The Other Side of Divine

by Vanessa Davis Griggs

  Paris began to really cry. “Oh, Mom. I’ve got to do something, and I’m scared. I’m so scared of how it will all turn out. I’m scared Andrew will leave me.”

  “Leave you? Why would Andrew leave you? Andrew’s not like that. There’s nothing you likely can do that would cause him to leave, especially not at this point.” She hugged Paris. “Do you have any idea how excited that man is about this baby? He’s about to drive me crazy, talking about this baby all the time. He walks around with his chest all stuck out like a proud peacock, grinning like he just won the lottery or something.”

  Paris opened her mouth to tell her mother. If she could tell her mother, then she would be one step closer to being able to tell Andrew. “I-I-I—”

  “Mom, where’s my blue pullover sweater?” Imani said, practically running full speed into the den. “Oh! Paris! I didn’t know you were here.”

  Paris sat up and quickly wiped her face with her hand. “Hi, Imani.”

  Imani went and hugged Paris. “What’s the matter? Why are you crying?”

  Paris shook her head and sat up even straighter. “It’s nothing.”

  “It is something,” Deidra said. “So go on, Imani and let your sister and me finish talking. I’m sure your sweater is in your closet and you just overlooked it as usual.”

  “No. Don’t go, Imani. I’m all right. It’s just hormones; that’s all. Babies and menopause have a way of messing with women and their hormones, causing us to cry for no real reason.” Paris chuckled although it was obvious she was faking it.

  “That’s true,” Imani said. “Because when Mom is crying for no reason, she has these sudden burst of anger moods that have the rest of us dodging for cover.”

  “What? I don’t have anger mood bursts,” Deidra said. “Do I?”

  “Yes, Mother dearest, you do. That’s why I stay in my room as much as I do these days,” Imani said. “Daddy has been taking the brunt of it. Mom has been extra brutal on him.”

  “Well, Imani, since you don’t know of what you speak, you probably shouldn’t go around repeating things like that,” Deidra said.

  “Oh, I don’t say a word to anyone else. But we’re all family here, and I’m sure Paris already knows, and she’s not going to broadcast it. We all seem to be great at keeping and hiding secrets, especially family secrets.”

  “O-kaaay. That’s my cue to leave,” Paris said, struggling to get up off the couch.

  “But you just got here,” Deidra said to Paris, trying to help her in her struggle to get up. “And it sounds like your father is home.”

  “I know. But I wasn’t planning on staying long anyway. Andrew has plans for Valentine’s Day today.”

  “I know, and you came by to get your box of candy from Daddy,” Imani said. Lawrence stepped into the room after coming in from the garage. “And right on time, here comes Daddy!” Imani ran and hugged her fifty-one-year-old father, who seemed to have aged ten years, actually looking closer to his true age since he’d ceased dying his hair after dropping out of politics last year.

  “Hello, hello!” Lawrence said, placing the familiar large paper brown sack on the kitchen counter. He reached inside the sack and pulled out a red heart-shaped box and handed it to Imani. “For you, Imani.”

  Imani took the box and grinned, giving her father a quick peck on his perfectly positioned, awaiting cheek. “Thank you, Daddy!” Imani left in a hurry, headed back up to her room.

  Lawrence picked up the sack and pulled out another red heart-shaped box, handing that one to Paris.

  Paris took the large box and smiled. “Daddy, I keep telling you that I have my own man now and that you don’t have to keep doing this every year.”

  “Yeah . . . well. I just want you to know that even when you have your own ‘man,’ I was the first man to ever really love you, unconditionally I might add, and that’s never going to change or grow old. So deal with it,” Lawrence said.

  Already on her feet, Paris pulled the box close to her, then pulling herself just a little bit taller, gave her father a peck on his cheek just as Imani had done. “I love you, Daddy.”

  “I know,” he said with a nod and a smile.

  “And now, I need to make my way home.” Paris hugged her mother good-bye.

  “We still haven’t finished our little talk,” Deidra said.

  “I know.”

  “And you’re going to tell me what it is,” Deidra said. “Right?”

  Paris smiled and started out of the room. “Bye, you two. I love you.”

  “Bye, baby girl. Love you, too,” Lawrence said, watching her as she walked away. The front door closed. “Love you,” Lawrence whispered, before turning back to his wife, who was no longer smiling.

  Chapter 12

  Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

  —Ecclesiastes 1:10

  Lawrence reached into the sack and pulled out an extra-large red velvet box. Lovingly, he handed it to the woman he’d known now and loved for over thirty years, this year marking their thirtieth wedding anniversary.

  “Thanks,” Deidra said with as much enthusiasm as a dead fish as she set the box down on the coffee table.

  Lawrence forced a smile, then reached into the sack again, this time pulling out a small red velvet square box and presenting it to her with a slight bow of his head. “This is also for you.”

  Looking down at the box, she frowned. “What is it?”

  “Open it and see.”

  “Look, Lawrence, I told you when you left this morning on the pretense of looking for a job that I didn’t want anything for Valentine’s Day this year.”

  “You meant you didn’t want anything from me for Valentine’s Day this year,” Lawrence said still holding out the box to her. “Please, Deidra . . . take this.”

  She let out an audible sigh and gently took possession of the box. Slowly, she untied the white ribbon and lifted the top. Her hand quickly flew up to her mouth. “Lawrence . . . how? Where did you get this?”

  “I’ll admit that it took some doing, but I was able to track it down.” Lawrence took a step closer to Deidra.

  She took the necklace out of the box, setting the now empty box down on the table next to the box of candy. “Is this really it?” she asked, questioning Lawrence about the heart-shaped semi-diamond-covered necklace with the diamond-looking pink rose on the inside made from what she now believed were, if this was the actual necklace, Swarovski crystals instead of diamonds.

  He nodded. “It is. One and the same.”

  Tears began to do a free-fall from Deidra’s eyes straight to her hands that lovingly held the necklace. She slowly turned the necklace over to the back and saw the slight cut mark on the gold in the exact same place, certain now that this was the necklace her beloved grandfather had given to her on her eighteenth birthday. A gift he’d originally given to her grandmother decades earlier but, wanting to make it into a family heirloom, had passed on to his little “Binky” as he called Deidra (in honor of the brand name of the pacifier that had never been far from her mouth when she was a toddler before they took it away, which then caused her to start sucking her thumb). Lost to her forever, or so she believed, after someone took it from her dorm room when she was twenty.

  Composing herself after several huge swallows, she again asked, “How? Where?”

  Lawrence took her by the hand that still held the necklace and guided her to the couch, where they both sat down. He angled his body toward her, refusing to take his hand away from a hand she was for once in seven months allowing to rest in his. A hand she had religiously and consistently pulled out of his when he’d attempted to merely reach for it.

  “I tracked it down,” Lawrence said.

  Deidra looked down at the necklace, lovingly settled in the palm of her hand.

  Lawrence smiled and carefully picked up the necklace by its chain. Holding it in the air, he looked into Deidra’s eyes, which were now
looking into his. “May I?” he said, holding the two sides of the chain apart now.

  Deidra nodded and turned her back to Lawrence, who, with shaking hands, managed to clasp the necklace around her neck. Deidra turned back to him as she touched the heart pendant lying next to her chest, once again close to her heart.

  “Beautiful,” Lawrence said with a satisfied smile.

  “Where did you find it? How were you able to get it back?” Deidra asked again, more completely this time.

  Lawrence nodded. “I knew who took it.”

  Deidra leaned back slightly away from him. “You knew who took it? You mean when I was frantically trying to find it that day all of those years ago, you knew who took it and you never said a word?”

  Lawrence placed his hands over both of hers. “If you’ll recall, that was the first time you and I actually held a real conversation.”

  “So what are you saying, Lawrence? That you put someone up to taking my necklace just so you could talk to me,” Deidra said, snatching her hand out of his. “Help me out here. Tell me the truth and I mean the whole truth because you know that I know when you’re lying.”

  Lawrence smiled as he nodded. “Yes, you, of all people, know me better than anyone on this earth. And yet, you still love me . . . you’re still with me. And I thank you for that. I thought I fell in love with you all those years ago. But these past few months, I can truly say that I love you even more than I ever thought possible.”

  “Lawrence, are you trying to change the subject?” Deidra touched the heart of the necklace again. “This necklace . . . did you know who took it and you’ve known where it was all of these years and you never said anything to me?”

  Lawrence took both her hands again and squeezed them. “Yes, I knew who took it.” Deidra tried to snatch her hands out of his again, but this time he held on tight. “No, no, don’t try and run. I need you to hear me out on this. You owe me that much.”

  Deidra stopped fighting him. “Okay. I’m listening.”

  “This guy I knew enlisted his then girlfriend to take it. He wanted to give his mother a Mother’s Day present—”

  “And he thought stealing my necklace was the perfect gift for his mother?” Deidra shook her head.

  “He got his girlfriend to take the necklace after she was talking about how you kept it in some box but you never wore it,” Lawrence said. “His girlfriend said she didn’t think you really wanted it since you would pass it over whenever you were looking for a necklace to wear.”

  “Wait a minute,” Deidra said. “This girlfriend . . . was this someone close to me? Yes, of course, it would have had to be a friend of mine since I wouldn’t have been doing something like that around just anyone.”

  Lawrence grimaced a little. “It was your best friend.”

  “Lynette? You’re telling me Lynette is the one who took my necklace?” Deidra pulled her hands out of his and stood to her feet. She placed her hand up to her mouth, took her hand down, and frowned as she slowly shook her head. “I don’t believe that. I don’t believe you, Lawrence. I’m not saying you’re lying, but your buddy who told you it was Lynette is not telling the truth. Lynette was tearing up the room trying to help me find it. If she’d taken it—”

  Lawrence stood and walked over to Deidra. “If she’d taken it, which she did, it’s not like she was going to tell you she had.”

  “But she knew how important this necklace was. When we were frantically looking for it, I told her the sentimental value behind it.” Deidra nodded quickly. “That’s why she fussed at me for having it with me on campus if it was something of that much sentimental value. And then she stormed out of the room—”

  “And she went to find her boyfriend to get your necklace back. But by then, he’d given it to his mother and said he couldn’t ask for it back,” Lawrence said.

  “Well, why didn’t he just steal it back from his mother the same way he stole it from me?”

  “Baby, you don’t really mean that like you just said it,” Lawrence said. “His mother was sick. The necklace cheered her up so much that once she put it on she promised to never take it off.”

  Deidra looked into Lawrence’s eyes. “If all that you’re saying is true, then how were you able to get it back after all these years?” She lifted the heart pendant and looked down at it before gently laying it back down.

  Lawrence took Deidra by the hand and guided her back over to the sofa, where they both sat again next to each other.

  “When you and I connected, because of how upset you were about the missing necklace, I went to Reggie and told him I wanted to buy the necklace from him.”

  “My necklace? The necklace he stole? You offered to buy it from him?”

  “Yes. But you have to understand, Reggie really wasn’t a bad guy.”

  “A man who stole my necklace wasn’t really a bad guy?”

  “I know it sounds crazy, but you have to understand what Reggie had gone through in his life. His mother had sacrificed so much for him and his three siblings. She was very sick, not expected to live long. He wanted her to have something nice for Mother’s Day for a change—”

  “So he got my best friend to steal my necklace. Lawrence, please . . . spare me the sob story. I don’t care how hard he may have had it. I don’t care how wonderful his mother may have been. I really don’t care how sick his mother was at the time, except to say I’m sorry she was sick. But you can’t take someone else’s property and still be called a good guy. You just can’t. He was wrong and I don’t know how he could live with himself knowing he’d given his mother a stolen piece of property. That’s just it in a nutshell and no amount of spin is going to change that.”

  “You’re right, Deidra. But I’m telling you, Reggie did feel bad, especially after he found out you indeed wanted the necklace. And after Lynette told him it was a gift your grandfather had given to your grandmother years ago and how your grandfather was passing it on to you as a family heirloom, he felt really bad about what he’d done.”

  “Yeah, he felt really bad all right. But not bad enough to make things right,” Deidra said.

  “It’s like I said: In the beginning both he and Lynette believed you were this well-to-do college student who probably had more stuff than you ever cared about. Lynette decided, rightly or wrongly, that you didn’t want what she believed you felt was an old piece of junk. She also didn’t think you’d ever miss it.”

  “I wonder where Lynette is today. I can’t believe she didn’t open her mouth about what she’d done. She was one of my closest friends. But getting back to how you managed to get this back . . .” She touched the necklace.

  “After you and I got serious, I went to Reggie and offered to buy the necklace from him. It cost me a pretty penny, but he did sell it to me.”

  Deidra held up her hand. “Hold up.” She turned squarely toward Lawrence and stared hard at him. “So you’re telling me that you bought my necklace way back then and you never gave it to me?”

  Lawrence grabbed her hands; she snatched them away. “Deidra, let me tell you everything. Okay?”

  “I’m listening. But you need to hurry up and get to the part I want to hear because my patience has worn thin with you, Lawrence.” She folded her arms.

  “All right. I did buy the necklace way back then. And at the time I was trying to figure out how to get it back to you without you thinking you were crazy if it just happened to show up out of nowhere after you tore up your room searching for it.”

  “How about you just coming to me and telling me the truth, Lawrence. How about having done that as a strategy?”

  “In retrospect, that might have been one plan. But you have to keep in mind that you and I had just started dating. You and Lynette were still friends although on your way out as close. If I had told you the truth, there would have been a huge fiasco. Who knows? Something like that might have broken us up before we even got going good—”

  “So as what has now become your signature pattern,
you decided to keep the truth from me so you could get what you desired in the end. Just like with Jasmine.”

  “Deidra, let’s not talk about Jasmine right now. We’re having a pretty nice time right now and I’d prefer not to ruin it. Not now. I’d like to resolve this issue we’re discussing if it’s okay with you. Anyway, that necklace—”

  She lifted up the pendant and rubbed it between her fingers. “You mean this necklace that apparently you’ve had all of these years but never told me until now? And why is that, Lawrence? Why didn’t you tell me you had it? You knew how much it meant to me. You knew I wanted to pass it on to one of my daughters when I had one, which I did. In fact, I ended up having two.”

  Lawrence nodded. “I was trying to figure out the right time and the right way. I knew if I just gave it back to you, short of it just showing up on its own, I’d have to tell you either the truth or make up a lie.”

  Deidra laughed. “You could have gone with the lie back then. It’s obvious that lying has never been beneath you, not even when it comes to me. In fact, how do I know you’re not lying right now? I mean, you could have been the one who stole this necklace and you’re just lying and pinning it on Lynette and her boyfriend Reggie. I mean, it’s not like I can easily find them and ask them, isn’t that right?”

  “I’m not lying to you, Deidra. Not this time. I promised you I wouldn’t lie to you anymore and I will keep that promise at whatever cost. I appreciate you for standing by me through all of this unfortunate mess—”

  “Oh, you mean the mess you made,” Deidra said.

  “Yes, the mess I made. The mess I’m doing my best to clean up. I’ve talked to Gabrielle about Jasmine, but she still isn’t ready to tell her that I’m her father. Paris and Malachi know the truth, even if Imani doesn’t. But at least I don’t have to worry about Paris going off and doing something destructive like she did last year, you know like taking Imani over and introducing them now as half-sisters.”

  “Lawrence, keep your voice down, unless you want Imani to overhear you.”