The room erupted once more, this time with cheers and shouts that echoed the sentiment that Yvonne was right—Marvel and his factory needed to go back where they’d come from.
At the mayor’s command, they gradually quieted. When the room was silent, he spoke. “In light of the information you have provided, Pastor Milner, I think it’s safe to say that we will launch a thorough investigation into the other plant Mr. Williams owns in Michigan. If the allegations are found to be true, he will not be permitted to continue doing business in Michigan, let alone build a new factory here. I guarantee you that.”
Cheers went up all around the room, and Yvonne, Toya, and Thomas came together for a group hug. Soon, the meeting was dismissed, and the three of them hung around to speak with various residents and officials to find out what they should do if a similar issue ever came up again.
As they were leaving, Thomas said, “I guess we’re going to need rides.”
“You two caught a cab?” Yvonne asked him.
“No, cabs don’t usually service the neighborhood we were in. One of Mother Thornton’s neighbors gave us a ride.”
“Thomas, I would really like it if you could tell me what happened. You look like you were on the losing end of a fight.”
His shirtsleeves were ripped and his pants torn; he had bruises on his arms and face. Yet he merely shrugged. “Hey, my sixty-four Mustang is in worse shape than I am,” he joked.
Yvonne gasped. “Not the car you bought while you were on the road with Jarrod?”
“The one and only. They delivered it yesterday. But I’ll tell you more about that later.”
When they reached Yvonne’s car, she handed Thomas the keys. “Here. I know it isn’t a classic, but you can drive my car.”
“These new cars take all the fun out of driving,” he said with a grin, then got into the car.
“But at least you know it’s not going to die from old age while you’re driving down the street,” Yvonne remarked as she slid into the front passenger seat and Toya got in back.
“Hey, only one of my cars ever died on me while I was driving it, but sixty-three was a bad year for cars in general.”
Yvonne and Toya laughed, and Thomas joined in.
He pulled out of the parking lot but didn’t turn in the direction Yvonne had expected him to. “I think we’d better go to the police station and file a report against Marvel before we do anything else,” he said, apparently knowing she would question him.
“Why didn’t you and Toya go straight to the police after you found her?” Yvonne asked.
“We had to make sure you were okay first, Mama,” Toya spoke up from the backseat. “Marvel had me terrified. He blames you for his mother’s death, and I honestly thought he was going to try to kill you.”
“Oh, my. What a troubled man! Why on earth would he blame me for his mother’s death? I’ve never even met the woman!”
“Evidently, she left his father after reading your first book, and then his father killed her.”
“That’s horrible!” Yvonne gasped.
“You’d think he’d blame his father,” Thomas said.
“Exactly!” Toya exclaimed. “I thought Tia had bad taste in men, but I’m the one who fell for the psychopathic, government-defrauding businessman who was planning to kill my mother.”
“Okay, you win,” Yvonne said with a giggle. Thomas laughed along with her.
“I don’t know what you two find so funny. This is serious. I dated a man who wanted to ruin my entire family. I didn’t even believe poor Robbie when he told me that Marvel had put something in his drink. I was so taken in by Marvel that I even accused you of being paranoid.”
And that did hurt, Yvonne admitted to herself. She and Toya had always maintained such a close relationship, she’d never imagined that her daughter would believe some guy over her own mother. But it had happened, and they would have to get past it. “We all make mistakes, Toya,” Yvonne said, turning around to face her daughter. “I don’t think you should beat yourself up too bad. Marvel is a very engaging young man, and you aren’t the only one he fooled. He worked his charms on the government of Detroit, as well.”
“Well, this won’t happen again,” Toya assured her. “From now on, instead of looking at how fine or business-savvy a guy is, I’m going to be checking out his love life.”
Now Yvonne was scared. “His what?”
“His love life,” Toya repeated. “I want to know if he is in love with God before I even wonder about whether I could fall in love with him.”
“Amen to that,” Thomas said as he pulled up outside the police station.
Yvonne and Thomas went inside with Toya and sat quietly as she filed charges against Marvel. She was an attorney, after all, and would know exactly what to tell the officers.
When Toya was finished filing her complaint, Thomas asked her if she wanted to be driven home or if she’d prefer to spend the night at Yvonne’s.
Toya turned to Yvonne and smiled sheepishly. “At the risk of sounding like a big baby, I think I’d rather stay at your house tonight. Is that okay?”
Yvonne nudged her shoulder. “It’s more than okay. Tia is at the house, so the three of us can have a slumber party!” She put an arm around Toya’s shoulders as the three of them walked back to the car.
“It makes me feel better knowing that the three of you will be together tonight,” Thomas said as they got back in the car. “Hopefully, the police will put Marvel behind bars before he can try anything else.”
“Are we going to get you home next?” Yvonne asked him.
“No, if it’s okay with you, I’ll take you home and then bring your car back in the morning. I want to make sure that you and Toya get home safely.”
“Thanks, Thomas. We appreciate everything that you’ve done for us,” Yvonne said as she gazed at the profile of the man who had put his life on the line to save her daughter today. Thomas had been there for her time and time again, even when she had mistreated him and pushed him away. She wished with everything in her that she could give him what he wanted, but she still was not sure she could do that. So, she was relatively quiet for the rest of the ride, careful not to say anything that might give him the wrong impression.
In the course of her quiet contemplations, however, Yvonne wondered about the thoughts that had been filling her mind in the past several days. The formerly vivid image of David was getting dimmer and dimmer, and even now, Thomas seemed to be taking up more and more space in her heart and mind.
Logically, Yvonne understood that David was gone—he had been for almost two years now, and he had been seriously ill a full year before his death. It was natural that she would think about him less and less as the years went by. But could she get comfortable with the idea that another man might be able to fill the space in her head and heart that David alone had occupied for so long?
Thomas’s hand touched Yvonne’s and squeezed it in a gesture of reassurance. “Get that worried look off your face. The police will catch Marvel. If they don’t, I will. I promise you that.”
“I hope you’re right.” Yvonne played along, knowing that Thomas probably thought she’d been thinking about Marvel and his dirty deeds all this time.
“Hey! Where is your faith, woman?”
She smiled at Thomas’s effort to lighten the mood. “My faith is intact,” she assured him. “The saints have been praying for us all day. And even though my daughter was basically kidnapped, I felt at peace most of the day, firmly believing that God would see us through this.”
“So, maybe you should deliver a sermon about peace in the midst of storms this Sunday,” Thomas said.
“I just might do that.”
They continued their light banter for the remainder of the drive, and Yvonne felt more and more at peace. But when Thomas pulled up in front of her house, her peaceful world was rocked once more. An ambulance and several police cars were parked in the driveway, and the front door was wide open, with medics and pol
ice going in and out of her house. She jumped out of the car and ran up the walkway, Thomas and Toya close on her heels. “What’s going on?” she demanded of no one in particular. “What are you doing in my house?”
“Mama, Mama!”
Yvonne rushed in the direction of Tia’s voice. “Baby?”
“I’m so glad you’re here! I tried to call you and Toya but couldn’t reach either of you.”
In the living room, they found Tia, lying on a stretcher. Two medics began wheeling her out of the room. “What’s happened, honey?” Yvonne asked, walking alongside them. “Marvel didn’t show up here, did he?”
Tia shook her head. “I started bleeding. I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m only six months along, so I shouldn’t be bleeding. Right, Mama?”
“No, baby, you shouldn’t be bleeding,” Yvonne said as she followed the stretcher outside. Fear was all over Tia’s face, and Yvonne wanted to say something to calm her, but with everything that had happened that day, she couldn’t readily come up with something.
That’s when Thomas spoke up. “Brenda spotted when she carried Jarrod. We worried about it, but he turned out just fine. You will be all right, baby girl, so don’t sweat it.”
Tia smiled through her tears. “Thanks, Uncle Thomas. You always know the right thing to say.”
As the medics lifted her into the ambulance, Toya hollered up to her, “We’re coming, Tia. We’ll be right behind you, and we’ll see you at the hospital.”
“Okay,” Tia hollered back. “I’ll see you when you get there.”
After making sure that everyone was out of the house, Yvonne locked the front door, then got back in the car with Toya and Thomas, who drove them to the hospital. The emergency room parking lot was full, so they had to park in the lot across the street.
They got out of the car and were crossing the street when a pair of headlights suddenly lit the road. A dark sedan was coming so fast that it could have been drag racing. And it was headed directly at them.
Yvonne froze in the middle of the street. Toya screamed. Thomas pushed them both out of the way, but he couldn’t clear the car’s path in time. The impact was so great that his body spiraled in the air before falling back to the ground.
To Yvonne, everything seemed to happen in slow motion. When she saw the car hit Thomas, all she could do was chant, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”
Toya was still screaming, but Yvonne shook her and said, “Go into the hospital and get help.” Then she dropped into a crouching position and crawled over to where Thomas’s body lay. She felt as if she were crawling in slow motion, too—like somebody had changed her settings, and she could move no faster than the speed of slow. Blood was on the ground. Thomas had a gash on his head, and he wasn’t moving. “Wake up!” she yelled at him. “Wake up this instant, Thomas Reed! Don’t you die on me.”
Yvonne wanted to shake him, but she was afraid that any movement might cause him more harm. She leaned down and put her head against his chest, not caring that they were in the middle of the street and that the person who had just hit Thomas could come back for her. She just wanted to be near him. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she pleaded, “Please be all right, Thomas. Please, just be all right. Lord Jesus, help him. Let him live.”
Chapter
Twenty-seven
Yvonne went back and forth between two hospital rooms for a few hours. When Robbie arrived and promised to stay with Tia in her room, Yvonne went to the hospital chapel. She really wanted a stop button that she could press to end this horrible ride and get off.
When they’d left the city council meeting, she had felt such a sense of peace. It had seemed that things were finally going their way. The church would not be bulldozed so that Marvel could build a factory and hire all the undocumented workers he could find, and Toya was safe and sound, even though she’d been shaken up a lot today. Yvonne had been so thankful.
Then, she’d gone home and found an ambulance waiting to take Tia to the hospital, and now she was at the hospital in this quiet little chapel, sitting on a wooden bench and praying not only for Tia, but for Thomas, as well. She was grateful that Tia had at least stopped bleeding. The doctor on call thought that she would be fine, but he wanted to keep her overnight for observation.
Thomas, however, was a different story. Yvonne’s heart ached as she recalled the sight of him being struck by that car and then flying in the air like a paper-thin kite. But when he’d come back down, his body had hit the ground with such a thud that Yvonne had known he’d need multiple casts for his broken bones—if he survived. Closing her eyes in an attempt to shut out reality, Yvonne prayed harder than she had in a long while. “Don’t let him die, God. I told him that I didn’t need him. But the truth of the matter is, I do.”
She opened her eyes and looked down at the wedding and engagement rings she still wore, even though her husband was no longer living. Tears welled up in her eyes as she put her hand around the precious jewels that had sparkled on her left hand for over thirty years but suddenly seemed not to belong there anymore. She twisted the rings off her finger and held them in her hands. It was time to say good-bye to David because love for another man now resided in her heart.
Lying down and stretching herself out across the pew, she cried tears of sorrow and joy. It had taken her a while to move forward from the place where her heart had once been. When she sat up again, she wiped the tears from her face and said, “I have to let you go, David. My heart belongs to Thomas now.”
She opened her purse, placed her rings in an inside compartment, stood up, and left the chapel. In the waiting room, she found Toya sitting with Jarrod, who must have just arrived. His head was down, yet he was fidgety, shaking his leg and tapping his fingers on his forehead. Yvonne went over to him, sat down beside him, and gave him a hug. “It’s going to be all right, Jarrod. We’ve got to believe that,” she said, trying to convince herself to believe, as well.
“I can’t lose him now, Auntie Yvonne. I feel like he and I just became friends. I don’t want to say good-bye to him yet.”
She didn’t want to say good-bye, either. She knew firsthand how hard good-byes could be. Turning to Toya, she asked, “Did the doctors say anything while I was at the chapel?”
“Nothing new, Mama. He still hasn’t woken up…that can’t be good.” Toya’s face was already wet from crying, but as she said those words, fresh tears rained down her face.
At that moment, another surge of holy boldness rose up in Yvonne. She stood up and said with all confidence, “I’m not going to let anybody’s thoughts or doubts destroy Thomas’s chances of survival. The two of you are staying in this waiting room. I’m going back to his room to wake him up. That man is going to live. You’ll see.”
She turned and walked away without looking back. As far as she was concerned, Toya and Jarrod had better pull themselves together, because nobody they knew was dying in this hospital tonight.
In Thomas’s room, it felt chilly, so Yvonne rushed over to him and pulled the covers up over his hospital gown. Then, she stood next to his bed and gazed down at him. Even with the bandage on his forehead, the man was just irresistible. How she had managed to deny him all these months was beyond her understanding. If she could go back in time and do things differently, she would have cherished her husband more while he’d been alive, and then she wouldn’t have felt obligated to put him on a pedestal after he’d died.
Yvonne had finally realized that her hesitation about loving Thomas had more to do with regret for all the opportunities she’d missed when it came to loving David. She had been too busy chasing after success in her ministry to be content with success in her marriage. She’d always thought that there would be plenty of time for loving later. But when David had gotten sick, Yvonne had been filled with so much guilt and regret that she’d made a promise she could no longer keep.
She put her hand on Thomas’s chest. “I need you to listen to me,” she said softly. “I have decided to love you, Thomas Reed. Bu
t I’m not promising my love to another dead man. So, if you want the love I have to offer, I suggest you wake up so you can receive it.”
Her words weren’t all warm and fuzzy; she knew that. But she didn’t have time to compose something eloquent. She had to let Thomas know that she was waiting for him if he would just decide to live. “Can you do that for me, Thomas? Can you wake up so that I can love you?”
Tears streamed down Yvonne’s face as she said the words she had held back for the past few months. She was in love with Thomas Reed. It wasn’t the same as the love she’d had for David. No, this love was different; it was new, and she was happy. She cracked a smile as she realized just how wonderful it felt to finally admit her love for this man. She leaned closer and whispered in his ear, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
The monitors started going off with loud beeps, and nurses began rushing into the room. They asked Yvonne to step out for a moment. She stood in the hall, biting her nails and praying that this was not the end for them.
Several minutes later, the nurses walked out of the room as if everything was all right with the world. Yvonne wanted to scream at them and ask how they could be so calm when the man she loved was struggling to stay alive.
One of the nurses took off her latex gloves and walked over to Yvonne. “He’s okay. Something must have excited him. He’s probably just dreaming.” With that, the nurse turned and walked away.
Yvonne tiptoed back into Thomas’s room but didn’t go near the bed. Instead, she sat down in a chair and tried not to bother him. She knew full well that it hadn’t been a dream that had excited Thomas but her declaration of love whispered in his ear. A nurse brought Yvonne a pillow and a blanket, and she thanked her before propping her feet on another chair and closing her eyes.
The next thing Yvonne knew, someone was shaking her. “Huh? Huh? What’s wrong?” she asked, feeling completely disoriented.
“It’s me, Auntie Yvonne. I want to sit in here with my dad. I promise to be positive,” Jarrod said.
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