“I would think you’d have been expecting me. One of these days.”
Simona said, “I believed you to be dead.”
That surprised me. “Dead? I sent you correspondence. You never replied.”
“I’ve never gotten anything.”
I said, “Letters.”
“No.”
I said, “Pictures.”
“No.”
I rolled all of that over in my mind.
She said, “I don’t understand any of this.”
“What’s to understand? You’ve had your life of privilege.” I paused, gritted my teeth. “And I’ve had my life.”
She realized then. She said, “You’re angry with me?”
I said, “Furious.”
“I don’t understand.”
I didn’t answer immediately; I pulled from the curb, then said, “You will.”
“We’re leaving?” There was a hitch in her voice she couldn’t disguise.
I said, “Bite to eat. Catch up on old times.” I didn’t bother smiling.
She touched her neck, one of her nervous tics. “I’m concerned,” she admitted. “You’re angry with me. You feel cheated somehow. Someone has to take the blame. And you’ve come up with me?”
I nodded and kept driving. “I’ve come up with you.”
“Your logic is surprisingly nonlinear, Simon.”
Simon. It was startling to hear that, to hear my birth name.
Simon Michael Darling.
I said, “Would you care for me to explain my logic?”
Simona said, “I would, of course. I’d like to understand…everything. You must know that. My brother, whom I thought to be dead, walks in to my job out of the blue…” Her voice was choked by emotion. I chose to ignore that.
I said, “Mosley Lehane and his wife Bettye. They took me in.”
Simona nodded. She knew that much. She was four years old, I was seven.
I said, “Mosley was a bear of a man. He locked me in the basement as punishment. He punished me frequently and fervently and with his fists. And it was all an arbitrary thing. I didn’t necessarily have to do something wrong.”
I shared a similar history to that of my wives.
Similar to Jacqueline, Dawn and Nikki.
Simona was quiet, listening.
I continued, “He was a diabetic. He stepped on a nail one day. Infected toe. Too stubborn to go to the doctor. It worsened. He eventually lost the lower part of his left leg. And then he lost his will to live. Thirteen months later…gone.”
Simona sniffed.
I said, “I was pleased.”
Simona nodded.
I said, “Bettye Lehane was pleased, as well.”
I said, “Bettye wasn’t an attractive woman. She had the hard edges of a man, none of the soft curves of a woman. She wasn’t exactly ugly but…”
Simona said, “Did she love you? Did she treat you with kindness? Was she cruel like her husband? Or was she caring and giving?”
I said, “Her vagina had a raw and disgusting smell. Like trash in those bins in the park during the hottest of July days.”
I didn’t have much of a sense of smell. My olfactory senses had been dulled. I believed it to be a mental block. I laid the blame at Bettye Lehane’s feet.
Simona eyes widened, startled by that revelation, by that blunt confession.
I added, “It tasted even worse than it smelled.”
My sister sighed, closed her eyes.
“I was forced to service her with oral sex. Twice a day until I was eighteen and I left. Like breakfast and dinner, twice a day.”
Simona’s eyes were open again. “And you blame me, Simon?”
I said, “Yes. You got first choice.”
She said, “It was a terrible arrangement, Simon. They should have never split us up. Just because their marriage didn’t work. They should have never split us up.”
Our parents.
Simona got our mother. Simona’s choice—the baby girl got first choice.
I got our father, the short straw choice.
Mother remarried into wealth, got her PhD, trips to Europe, clothes and shoes with Italian names. Simona got that, too.
Papa was truly a rolling stone. A bluesman with an insatiable taste for the ladies, for liquor, for the road. It wasn’t the life for a growing boy. So he shipped me to live with his good friends, the Lehane family, that bear of a man Mosley and his foul pussy-smelling wife, Bettye. I never saw my father again.
Mother, only a few times. When she remarried, things changed.
I said, “Would you like to know what I’ve done? It’s really something.”
Simona said, “What? What have you done?”
I told her my story. Told her all about my wives, all my women, all those I’d wronged. She sighed and shook her head. When I was done she said, “You’re…oh, Simon.” She paused, then, “This last one had hazel eyes, huh?”
“Yes,” I admitted, “beautiful hazel eyes.”
Simona said, “I think you’ve misplaced your anger, Simon.”
“You think?”
She said, “I was led to believe you were dead, Simon. Mother told me you’d died. Those times were tough on me, too. We were close, remember?”
I did. We were very close.
She continued, “I was little. I didn’t understand much of what was happening. My family was torn apart. My father and brother, both of you were gone. And then a year or two later, Mother told me you were dead, drowned.” Simona started to cry, choked out, “I didn’t know how to handle that, Simon. I was so little. I cried. I acted out in so many ways. I learned to despise water. I don’t swim, you know? Never been able to get my mind right enough to learn.”
I felt the rumblings of emotion in my gut. There was much I didn’t know.
Simona said, “It’s okay. Blame me if you like. But I’ve mourned you.”
It took me a while, but I finally managed, “You’re right.”
Things were becoming clearer. I didn’t feel what I thought I would after confronting my sister. I didn’t hate her. I was too numb to feel that. Without feeling. That’s what life had done to me. My life, it had drained me of feeling.
Simona asked, “What do you mean? I’m right about what?”
I thought of Jacqueline, Dawn and Nikki. I thought of my beauty with the hazel eyes. Simona was led to believe I was dead. That wasn’t a lie.
I said, “You were right. I have misplaced my anger, Simona.”
CHAPTER 21
JACQUELINE
Round-trip plane tickets, the promise of a driver waiting for me at the airport—DNA Girl, Inc. spared no expense.
For some reason, the entire flight, I couldn’t stop thinking about Jesse Washington. He was my first love, and first of many heartbreaks. We’d shared a flat together in Brooklyn. He was a beautiful man. Strong and rugged, with reddish-brown hair and skin the color of a walnut shell. Skin like Manuel.
I gave him every inch of me. That would be the first of many times I would do such a thing in the name of love. Every time it ended badly for me.
But then I was pregnant then came my first miscarriage I noticed the delight on Jesse’s face my love started to waver one day he bought me flowers they weren’t for what I thought he wasn’t attempting to repair what he’d broken he told me he never really loved me the sex was good but that was it he was going away I shouldn’t try to contact him he wouldn’t contact me.
My life, my pain, is a run-on sentence.
“You must be Jacqueline.”
I ventured, “Dawn?”
We eyed one another, unsure of how to proceed. Our driver, a gentleman named Cunningham, had already taken our bags and carefully placed them in the trunk of the limo. We stood on the curb, studying one another. Appraising our husband’s choices. She was beautiful. He’d chosen well, I had to admit.
Dawn said, “We’re waiting on Nikki, correct?”
I said, “Nikki with two Ks,” and laughed.
&nb
sp; The DHL-delivered letter we’d received from DNA Girl, Inc. had come with a bio on each of us. I knew all about Dawn and Nikki, and they knew all about me.
I said, “That letter was something wasn’t it.”
Dawn said, “Upset me at first.”
I said, “Counterfeit: fraudulent; an imposter; a forgery.”
Dawn said, “Wife: a married woman.”
That letter had included that info, had branded us for what we were: counterfeit wives.
I said, “Can’t believe Todd did this to us both.”
She said, “Todd?”
I asked, “What did he call himself with you?”
Dawn said, “Terry.”
I heard, “Fucking James,” from over my shoulder.
Dawn and I turned.
She was beautiful, looked like Eva from America’s Next Top Model.
In unison, Dawn and I said, “Nikki.”
Nikki said, “With two Ks.”
Crystal Edwards-Griffith, the CEO of DNA Girl, Inc., welcomed us into a well-appointed office in her home. She said, “I hope you ladies are okay with these arrangements. I thought it impersonal to have this meeting in the corporate offices.”
Her eyes were gorgeous, that’s the first thing I noticed about her.
They were hazel.
She said, “I’m truly honored and pleased to meet the three of you.”
We exchanged pleasantries.
“Can I get right to it, ladies?”
I said, “Please.”
“You’ve all been deceived. And I’m extremely empathetic to your plight. I intend to do something about it.”
Nikki said, “Why you all up in this?”
I smiled. I wouldn’t have put it that way. But that was the heart of the matter. I wondered, too.
Crystal said, “DNA Girl, Inc. is one of the leading agencies in this country in tracking down deadbeat dads, men that try and shirk their responsibilities. We became aware of Simon Darling through work with an unrelated case.”
Nikki said, “Who the fuck is Simon Darling?”
Crystal’s lips tightened into a smile. “Todd. James. Terry. Same man,” she said. She paused, cleared her throat. “But his given name is Simon Michael Darling.”
Nikki said, “No shit.”
“You’re all beautiful and accomplished women of color. What Simon did to you is incredibly tragic. I know you must have a myriad of questions you’d like to ask him.”
Nikki said, “Where the fuck is my cream?”
Crystal’s brows knitted. “What was that?”
“Bitch better have my money,” Nikki said.
Crystal’s smile tightened even more. “There is that. He took your assets as his own. Terrible.”
Dawn was silent through the entire meeting.
I worried about her. She looked very much on edge.
Crystal said, “I’m prepared to offer you ladies a golden opportunity.”
I spoke. I said, “What’s that?”
Crystal smiled at me. It wasn’t tight. “Answers,” she said, and added, “And your money.”
I asked, “How?”
“Our surveillance has tracked your husband, ladies. You’ll get your opportunity to confront him, face-to-face.”
CHAPTER 22
DAWN
“I got a good mind to fuck his ass up when I see him.”
That was Nikki. She had such an incredibly tough vibe to her. Despite her gutter mouth, I enjoyed her. Envied her. Wished I had that kind of toughness. I was stunned by everything. Couldn’t believe the man I’d loved as Terry wasn’t Terry at all. Simon Michael Darling. It hurt to know that my marriage was a sham, that I’d been the biggest of fools. Tanya was right. I was stupid and blind.
“I’d like answers. I want to know why he did this. Why he picked me.”
That was Jacqueline. I liked her, as well. We’d all had difficult lives, but she was the most together of the three of us, I believed. Most of it was a facade, true, but just looking at her you could see her fitting into the comfy kind of life that Crystal Edwards-Griffith lived. Nikki was too gutter for that. My past was too cluttered. That left Jacqueline.
I said, “I’d like my money. Have to start over.” Five thousand wouldn’t last.
Nikki said, “How ’bout we get all three? How ’bout that?”
We agreed with a sisterly handshake. We were counterfeit wives.
United as one. United by pain.
We’d been given a rental car for the drive out to the address where Crystal Edwards-Griffith said we’d find answers and our money. Crystal wasn’t with us, didn’t feel as if that would be appropriate. She’d left us with words of encouragement, a sisterly hug and hope for Godspeed. The sisterhood warmed me. Sisterhood. That was important. Jacqueline was at the wheel of the rental. Nikki was in the back, lounging as she described it. I had the printed MapQuest directions Crystal had given us in my lap.
I said, “Turn right up here. Then go 1.2 miles. That’s it.”
Nikki sat up in the backseat. “That’s it?”
I said, “That’s it.”
Jacqueline said, “That’s it.”
Counterfeit wives. United as one. United by pain.
Jacqueline said, “This is it. Do we knock?”
“Hell no, we don’t knock. We just storm up in there. I’m really pissed off now. Look at my fucking Audi in the driveway.”
Take a guess who that was.
I said, “Crystal said the side door is usually open.”
Jacqueline said, “Side door it is.”
We moved to the side of the house. Moved quietly and slowly.
Nikki said, “I feel like a damn Power Ranger.”
I smiled. I had two new friends.
Jacqueline said, “After we get this all settled, we have to stay in touch. Let’s make that promise.”
Nikki said, “I’m broke as a joke. I’m ’bout to ask one of you chicks to be my roommate.”
I said, “I have nowhere to stay.”
Jacqueline smiled. “I’ll call myself blessed. I have a home.”
I said, “Uncle Roscoe?”
“You know it.”
We’d bonded so much during our car ride.
Counterfeit wives. United as one. United by pain.
We reached the side door. Nikki stepped inside before I could say a word.
Jacqueline and I followed. It hit us immediately. A terrible stench.
Nikki stopped on a dime, shot back around to face us, her face a mishmash of disgust. “What the fuck is that? Think I’m going to throw up. Shit.”
Jacqueline said, “This doesn’t make any damn sense.”
I thought of my father, thought of Clarence. I said, “Damn.”
Jacqueline said, “What’s up, Dawn?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.
Nikki was moving through the rooms despite the stench.
I went ahead and followed. Jacqueline did, too.
Within a minute there were two screams in that rundown house. Two screams echoing off of the walls.
Mine wasn’t one of them.
Simon Michael Darling was sitting in a leather chair in his living room.
His eyes were vacant. He looked at peace.
Jacqueline kept screaming between retching. She was vomiting all over the carpet. Nikki screamed and cried, held her stomach, kept rubbing it.
Simon Michael Darling wouldn’t be giving any of us answers or money.
A gun was in his limp hand; his arm hung down loosely to rest in his lap.
Half of his head was missing, the other half was a pulp of blood and shredded brain.
I noticed a letter on the coffee table in front of him.
I went and picked it up and read it.
I was calm. So many screams in that house. But I was calm.
I plopped down on the couch and waited. Waited for the two other counterfeit wives to get themselves together. It took a while.
Jacqueline was the firs
t to speak. Her voice was raw. “What’s that in your hand, Dawn?”
I said, “A letter from Terry. I mean…Simon.”
Nikki asked, “To us?”
I shook my head, said, “To his mother.”
Jacqueline said, “Mother? That can’t be. She’s dead.”
“I thought so,” I said. “But apparently not.”
Nikki said, “He told me that, too. Did he tell the fucking truth about anything?”
I said, “Doubt it. He came by that honestly. His mother is a liar, too.”
“You met her?”
“We all have.”
“I never met his fucking mama.”
I said, “Yes. You did. Crystal Edwards-Griffith.”
CHAPTER 23
NIKKI
Last things last…
“Open your damn eyes, bitch.”
Simon’s mama did as I directed her. She seemed surprised to still be among the living. The gun blast had her shook. It was the real thing, and not from the Dennis Hopper movie playing on the television. She touched the side of her face, her chest, and then she settled, slumped in her chair. Took so many deep breaths.
I said, “That was a warning shot, Mama Simon. More soon come.”
She said, “I lied to you all. I know. I’m sorry.”
Jacqueline said, “Why?”
“Simon was becoming a nuisance. My life is settled, I didn’t want him to disturb it. That was wrong. But he was wrong, too. Creating a nuisance. I wish I hadn’t gotten you all involved. I do. I didn’t know what else to do. I thought you all would…would…scare him off or something. The letters unnerved me.”
“Letters?”
She nodded. “Detailed letters about his exploits. What he was doing to women. That’s how I came to know you all. He’s always sent letters. They read like fiction, like something from a novel. But they’ve gotten more disturbing. Very dark and worrisome. This last woman seems to have broken his heart.”
I said, “How so?”
“I believe he loved her.”
I swallowed that news. It hurt. I looked at Jacqueline and Dawn. They looked hurt, too. He hadn’t loved any of us.
Jacqueline said, “Tell us about her. This last one. What’s her name?”
Crystal said, “Don’t know her name. She…” She cleared something from her throat. “She has hazel eyes. That’s all he mentioned in the letters.”
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