Another Woman's Man
Page 19
“Mama, we have to leave now if we’re going to make your last fitting!” Cynthia shouted. “Mama, where—”
She paused near the entryway of the dimly lit library. She saw her mother sitting at her writing desk near one of the windows. The older woman was wearing her cashmere wool coat. Her black Chanel purse sat on the tabletop beside her. She was staring down at a sheet of paper.
“Mama, I’ve been calling you and calling you,” Cynthia said as she walked across the Persian carpet toward Yolanda. “Did you hear me?” As she drew closer and saw the perturbed expression on her mother’s face, she frowned. “What’s wrong?”
Yolanda slowly looked away from the note and gazed up at Cynthia, shaking her head. “I just don’t know what to make of this.”
“Make of what?”
Yolanda handed her the sheet of paper. The note was written on a legal notepad sheet in blue ink with wild handwriting worthy of any doctor, but Cynthia could still read its loopy scroll:
As you can sermise from my letter I know who you are, heffa, and where you’re ass lives! Stay away from my man or you will find you’re gold diggin’ ass 6 FEET UNDER! I’m not fakin! TRY ME!
Cynthia lowered the letter after she finished reading it. “Oh, my God! Mama, it’s a death threat!”
“I know it’s a death threat, honey,” Yolanda replied dryly, rising from her Queen Anne chair. She reached for her gloves, which sat beside her purse. “And a death threat with atrocious spelling and horrible grammar, at that.”
“Mama, how can you possibly joke about this? This crazy person just threatened to put you six feet under!”
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Yolanda asked, raising her finely arched eyebrows. “Because I’m not! I swear, this Beatrice woman will not let up. I am really starting to get tired of her foolishness.”
Cynthia’s frown deepened. “Wait, you . . . you knew about her?”
Yolanda nodded as she tugged on her gloves and draped the strap of her purse over her shoulder. She ruffled her hair, fluffing her curls. “Of course I knew about her! She isn’t exactly inconspicuous with how she’s been carrying on. She follows me everywhere! That woman has all the subtlety of a buffalo charging across the Great Plains.”
Cynthia stared at her mother in disbelief. This whole time she thought she had been protecting her mother by keeping Beatrice a secret, and Yolanda had known about Beatrice all along.
“So what are you going to do?”
“What I’ve always planned to do! Marry Reggie.”
“I’m talking about what are you going to do about Beatrice, Mama? You have to show this note to the cops. Hell, take out a restraining order while you’re at it! She’s taken it past just following you to the hairdresser’s and the grocery store! Now she’s—”
“I will do no such thing! If I call the police and tell them what’s happening, then I’ll have to tell Reggie. What if he wants to call off the wedding?” She grimaced as if the thought left a bad taste in her mouth. “He’s been acting strange enough as it is.”
Cynthia dropped a hand to her hip and tossed the note back onto the writing desk. “Mama, now I know you’re joking! Are you honestly going to risk your life just to marry a man?”
“Just to marry a man?” Yolanda’s red lips tightened. “Cindy, do you realize how broke I was before Reggie and I started dating? Before he started paying my bills?”
Cynthia nodded tiredly. “Yes, I do, Mama. We all knew how broke you were! But—”
“So broke that I was selling my furniture to antique stores! So broke that I thought I was going to have to put up your childhood home for sale! So broke that I was calling old boyfriends that I hadn’t spoken to in decades and asking them for money! And some of them were so smug about it. Oh, they couldn’t get enough of it . . . ol’ Yolanda Gibbons begging for money like some grubby panhandler!” She ruefully shook her head. “Do you know how humiliating that was? I’m not going back to that—absolutely, positively not!”
“I’m not asking you to go back to it!”
Cynthia of all people knew what it was like to treasure the financial security that a rich man could bring, but it certainly wasn’t worth dying over! She had thought she could handle this, but it was apparent that things were quickly spiraling out of control.
“I’m just saying that Beatrice doesn’t seem like she’s going to let up or back down. She’s actually getting worse! I’d hate for you to go to sleep one night and wake up with that crazy behemoth standing over you with a knife at your throat!”
Yolanda waved her hand as she walked across the room toward the open doorway. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Cindy! I have a state-of-the-art alarm system all around this property. She couldn’t make it across the front lawn, let alone into my bedroom to stab me in my sleep!”
Cynthia clenched her hands into fists. Damn, this was frustrating! Why couldn’t her mother understand how serious this was? Instead, Yolanda had a glib response to every legitimate point Cynthia believed she was making.
“OK, so she can’t get you here, but what about when you drive around Chesterton, Mama?” Cynthia cried. “What about when—”
“Cindy,” her mother began, “I really don’t want to talk about this nonsense anymore. That woman is not going to scare me off from what I want, and I want Reginald Whitfield III’s ring on my finger. We have an appointment to make and”—she paused to point at the ticking grandfather clock in the corner of the spacious library—“it looks like we’re going to be late.”
Cynthia knew it was useless to continue this argument with her mother. It was obvious Yolanda’s mind was set. “Fine, Mama,” she muttered.
For the rest of that day, during the drive to the fitting, even during the appointment, Cynthia kept making furtive glances into her rearview mirror and over her shoulder, wondering if she would find Beatrice or her Grand Marquis there. While her mom flitted around, laughing with the seamstress and rambling on and on about her wedding details, Cynthia kept having visions of Beatrice bursting through the bridal shop glass doors and charging toward them “like a buffalo across the Great Plains” with a butcher knife in her hand.
It had Cynthia on edge the whole afternoon. She jumped at every sudden sound. She almost punched the poor salesgirl who tapped her on the shoulder to ask her if she wanted water or tea. By the time Cynthia dropped off her mother and drove back home, her sense of unease hadn’t waned. Something bad was going to happen. She could sense it, and her mother refused to do anything to prevent it!
Cynthia was at a loss for how to change her mother’s mind. Maybe her sisters would have better luck. She called Lauren first and rolled her eyes when she got her voicemail. She called Stephanie next.
“Hey, this is Keith.” Stephanie’s man answered on the second ring in his deep baritone.
“Hi, Keith, can you put my sister on the phone?” Cynthia asked as she stepped out of her high heels and walked barefoot over the cold tile into her kitchen. She opened the stainless steel refrigerator door and peered at the shelves.
She had been so tense that she hadn’t been able to eat anything during lunch with her mother.
“Baby, can you come wash my back?” she could hear Stephanie shout in the background. “Please!”
Keith sighed gravely on the line while Cynthia laughed to herself as she took out a loaf of bread and some turkey deli meat. Keith Hendricks was supposed to be this hard-nosed, über-masculine detective, but now he was basically playing handmaiden to a belligerent pregnant woman.
From sexy PI to Stephanie’s bitch, Cynthia thought sardonically.
“Can Steph call you back?” Keith asked hurriedly. “She just got into the bath.”
“And don’t forget to bring my new loofah!” Stephanie yelled.
Cynthia pursed her lips in annoyance. She opened one of her overhead cabinets and pulled out a plate. “Well, can you put her on the phone anyway? It’s kind of—”
“Keith! Where are you?” Stephanie barked.
“Keith!” Stephanie screeched.
“Gotta go,” he said before abruptly hanging up the phone.
Cynthia stared at her phone receiver, completely flabbergasted. “Did he just hang up on me?”
She knew Dawn said she was going to see her father, but she figured it was worth a try calling her too. Besides, the Allens weren’t the only ones dealing with a family crisis right now!
She dialed Dawn’s number and listened to the line ring.
“Come on, Dawn,” she mumbled as she glared at the ceiling. “Pick up. Pick up. Pick up!”
Chapter 22
Dawn glanced down at her iPhone to see that her sister Cynthia was calling her. Just as she was about to answer the call, the door to her father’s mansion swung open. She stepped inside and a minute later handed off her coat and gloves to Carl, her father’s housekeeper. She gazed hesitantly at the stairs leading to the east and west wings.
“Would you like me to take that too?” Carl asked, reaching for the large bouquet of roses and calla lilies she clutched in her arms. “I can have someone put it in water and a vase for you.”
Dawn quickly shook her head. “No. No, I’d . . . I’d like to give these to my father myself, if that’s okay.”
The tall older man nodded. “Of course. I’ll take you to him directly.”
She started to walk toward the stairs, expecting to be led to one of the upstairs bedrooms since her father had told her he was now on bed rest, but instead Carl turned and walked toward one of the side corridors.
She frowned. “He isn’t in bed?”
Carl shook his head. “No, I’m afraid he isn’t, ma’am.”
They walked down a series of halls and finally emerged onto a stone portico leading to the back of the Windhill Downs grounds. Dawn found her father sitting in a wheelchair, bundled in a coat and blankets, staring off into the distance. A plump, perturbed-looking black woman in a long puffy pink coat and green scrubs was sitting on a stone bench beside him. Dawn assumed she was his nurse.
She wondered where Constance and Raquel were. The mansion had seemed awfully quiet when she entered, and now she knew they weren’t with Herbert either.
Carl, who had been holding Dawn’s coat and gloves the entire time, offered them to her. “You’ll need these.”
She walked onto the portico seconds later, pulling her coat collar tightly around her neck with one hand and holding the bouquet in the other.
“Herb,” she said, noticing that when she spoke, a gust of mist went into the air because it was so cold outside. “Herb? What on earth are you doing out here? It’s freezing! You should be inside in bed.”
He looked up at her and grinned. “Well, this is a pleasant surprise. Why didn’t you tell me you’d be stopping by today?”
Though his expression was jolly, he looked ghastly. The cancer was taking its toll on him. His face was gaunt. His eyes were sunken. His pink lips were chapped and cracked. The coat that he wore dwarfed him. He looked like he had lost at least fifteen pounds since she had last seen him a couple weeks ago.
“Hortense,” he said, turning to his nurse, “meet my daughter, Dawn.”
The irritated expression didn’t leave the woman’s face, but she nodded and mumbled a “Hello.”
“Dawn can take over from here,” Herbert said. “I know you’re cold. You can go back inside.”
“But I’m supposed to stay with you at all times, Mr. Allen,” the nurse insisted in a Caribbean lilt.
“Yes, I know, even when I have to relieve myself,” he said with a roll of the eyes. “But I believe I can be out of your sight for a mere fifteen minutes with supervision, can’t I?”
“I’ll take care of him,” Dawn promised. “We won’t be out here much longer. He should be in bed. I know.”
The nurse gazed at her warily for several seconds before finally rising from the bench and following Carl through the glass doors.
“I brought you flowers,” Dawn said, handing the bouquet to him.
“Thank you. They’re lovely, sweetheart.”
He sounded hoarse. He was also breathing harder than she would have liked. She watched as he gazed down at the flowers before setting them on his blanket-covered lap.
“You know, you should be going inside too,” Dawn said as she sat down beside him.
He shook his head. “No, I shouldn’t. I refuse to spend my last dying days cooped up in a stuffy bedroom.”
He pointed to the wintry landscape in front of him. The trees were bare but the setting sun shone through the branches, creating a beautiful tableau of shadows on the remaining snow on the ground. Shades of orange, purple, and blue were splashed across the horizon.
“This is what I want to see when I take my last breath,” he whispered.
Dawn reached out to him and placed her hand on top of his own. “Don’t talk like that. Please?”
“Don’t talk like what?” He turned to her. “Don’t admit that I’m dying? But, sweetheart, I am dying. I’ve seen myself in the mirror. I feel my body getting weaker and weaker. There’s no denying it.”
“Yes, there is. You’ll get better.”
He has to, Dawn thought stubbornly. She had just gotten to know him. He couldn’t die now, not when they were still building a relationship, not when there were so many talks for them to have and moments for them to share.
She forced a smile and squeezed her father’s hand. “You have to get better. You have a wedding in a couple of months that you’re going to attend. Remember? Constance needs you there to walk”—she glanced at his wheelchair—“well, roll her down the aisle.”
She laughed but her father didn’t join her in her laughter. Instead, Herb shook his head solemnly.
“Frankly, I wonder if there is going to be a wedding in May.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because things have changed between them. Xavier and Constance aren’t getting along at all. In fact, just a couple of days ago, I heard that Xavier stormed out after arguing with her. It’s not like him. He will usually do anything to appease Connie, to make her happy. But that’s no longer the case. They haven’t spoken to each other since.”
Dawn lowered her eyes and stared guiltily at her lap. She hoped she wasn’t the cause of that argument. Though she was heartbroken by Xavier’s rejection and his insistence that she needed to be exorcised from his life, she knew—in the end—his decision was for the best. She couldn’t take the emotional roller coaster anymore. Constance had laid claim to Xavier a long time ago. She was the woman he wanted, not Dawn, a twice-over divorcée with a bad reputation who wasn’t sure if she was ready to commit to a relationship anyway. Though Constance was spoiled and not the smartest woman, she was perky, pure, and beautiful; she was the perfect woman for a conservative corporate climber like Xavier to have on his arm—the Black Malibu Barbie to his Ken.
“Couples argue, Herb. Even couples like Constance and Xavier,” she urged softly. “That doesn’t mean they’re breaking up or that the wedding is off. They’ll patch things up. You’ll see.”
“I don’t know. It’s not just the arguing. I told you something has changed. Their feelings aren’t the same. I can tell.” He looked away from her and off into the distance again. “I think . . . I think Xavier has fallen in love with someone else.”
She frowned, not understanding why her father was saying all of this. “I highly doubt that! Xavier is head over heels in love with Constance. Anyone can see that.”
Her father returned his gaze to her. “Remember when I said a while ago that I thought Xavier was a little smitten with you? Now I know it’s more than just a little. I think you’re the one he’s fallen in love with.”
Dawn’s eyes snapped up from her lap. She stared at her father in horror and genuine disbelief. “With . . . with me?”
Xavier wasn’t in love with her! There was a steamy attraction between them—y
es. Xavier had confessed as much, and Herbert had rightly picked up on that. But Xavier didn’t—couldn’t love her. That was just crazy!
“It’s not just my imagination. I noticed it not too long after you started working at the community center . . . how eager he was to see you, how he couldn’t stop raving about you, and how he looked at you when he thought no one else was watching. I tried to push those suspicions aside for many reasons.” He sighed. “One being that it was pretty unsettling realizing that the man I thought had fallen in love with one of my daughters was now in love with the other. He and Constance have been together since they were teenagers. They’re supposed to get married! But I’d hate watching him act out that lie, putting a ring on one woman’s finger—even if she is my Connie—while his heart belonged to someone else. I suppose in a way it’s my own fault,” he said ruefully. “I threw you two together in the first place.”
“Herb, I can assure you that Xavier isn’t”—she paused and swallowed, feeling tears prick her eyes—“that he isn’t in love with me. He wants to marry Constance. He knows that they belong together, and he would never do anything to hurt her.”
Herb stared at Dawn, staying silent for several seconds. “Yes, I suppose you both would put your love aside if you felt it was the right thing to do, wouldn’t you?”
She instantly opened her mouth to lie that she wasn’t in love with Xavier, but her father hastily waved his hand.
“Please, don’t deny that too. I’ve also known for a while now that Xavier isn’t alone in this. Your feelings for him are just as strong, aren’t they?”
One of the tears that Dawn had been holding back spilled onto her cheek. She fussily wiped at it and sniffed. She could blubber so easily now. It was really starting to piss her off.