.

  Deidra looked at her sheepishly and nodded. "I mind, but I guess we have to talk sometime."

  Natasha sat down and just stared at her.

  Deidra squirmed under the stare.

  "You wasted my time," Natasha said to her frankly. "You wasted police resources. Every time you make a bad report for something as bad as rape you make it very hard for future victims to be trusted…real people who have real issues."

  "I already said I am sorry," Deidra said sullenly. "Why is everybody coming down on me so hard?"

  "Everybody like who?" Natasha asked. "I didn't know that this was known."

  "My father," Deidra said. "He kicked me out of the house last night."

  Natasha nodded. "Good for you. All little girls must face the real world."

  "It's so unfair!"

  "Suck it up," Natasha said frankly, "and don't waste time in self pity. Straighten that tiara Miss Beauty Queen and smile through your pain."

  Deidra hung her head.

  "Gotta go," Natasha said finishing her soup. "I have a bad guy to catch…a real rapist. Be careful out there."

  Deidra nodded and watched as Natasha walked away confidently and she found herself envying her in her cheap washed out jeans and her inexpensive polo shirt.

  Deidra walked into Media Room 4 fifteen-minutes after she was told to show up for her screen audition. It was hell not having a car. She hadn't realized how big the campus was and that most of the places seemed to be uphill. By the time she went into Media Room 4, a sour-faced woman, with what looked like a five o'clock shadow, looked at her balefully.

  "If you are going to work here you can't be late for production. Got that?" She jammed a sheaf of papers in Deidra's trembling hands. "Go stand before the green screen and read the paragraph from the paper. Then I want you to do the same from the teleprompter."

  Deidra walked in front of the green screen. There were several lights shining at her so she couldn't see into the dark areas of the studio.

  She knew that there were people there though because one person coughed and somebody growled, "shut up."

  She read from the paper:

  "Psalms 37:3-5 Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to past.

  The Lord is the source, the heart, and also ought to be greatest object of our desire. There are lots of good things in this world but we have to be careful about what we want and why. When the Lord is our greatest, our first love, when we are delighted in Him, every desire of our hearts will be perfectly fulfilled. That's the promise of this wonderful word!"

  "Not bad," said the sour-faced lady coming to stand before Deidra.

  "What do you think Gilbert? I think she handled the teleprompter bit like a natural."

  Gilbert, a slim, fair guy with a premature bald spot in the middle of his head stepped forward out of the dark. "I agree and not to mention that her beauty lights up the screen."

  "You are hired." He turned to Deidra. "It is an honor to have a reigning beauty queen on our humble MFTV screen."

  "You recognize me?" Deidra asked.

  "But of course." Gilbert licked his lips. "The popular senator Durkheim's daughter. How could we not?"

  "I am the producer for this nugget section." He handed Deidra a sheet of paper. "Please record your details here. Workers are paid every two weeks. Want to go out to dinner?"

  Deidra took the sheet from him—her first real job. This wasn't too bad. It could be worse. She could be scrubbing toilets, and the devotional had hit a spot, a very vulnerable one.

  She looked at Gilbert. Usually she would have done so scornfully but she just shook her head. It was time to put away her beauty queen haughtiness.

  "Not tonight."

  "Another time then?" Gilbert looked at her like a salivating dog eyeing his first meal after a fast.

  "Not sure," Deidra said. The sour-faced lady was passing again and Deidra turned to her. "What's your name?"

  "Sonia King," the lady said. "You can come in everyday at 8. You do the daily readings and that's it."

  "Okay, thanks," Deidra said and headed out the door.

  "Wait!" Gilbert said. "You didn't give me a conclusive answer about dinner.

  Deidra shook her head. "No! I am not interested."

  If she had turned back, she would have seen Gilbert grit his teeth and tighten his fist.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Two days and she was out. She couldn't stay with Tiffany for more than three nights. The Dean of the Girls Dorm had personally come to escort her off the dorm. The dean had looked at her sympathetically and then had her sign up a form to board there next year.

  Deidra pulled her bags along the pavement leading up to the business center. They had a hotel called the
Oasis. Problem was, she couldn't afford to stay there more than a night.

  Besides, when she had called today the place was booked out. Apparently, there was a pastoral conference going on and all the visiting pastors were staying there.

  She bit her lip. Her calls to her aunties and uncles came up with nothing. Apparently, there was a family wide strike against her.

  Even her stepmothers were unsympathetic to her. Aunt Mattie, Charlene's mother was a softie to the core and even she had told her no. The no from Aunty Mattie hadn't stung too badly though. At least she was crying when she said the no. Then she had asked Deidra if she had an account. Deidra didn't have one. She had told her to get an account and give her the number.

  Aunt Marcie had laughed at her outright and told her to man up, she could get through this tough time.

  She stopped at a bench in front of the business center and sat down. Her two bags beside her. She felt like the prodigal son after he had lost all his money and was eating with the pigs, had no friends and no one to turn to except his father. Forget it, her story was not like the prodigal at all. Her father was the one who had kicked her to the curb.

  It was late evening and the breeze was blowing colder by the minute. Deidra went to her clothes bag and pulled out a thick sweater. It had taken up almost one third of the space in the suitcase but at least it made her warm.

  She contemplated putting on another pair of socks and rummaged through her bag for them. Students were passing and glancing at her furtively but she didn't care. She found a pair of her wooly socks wrapped around her tiara—her fake gold tiara. She had no idea why she packed it. Maybe she wanted it as a reminder of what she had achieved so far. She yanked her socks out of the small groove on the tiara and it broke.

  It was as if something broke in her when the tiara snapped and she found herself sobbing uncontrollably. Big drops of salty tears just poured down her face unchecked.