God Only Knows

by Xavier Knight

  “If it helps, Marcus,” Julia said, her arms crossed and her gaze respectfully focused on the floor, “none of the people in our lives have known about this up until now.”

  “Except for Toya’s brother, apparently.” Marcus shook his head, looking frustrated with himself. “For the record, I don’t really care if anyone else told their husbands or boyfriends. I care that my wife didn’t tell me, even when we were fighting for the very survival of our marriage.”

  “What purpose would it have served?” Cassie leaned over, resting against her husband’s strong back and draping her arms over his shoulders. “Our problems had nothing to do with this.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Marcus replied, holding his wife’s hands lovingly, though his tone was cool. “You told me about Gil Darby,” he said, nodding at Julia as if to ensure his wife’s best friend knew that piece of treacherous history. “Why not this?”

  Julia opened her mouth, then shut it so quickly —only Cassie caught on. Her outspoken, occasionally bossy friend was stifling herself, struggling to be more fly-on-the-wall observer than unsolicited therapist.

  “Marcus, no one could ever prosecute me for being assaulted by Gil,” Cassie said, her mouth nearly pressed flat against her husband’s cheek. “This situation with Eddie was totally different, so complex.”

  Marcus sighed, his eyes moving between his wife and Julia, and Cassie could feel the motors whirring inside his perceptive mind. “You’re right,” he replied, gently letting go of Cassie’s hands and rising from his chair. Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his dress slacks, he stepped to the nearby bay window and took a seat against the sill. “Maybe we’ll pay another marriage counselor’s kid’s way through college as a result of all this, but I guess that’s a separate matter.” He nodded toward Julia. “Right now, let’s the three of us sort out what to do about this mess.”

  Cassie blew a kiss toward Marcus. “Thank you.”

  “Oh, you can do that and more later,” he replied, grimacing and running a hand over his face. “I do need to hear some constructive ideas, ladies, because my flesh has the simplest answer: Take a Holy Spirit vacation and snap this Whitlock fool’s neck.”

  Julia looked up, her hands tented and her eyebrows raised. “I feel you, Marcus,” she said, “but as we all know now, following the flesh led to the problem we now face.”

  Marcus stroked his beard. “I have to be honest with both of you,” he said, glancing between them. “I’m not sure I understand how you kept from confessing to whatever happened long before now, Julia. No offense meant, but Cassie’s and my faith is a little more practical than yours, if you know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I am a ‘pie in the sky’ fanatic,” Julia replied, chuckling faintly. “I love you too, Marcus.”

  “Stop being offended,” he said as Cassie joined him on the windowsill, “and answer my question.”

  “I was a kid, just like Cassie, Toya, and Terry, that night,” Julia said, her eyes on the table as she seemingly searched her memory. “We all did what made sense to a bunch of terrified thirteen-year-olds. We kept our mouths shut.”

  Cassie asked a question that she realized she’d never actually voiced. “But, Julia, once you got into college and everything, as your faith and maturity in God grew, you never felt led to confess or make restitution?”

  Julia nodded. “I know what you mean. For a long time, as a single woman, I didn’t have as much to protect as you did. I think that’s why I did feel led to consider confessing, in some manner that wouldn’t affect the rest of you. This was about ten years ago.”

  “Uh-oh,” Marcus said. “That had to be around the time you met Mario.”

  Julia suppressed a frown at her ex-husband’s name. Her investment banker ex had swept into her life with such sudden flash, he had literally seemed heaven-sent. “I didn’t realize you were tracking my life’s timeline so closely, Marcus,” she said, working hard for her chuckle this time. “Yes, the long and short is, I put God’s call of confession on hold when Mario swept me off my feet. I told myself that telling the truth about Eddie could wait. I mean, how often did fine, wealthy Christian black men take such an interest in me?”

  Cassie tensed, instinctively hating any time her friend spoke of herself in such unflattering terms. “Stop it now, you hear me?”

  “Never mind,” Julia said. “The short answer is yes, I did nearly confess at one point.”

  “Confess what?” Marcus stood from the windowsill, checking his watch. “I don’t have all day here —Cassie and I need to change and get ready for a visit from another football scout who’s coming to interview M.J.; then we have to scoot and pick up the twins. If we’re going to figure out God’s will regarding this psychopath and his poor brother, I need to know exactly what happened between you and this boy.” Planting his feet, Marcus cast an inquiring stare between the two lifelong friends. “All you’ve said is that Whitlock’s right, that you were involved in his brother’s injuries. What does that mean?”

  Julia stood now, walking first to hug Marcus and then walking over to Cassie. “Your hubby just asked the million-dollar question, didn’t he, sweetie?”

  Cassie blinked, wrestling with a touch of confusion. “What do you mean?”

  All traces of emotion had disappeared from Julia’s face. “Pretend you’re being interrogated by a legitimate policeman, not Whitlock,” she said. “Tell me, in chronological fashion, Mrs. Gillette, exactly how we all wound up playing a part in Eddie’s injuries that night.”

  Cassie started, then said, “I’m not sure where to begin.”

  “Okay, simple question. Describe the last few minutes of the fight we had with him. Who hit him, kicked him, punched him, or used any weapon against him? What types of injuries did he sustain?”

  “I —I just remember shouting, shoving, a lot of blood. . . .” Cassie was embarrassed to realize she had started chewing a fingernail. Popping it from her mouth, she glanced toward Marcus before saying, “How do you remember it, Julia?”

  “This is the problem,” Julia said, placing an arm around Cassie’s shoulders and turning toward Marcus. “If I was put in front of a policeman today, I’d be up a creek. Cassie and I haven’t talked about that night in detail for nearly twenty years.” Cassie was shocked to see tears forming in her tough friend’s eyes. “Sis,” Julia said as she faced her friend, “we have to tell the truth now. God didn’t allow Whitlock to surface just for us to give in to flesh and play his games. We only have one option: Rob him of his power by going to a legitimate police detective and telling the truth. And with his two-week deadline ticking, we better get started.”

  “How do we tell the whole truth?” Cassie replied, her posture weakening at the very thought. Sensing Marcus’s sudden movement as he stepped to the other side of the two friends and slipped an arm around his wife’s side, she continued. “Julia, you already made the point. We’ve all repressed our memories so much —at this point, God only knows what happened that night. We start telling different stories to the authorities, we could all lose everything.”

  “Or,” Julia replied, her steely stare sending a bolt of strength through both of the Gillettes, “God’s favor can cover us if we go in with one united but honest account of what happened.” She reached for both of their hands as she said, “Give me a few days. It’s time we girls had a reunion.”

  12

  As their pilot announced the beginning of the plane’s approach to JFK Airport, Julia awoke to find Cassie staring at her. Her friend was smiling, but her eyes had an odd glow that caused Julia’s eyebrows to rise. “Hey,” she said, her smiling eyes meeting her friend’s, “what’s up?”

  “Nothing really,” Cassie replied, “just thanking God for sending me a friend who sticks closer than a sister.” Cassie winked at her own paraphrase of Scripture. “I’m still amazed that you pulled this off.”

  Julia coughed and reached to draw some hand sanitizer from her purse. “Well, don’t start writing a song in my honor
just yet. We haven’t solved a single thing yet, sister girl.”

  Julia had drawn on plenty of Holy Spirit power to convince both Toya and Terry that it was in their respective best interests —not just for the general cause of justice —to meet with her and Cassie today, but she still had no idea how to ask for the ultimate sacrifice from these women. She was no more eager than she imagined they were to risk everything —family, reputation, even personal freedom —to right something that was not an unquestioned wrong.

  “I hear your warnings,” Cassie said, tapping Julia on the hand, “but I hope, like me, you are praying for a miracle here in New York City.”

  “Oh, we won’t be going into Manhattan or anything,” Julia said. The only reason they were flying all the way to New York was because of Toya’s stubbornness.

  “Listen, I will meet with you,” she had finally said at the end of her frosty phone call with Julia, “but you’re asking an awful lot to make me do this in person. I can pretty much fly free, using George’s frequent-flier miles,” she said, referencing her husband’s world travels, “but that means I’ll be flying Delta and I’m not doing any connections once I come into the States.”

  “So what does that mean?” Julia had asked, her teeth grinding in annoyance.

  “The best flights are those that take me straight from Paris into JFK Airport,” Toya said, her tone dripping with a toxic combination of annoyance, impatience, and dread. “If you all can meet me there, I’ll agree to the meeting. And for the record, we’ll need to be efficient; I’ll be looking to board a return flight within three hours from my arrival.”

  “I don’t care if we just meet at Toya’s plane’s airport gate,” Cassie said, downplaying the significance of Toya’s selfishness. “This has to work, Julia, do you understand me? I cannot get back onto this plane tonight without an agreement that we’re all confessing to what happened.” She failed to fight a shudder at the thought. “Whitlock is waiting on me, do you understand? And if I don’t steal his motivation, if I let him keep coming after my family, it’s just a matter of time before Marcus or, God forbid, M.J. gets caught up in all this.”

  “You’ve already done right by Marcus, stop worrying about your husband.” Julia felt her back tense as she looked out the window. The plane was in the initial stages of its descent. “Now that Marcus is up to speed on everything, he knows we have the situation under control. If anything, he’s less likely to get in the middle of things as a result.”

  “Don’t bet on that.” Cassie grabbed Julia’s hand. “Marcus is giving us time to prove we have it under control. If he’s not convinced quickly, trust me, he will step in.”

  “Calm down,” Julia whispered, coaxing Cassie to lower her voice as the plane’s wheels bounced against the runway once, twice, then a third time. “One step at a time, girl, one step at a time.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Cassie said, voice back at a reasonable level, but still a little shrill even to her own ears. “You’re not trying to keep a hotheaded teenager out of all this. I tried to talk to M.J. again this morning before I left the house, Julia. It was a train wreck.”

  Julia frowned. “How’s that? I thought you were going to let Marcus run interference with him.”

  “Yeah, well,” Cassie said, sucking her teeth, “that was before M.J. told Marcus he has no ‘moral authority’ over him anymore.”

  “Where’d he get that idea?” Julia did a quick calculation of how Cassie’s son and husband compared physically. Even though M.J. had youth on his side, he was still shorter and lighter than his father, who had lettered in both high school and college as a football linebacker.

  As the plane taxied toward its gate, Cassie shook her head, eyes trained on her own lap. “Well, I guess when a nearly grown boy sees his father committing adultery, he’s entitled to get an attitude.”

  Julia gasped. “He didn’t actually walk in on —”

  “Oh, please, no.” Cassie shooed off her friend’s crazy notion. “What I’m saying is, M.J. was painfully aware of his father’s temporary decision to leave me for Veronica. Given that she’s a local broadcaster, well, most of M.J.’s friends knew who she was. He told me one night that the whole time Marcus was living with Veronica, his friends were complimenting him for having a ‘pimp’ of a father who could get a girl that ‘hot.’ M.J. said he nearly decked several of them to shut them up.”

  Julia let her eyes shut slowly. “I’m so sorry, Cassie.” For some reason, she had assumed that Marcus had been discreet enough to keep the affair a private matter between Veronica, himself, and Cassie. As far as anyone knew, it was Marcus’s first unfaithful act, and that had been after a couple of very tough years.

  “I talked to M.J. this morning,” Cassie said, whispering now, “because I needed him to understand the role I played in Marcus’s initial decision to divorce me and move into Veronica’s place. I tried to explain all the tensions that arose between us when Marcus insisted on leaving the newspaper to start his magazine, but it was like talking to a brick wall.”

  Julia nodded. “I’m guessing a seventeen-year-old whose biggest relationship obstacle so far has been ‘which brand of condom to use?’ wasn’t able to understand the role your emotional abuse played in Marcus’s affair.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Cassie said. “Maybe I should be flattered. Apparently, my son has planted a classic ‘momma’ halo over my head. I told him how I pressured Marcus to give up his dream about the magazine, how I retaliated when he didn’t listen by opening up separate investment and checking accounts, how I revoked his right to designate how my paychecks were spent, and even overruled him on decisions about the construction of the new house. None of it mattered to M.J. In his mind, Marcus committed an unforgivable sin by cheating on me.”

  “So,” Julia replied, “you weren’t able to get through to him at all?”

  “No. M.J. said he’ll continue to respect his father, but he doesn’t want Marcus telling him what to do. I decided to let it drop at that, but I did press him again about the need to cut his ties to Dante and anyone like him.” As the plane’s cabin lights came on and the door to the Jetway opened, Cassie balled a fist. “He blew me off again, but what else could I do? I’m just praying that the twins can keep him and Marcus from killing each other while I’m gone.”

  Once they had exited the plane and found a table at a cramped Starbucks near the gate, Julia checked her watch. “I guess we have another ninety minutes before the other two arrive.” She hoisted her vanilla latte cup toward Cassie’s decaf. “Been a long time since we both had this much free time to spend with each other.”

  “Yeah, if only it was under better circumstances,” Cassie replied, playfully knocking her cup against her friend’s. “I’ll take it for what it’s worth, though. Now that I spent the plane ride dumping on you, what’s on your mind? Everything good with Amber now, is she minding her business?” Cassie’s smile reminded Julia that she’d already shared her annoyance at her niece’s preoccupation with her social life.

  “We did have that talk,” she replied, chuckling. “Your points were helpful, but I honestly think I hit home most when I reminded her that someday she’ll be dating, and payback is a mother.”

  Cassie laughed in response, then eased into her question. “Are you so sure, by the way, that our precious little girl isn’t sort of onto something?”

  “About what?”

  Cassie shot a sharp glance, then put a playfully chastising tone into the word “Julia.”

  Julia crossed her legs, peering around the surrounding crowd as if concerned she was being watched. “Certainly, you’re not encouraging me to try and date Maxwell Simon.”

  “I’m just asking,” Cassie said, a sly smile escaping. “I mean, he’s an eligible bachelor, from all I hear, and you’re certainly quite the catch.”

  “I can’t be a catch if I don’t have an interest in being caught.” Julia was embarrassed to hear her heart flutter at what could be a half-truth. “I do
n’t believe I’m even bothering to mention this, but you may as well know. Can you believe he had the nerve to invite me out on a date with his friends?”

  Cassie scooted closer, eyes widening as Julia recounted Maxwell’s invitation to hang out with Jake, Lyle, and their wives. “Now that would be interesting. Dayton’s supposedly so small, but I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve run across Jake or Lyle in all these years. I’d be willing to drag Marcus along, if it would make you feel better. I’d love to see how those jokers turned out.” She chuckled under her breath. “Did I ever mention that I ‘went steady’ with Lyle for all of three weeks? I think it was sophomore year.”

  Julia felt her eyes flare with annoyance. “I seem to remember tripping across the two of you a couple of times, stumbling out of the band room after school with your clothes and hair looking a hot mess.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s why it only lasted a few weeks.” Cassie laughed. “Lyle could talk any girl into joining him in that band room at least once, but his hands were like sloppy, heat-seeking missiles hitting anything they could grab onto, and he wanted to put them everywhere.”

  Julia sighed, glancing randomly around her again. “Well, as one who looked more like a young Cicely Tyson than Halle Berry, I wasn’t cursed with all that attention. Lucky me.”

  “Oh, no,” Cassie said, the look on her face making Julia feel guilty. Her dear friend always looked like she had just discovered a dead body when she feared she had hurt someone’s feelings. “I didn’t mean to be insensitive, Julia. We’ve talked about this, I know, but I still can’t believe how stupid those boys were back then. I always thought you and Terry, especially, were beautiful.”

  “Toya was the cutest out of us,” Julia replied, smiling. “She had the tightest little shape, a cute button nose, and her mother kept her hair done really nice. The boys in the neighborhood were always chasing her. She was only invisible in the halls of Christian Light.”