“Naw. We’re just going to have a small ceremony in the little chapel at church. I’m going to fly Granny in for the ceremony. That will be the most extravagant thing we do.”
“That’s cool. I’m sure Granny will love that. First, my wedding at Martha’s Vineyard, now she gets to travel back home for your wedding. I can’t wait to see her. I’m still not over the fact that she left us and moved down to Florida.”
Kevin jumped from the sofa. “I’m going to get the kids.”
He trotted upstairs to where his niece and nephew were. When they came back down, packed and dressed to leave, Sherrie got up from her seat and put her coat on as well.
“Shaun, Shauntae, you two have fun with your grandma tonight. But I don’t want you to plan to go anywhere else. No visiting with Sha’Ron for the rest of this weekend, understand?” Lindsay insisted.
Both kids nodded that they did. “It’s cool, Mom. I think we kind of need a break from each other for a few days. But can I visit with Nichole and Isis?” Shauntae asked.
“If you’re talking about your friends from the neighborhood, that’s between you and your grandma.”
“We’ll work it all out when we get to my house. Maybe the girls can come to my house tonight for a sleepover,” Sherrie suggested.
Just as Lindsay predicted, overindulging the kids would not be a problem for her mother.
Everyone walked to the front door together.
“I’ll go out and start the car,” Kevin said.
“Don’t worry, daughter, dear, I’ll take wonderful care of my grandbabies. Cody, you take care of my baby.”
Cody stepped behind Lindsay and wrapped his big strong arms around her. “Don’t you worry, Mama. I will guard her with my life.”
“Good. I love you both. Enjoy your privacy. I’ll see you at church tomorrow.”
“We love you, too. Bye, Mama,” Lindsay said.
“Hey, li’l sister, what you got going on today?” Sha’Ron asked Shauntae via cell phone.
“Hey, Sha’Ron, I’m on my way down the street to hang out with my friend Nichole.”
“Okay. Why don’t you and your girl meet me at the mall? We can get something to eat and see a movie. I’ll buy both of you a LeBron James basketball jersey.”
Shauntae considered what her brother said. She felt kind of bad for him. She knew he was probably lonely or needed to get away from Grandma Pat’s house. But even if her mother had not forbidden it, she really didn’t want to hang out with him today anyway. Like she told her mom, she needed a break from that drama.
“I can’t today, Sha’Ron. Me and Li’l Shaun are spending the night with our grandmother. I already have plans to hang out with my friends in the neighborhood.”
Sha’Ron could hear in his sister’s voice that she really didn’t even want to see him. Normally, she would get excited and think of ways to persuade whomever she needed to let her see him. Today, there was no fight in her. She didn’t even want to try. Her mother had poisoned her mind and probably his little brother’s mind against him.
“Oh. Okay. Cool. Enjoy yourself with your friends and your other grandma. I’ll talk to you later, Shauntae.”
Shauntae felt even worse after Sha’Ron disconnected the call. She knew he was being intentionally snippy with the grandma comment.
Wow, she thought. This was getting more complicated than she ever imagined it would. In the beginning, all she wanted was to reconnect with her father’s side of the family. Since her initial reunion with Sha’Ron, she had lost her grandmother to death, she watched her aunts attack her mother, and saw her uncle locked in chains. So much for them all being one big happy family.
The evil witch, as his aunts always referred to her, had gone way too far now. She had stolen the minds of his sister and brother; probably Kevaun too since it was apparent she and Keva were new best friends. But there would be nothing else. Sha’Ron vowed he would not allow Lindsay to take one more thing from him. Nothing!
Chapter Seventeen
Monday morning came quickly, and Lindsay was not mad about it. For her, it signaled the beginning of not just a new week, but also the beginning of getting past the last few weeks.
Though she and Cody had only been separated one night, that one night was horrible. The weeks leading up to her finally telling him the truth had been nerve-racking. So, in essence, that drama had lasted more than one night.
Then there was the horrible drama of Patricia’s death and all her children had to deal with and witness as a result of it. Heck, her kids were already in therapy because of the drama she had with their father. Yes, Shauntae and Li’l Shaun had been privy to way more than any thirteen and eight year olds should have to deal with.
But she felt today was a turning point for her whole family. Even her little brother was getting married and had a baby on the way. Yes, today was the beginning of a new season; one of complete healing. They still had a long way to go and a lot of processes to get through, but they were at least moving in the direction of progress; great progress. Yes. Today was the first day of the rest of their lives.
“Thank you, God,” she said as she sat up in bed.
“Thank you, God,” Cody repeated as if he knew every thought in her head and was cosigning them.
“Today’s a new day, baby,” Lindsay shared with him.
“I hear you, love, and I agree. But let’s start it by being clean with fresh breath. We have to get up and get showered. I’ll take my shower first while you get the kids up. Then you can shower while I check on them and get them to the kitchen for breakfast. Then you can—”
Lindsay cut him off midsentence. “I know how this works, Mr. Vincini. This part is not new.”
The couple kissed with the unspoken promise of starting all of their mornings together this way.
Once everyone was up, showered, dressed, and fed, they all left the house at the same time going to their respective destinations: Cody to his law office, Shauntae and Li’l Shaun to the bus stop heading for school, and Lindsay on her way to college and her first day of completing her degree.
At the end of her second class, Lindsay waited to talk to her professor to find out if she had missed an assignment last week. Her economics professor said he and the class simply used the first session as an icebreaker.
When the final student had filed out of the classroom, Lindsay approached her professor. “Professor Monroe, I want to apologize for missing last week. Was there an assignment given that I need to complete?”
“Actually, we did have a homework assignment that was due at the beginning of class. If you can give me a good reason for missing last week, I will allow you to complete it by Thursday. E-mail it to me and you’ll receive full credit.”
Lindsay chuckled, not the least bit worried about her reasons being good enough. She told Professor Monroe the complete truth, including the reason for her one-day estrangement from Cody. By the time she was done, the woman was sitting there with her mouth hanging open. Lindsay laughed out loud at her expression.
“Professor Monroe, all of that was a result of remnants from my past. But I declared and thanked God this morning that today is the beginning of a brand-new day; a brand-new life.”
Lindsay received her assignment and went home. She checked her phone and discovered she had a voice mail from Kevin
“Hey, sis, give me a call when you get this message. I’m only working half day today and Brooke is off. We were hoping to get with you today since we know you don’t have anything going on. We wanted to go over some things for our ceremony.” Lindsay returned her brother’s call promptly.
“Hi, sis,” Kevin answered.
“What do you mean I don’t have anything going on, big head? I have a very full life, thank you very much. As a matter of fact, I’m leaving school right now.”
“Oh yeah. You did mention going back to school to finally get your degree. Anyhoo, what’s up? Can we get together about 1:30 or 2:00? When I get off work we can meet at Souther
n Fires downtown. My treat as long as you don’t bring your kids.”
“Shut up. I’ll meet you all at 2:00. See you in a little while.”
Lindsay decided she would run home and prep dinner for this evening for her family; then she would leave to meet her brother.
Sha’Ron had not been stalking Lindsay long enough to have established any specific patterns. He only knew that Shauntae and Li’l Shaun rode the school bus to school. So she didn’t take them to school. He didn’t believe she had a job, so he didn’t think she would have to get up and out too early in the morning. Therefore, he didn’t have to get up and out too early to watch her. Today would be the first day of his official surveillance and logging process. This way, he could get a line on her comings and goings.
He designated a spot about four doors down from her house on the opposite side of the street in front of an empty house for sale for his observation spot. He’d been there about thirty minutes when he saw the witch ride past him in her maroon GMC Yukon SUV. Sha’Ron jotted the time in his log book at 11:55 A.M. Lindsay only pulled the truck into the driveway as far as the front door. On the last two days that he watched the house, he realized that her truck was kept in the garage while White Boy kept his BMW in the driveway, up close to the side door. The way she parked her car gave Sha’Ron reason to suspect she would be leaving again soon. He decided to wait her out and see where she was going.
Sha’Ron kept a loaded .45 automatic gun on the passenger seat of whatever friend’s car he was driving that day. He switched vehicles each time he decided to watch the house. It was easy to get someone to loan him their car, especially since he would allow them to keep his sports car in exchange. Today he was rolling in a tan ’05 Chevy Malibu. It was actually the car of one of his friends’ mom, who had no problem risking his mother’s wrath for the opportunity to drive Sha’Ron’s pretty car.
Ditching school today was not a problem either. Sha’-Ron used his ensuing grief as a reason to miss school again. He had his friend’s older sister make the call, pretending to be his Aunt Tameeka.
In an effort to pass the time, he decided to clean out the text messages in his cell phone. His process was usually to read each of the sent and received messages and save those he thought to be pertinent. He would get rid of those that were inconsequential and in any way incriminating.
While scrolling through his texts, he saw a series of messages between him and Shauntae and read them carefully.
Sha’Ron: Hey li’l sis. How r u this eve?
Shauntae: Hey big bro. I’m good. What abt u? Good 2 hear from u. I thot u were mad @ me.
Sha’Ron: No. Y wuld I b mad @ u?
Shauntae: Idk (I don’t know). Mayb it was just me. Sha’Ron: Yeah. I guess. So u havn fun?
Shauntae: Yeah. I luv hangn w/my grandma. She does not no how 2 say no. Lol. My grandma is so cool. I rember Grandma Pat was cool like tht 2.
Sha’Ron never responded to his sister after that. She never said anything else either. He reread the text series over and over again. He appreciated Shauntae’s acknowledgment that his grandma was cool. It crushed him, though, that she had another grandma to love and kick it with. Yes, he knew a little about his mother’s mother, but they never really developed a close relationship, not even after Lindsay had killed his mother. Patricia Taylor had loved him, taken care of him, and she never told him no either. She was the coolest.
Sha’Ron began to feel that ache that made him cry. The only other time he felt that ache was when his stepmom killed his dad. He cried a lot right after his father’s funeral. His grandma had allowed him to cry. She cried too.
But whenever his uncle Bobby was around, he had to stifle his tears and man up ’cause only girls are allowed to cry. He had to be a man, a man who avenged his daddy’s death, not cried about it.
Fine. He was going to avenge his daddy’s death and the death of his mother and grandma as well, but he was going to cry too.
Forty-five minutes after Lindsay had gone into the house she came back out, got in the truck, and started it up. Sha’Ron heard the sound of the ignition start. That brought him out of his tear-laden recollection.
Lindsay began to back out of the driveway. Sha’Ron quickly started his car and drove up to the house with intentions of cutting her off as she came out of the driveway. However, Lindsay stopped suddenly. She got out of the truck, quickly jogged back to her front door, and went into the house.
She left her truck running so Sha’Ron knew she would be back shortly. He stopped the Malibu in the middle of the street and waited for Lindsay to reemerge from her beautiful house here on Everything Is Lovely Street. No, he thought. She does not have the right to live happily ever after when she has destroyed so many other lives, including mine.
Lindsay came running, almost sprinting, out the front door back to her truck.
“Stepmother!”
Lindsay heard the booming voice of her former stepson call her just as she got to the door of the truck. She looked and saw him standing in the middle of her street with a big silver gun in his hand.
She froze like a deer caught in bright headlights. That’s when the first bullet hit her in the right shoulder. The force of the impact twisted her entire body to the left. She slumped against the truck, but she did not fall. The next bullet hit her painfully in the upper shoulder on the opposite side of her body, which caused her to lurch forward, but before she hit the ground, the third bullet hit her in the back. She fell to the ground and could no longer feel a thing... .
Chapter Eighteen
Just over a week ago, Shauntae was in this same hospital emergency room waiting while her mother went to find out where she and her brother could find their grandmother. Now it was her grandmother screaming at the same receptionist to help her to locate her mother. “Irony” was one of her vocabulary words about two weeks ago. How appropriate I learned it, she thought.
“Ma’am, please stop yelling at me. It won’t make the computer unfreeze any faster. All I have to do is reboot it. Then I’ll have your answers for you.”
Sherrie started to yell again, but she realized the ghetto receptionist was right. The only thing she was getting from trying to talk to her was frustrated. She instead pulled out her cell phone and tried to call Cody again. This time he finally answered.
Cody had called Sherrie to go directly to the kids’ school to pick them up when he received a call from the police telling him that Lindsay had been shot. The neighbor who called the police after hearing the gunshots told the police that the kids rode the school bus home. The police officer warned Cody to get to the kids before they got on the school bus and got home to find their mother’s blood in the driveway.
If Cody knew any details surrounding her daughter’s shooting, he did not share them with Sherrie at the time. He simply told her that she had been shot, it seemed by Sha’Ron, but she was still alive. Sherrie did as he instructed and got the kids from the school. On the way to the school, she called Kevin who was sitting at the restaurant waiting on his sister to arrive, assuming she was just running late, to tell him the real deal. She then headed straight to the hospital, telling the kids once she got them exactly what Cody had shared with her.
“Mom, I’m sorry. I see I missed your call seven times, but I can’t get a signal in certain places in the hospital, specifically right outside the operating room. I’m on my way down to the lobby to talk to you.”
Kevin came barreling into the waiting area just before Cody arrived. He grabbed the front of his mother’s coat. “Mama, how is she? I can’t believe he shot my sister.”
Kevin collapsed on the floor of the waiting room, almost pulling his mother down with him.
“Kevin Westbrook, don’t you dare fall out on me. I demand that you hold it together. Put your faith and trust back in God. Your sister is still alive, and we have to believe she will stay that way. Please, baby, get up.”
Cody came into the lobby just then and helped his mother-in-law get his brother-
in-law to his feet and in a chair.
“It’s okay, Uncle K.J. God won’t let my mommy die. That’s just too much death. My daddy died, then my grandma. I mean my daddy’s mama, not yours. So he won’t take my mommy too. That’s just too much, and He won’t give us more than we can bear. It says that in the Bible,” Li’l Shaun said.
“Out of the mouth of babes come truth,” said Sherrie.
“Thank you, Li’l Shaun. I needed to hear that,” Shauntae said as she wiped tears from her eyes.
“Cody, what’s going on upstairs? What are the doctors saying?” Sherrie asked.
Cody struggled to share with them what the surgeon told him, but he knew they deserved the truth. He considered sending the kids on a frivolous errand to avoid having to talk in front of them, but decided against it. They had stood through everything else, so they deserved to know this as well.
“She was hit three times. There is a bullet in her left shoulder that is pretty serious, but there should be no problem removing it. She was also hit in the right shoulder by a bullet that went in and out.”
Cody paused to gather himself and make sure he didn’t break down as he delivered the last piece of news. The family all seemed to be collectively holding their breath as they waited to hear the rest.
“The third bullet hit her square in the back.” Cody had to pause again as he choked, but decided to push the truth out through the pain. “The bullet hit her spine and lodged itself too close for them to remove it. Lindsay is going to be paralyzed. The only thing we can hope for is that the paralysis is partial; from the waist down instead of from the neck down.”
Cody lost it then. He broke down and cried. The rest of the family followed suit. They all cried as well while still trying to comfort one another. After a solid ten minutes of weeping, Sherrie stood.
“Come on now, y’all. We have just been sitting here wailing as if we have given up on my baby. Not once have we opened our mouths to God to pray and thank Him.”
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