by E. N. Joy
As a commercial real-estate agent, when the recession hit, most folks in real estate began to suffer financially. Blake obviously walked in true favor of God and had the faith of a mustard seed that the God he served wasn’t in a recession. The talk, chatter, murmurs, and complaints by some of his coworkers didn’t get to him. He didn’t walk in fear when it came to his being able to provide for himself and his family. If he learned nothing else from his father before he’d passed away, it was that where there was a will, there was a way. If he’d just hold on, then everything would turn out for his good in the end. After all, everything had turned out good for his father and him.
It didn’t look like it would when his father was critically injured on his job and unable to work for the rest of his life. It didn’t look like it would when his father’s job refused to compensate him fully for the incident. It didn’t look like it would when Blake’s mother ran off with his little sister, leaving him and his disabled father to fend for themselves. But all had turned out for their good in the end. Yes, it had!
Blake’s father finally won a settlement against his job, allowing him and Blake to live a comfortable life. Blake was also able to go to college. It wasn’t just the financial blessing of the matter that had turned out good. Having to spend most of his time taking care of his father, Blake was able to form a bond with him that some young men would kill for. He was able to spend the most precious years of his life with his father. He was able to learn how to become a strong willed man through his father’s teachings and actions. His father was his hero. His father was the reason why he persevered in life.
Aside from God’s favor, it was this strong will that pushed Blake to do his best no matter what the situation looked like. His perseverance in the real-estate market had paid off . . . very well. Because Blake didn’t live a flashy lifestyle, no one would have ever known just how financially prosperous he was, including Paige. Blake paid and handled all of their living expenses and finances. This allowed Paige, after taking care of her personal debts, to bank her money. There was none of that going Dutch stuff—all the bills being split down the middle. Paige had landed her a true provider. And now Blake was being recognized by a nationally distributed magazine as one of the top ten commercial real-estate agents in the country: a man able to surf the waves of the recession and come out on top.
“You can say that again,” Blake said to Paige as he dropped their belongings on the floor. He was certainly glad to be home as well.
“Home sweet home,” Paige abided. She walked over to the couch and collapsed. Then she looked down at all the luggage Blake had brought in and pointed to it. “And you can leave that stuff right there for when Flo comes tomorrow.”
“Honey, I know you are not going to have that woman put away your drawlz,” Blake laughed as he walked over and joined his wife on the couch.
“Shows what you don’t know.” She rested her hand on his knee before spotting something on the living-room table. “What’s that?”
Blake followed her eyes to the FedEx package on the table. “Something from FedEx. Flo must have brought it in when she checked on the house for us while we were gone.”
“Where’s the rest of the mail?” Paige asked.
“Oh, I had the post office hold it. We have to go pick it up,” Blake told her as he opened the package. His eyes lit up as he pulled out the contents. “It’s here. It hit the stands while we were away.”
“Oh my God! Let me see!” Paige exclaimed, knowing exactly what Blake was referring to.
Blake held the magazine where both he and Paige could look at it.
“Cover? They have you guys on the cover?” Paige playfully whacked Blake on the shoulder. “And you didn’t tell me.”
Blake smiled, proud that he’d been able to keep the best part of the secret for last. Keeping the interview and the photo shoot from her had been difficult enough. And it was no coincidence that he’d been out of the country when the magazine hit the stands. Being a very low-key person by nature, Blake knew that once the magazine was published, the local media would be at his doorstep, organizations would be contacting him for speaking engagements, etc.... He’d even been advised to hire a publicist, told he could gain even more notoriety and money as a result. Blake wasn’t interested in all of that. He didn’t want to be a star. He just wanted to be a hardworking man like his father had raised him to be. So it was his prayer that by the time he returned home, the buzz would have died down some and the media would get the hint when he didn’t return any of their calls.
“Oh, honey.” Paige’s eyes filled with tears. She was so elated. “You have no idea how proud I am to be Mrs. Blake Dickenson right now.”
“I’m the one who’s proud to have such a loving and caring wife to share this with.” Blake stared down at the cover and shook his head. “I just can’t believe it. This all seems so surreal.”
“Well, believe it. It’s all real. This is really happening for us.”
Blake stared into Paige’s eyes as tears fell. Wiping one away with his thumb he stated, “Yes, honey. This is really happening. And this is only the beginning.” His eyes returned to the magazine. “Now I have to work even harder. I can’t just live up to this.” He shook the magazine. “I have to exceed this. My father always told me to never get complacent. That there’s always a higher mountain, a higher peak.” Blake stared off remembering his time with his father.
Paige looked down at the magazine again. “Well, don’t just sit there; let’s read it.”
Snapping out of his daze, Blake opened the magazine and flipped to the cover story. He and Paige excitedly read the two-page interview on him. Although he’d made cover, he had to share the spread with the others. Blake’s interview covered everything from how he was abandoned as a child by his mother, to his father’s accident, to his father winning the settlement that would afford him a college education, to the foundation that catapulted him to where he was today. He was very humble and modest in his interview, giving glory to God and his father. It was a moving article indeed.
“That’s my man,” Paige pointed to the individual picture of Blake that rested on the first page of his interview. “That’s my man.”
“I’m your man,” Blake agreed.
Paige seductively removed the magazine from his hand and placed it on the table. “No, you are the man.”
“Oh, I see,” Blake nodded with a mischievous grin on his face. “Well, why don’t you let the man get cleaned up, you do the same, and we’ll spend the last day of our vacation curled up together.”
“Sounds good to me.” Paige licked her lips. “You go ahead and jump in the shower first. I’m going to check the home phone messages.”
“You’re the boss,” Blake said as he headed to their bedroom bathroom to shower.
“And you remember that when I’m calling the shots ten minutes from now,” Paige winked as she walked over to check the phone messages.
Twenty minutes later, Blake returned to the living room to find Paige with the phone to her ear still writing down messages. “Geez, is it like that?” Blake asked, standing over her as she scribbled down the information from the last message she’d retrieved.
Hanging up the phone, Paige sighed. “When did that sucker hit the stands?” She nodded to the magazine. “Everybody and they mama called, leaving congratulatory messages. Newspapers and the local news even called.” Paige pointed to one message in particular. “And this woman, she called twice. She’s some attorney with the law office of Crainbel and Associates.”
Blake took the paper from his wife’s hand and read the name. “Robin Turner, Esquire. Hmm. Doesn’t ring a bell.”
Paige took the message back from him. “Well, looks like you’re not going to find out until tomorrow, because right now, you have to ring my bell, husband.” Paige began planting kisses on Blake’s lips.
“Umm, hmm, right after you go knock that shower out.” Blake sniffed the air and playfully turned his nose up.
> Paige turned her lips up and headed to the bedroom. “Boy, quit playing. You know you like it funky.”
Blake just shook his head, and then turned his attention back toward the message. He looked at the clock. It was four o’clock in the afternoon on a Tuesday. He decided to go ahead and return the attorney’s call while Paige was in the shower. He picked up the phone and dialed the number she had written down.
“Crainbel and Associates. How may I direct your call?” the operator answered.
“Robin Turner, please,” Blake requested.
“One moment. And may I ask who’s calling?”
“Blake Dickenson.”
“Thank you, Mr. Dickenson. Please hold.”
After a few seconds, Robin Turner came on the line. “Ah, Mr. Dickenson. Attorney Robin Turner, Esquire here. And before we begin, let me first congratulate you on your most recent success. You must be humbled to have appeared in a national financial magazine, receiving such recognition for all of your hard work.”
“Thank you, and yes, I am. I’m very humbled. Thank you for sharing in my celebrating.”
“You are very welcomed, Mr. Dickenson. But I know someone who would love to really share in celebrating with you.”
The next words Robin Turner spoke nearly knocked the wind out of Blake. He couldn’t believe what this woman was saying to him. This had to be some kind of joke—a bad joke. After the first few sentences, Blake had tuned Ms. Turner out completely. He was still stuck on those first couple of sentences.
“So, anyway, Mr. Dickenson,” Ms. Turner finished up her conversation, “once you receive the papers, just give me a call so we can discuss this further and come to an agreement that will make everybody happy. You take care,” Ms. Turner said before ending the call. “And congrats again.”
The line went dead, and Blake felt as though he were about to go dead as well. His body turned cold with chills as sweat expelled from his pores.
“Blake? Blake? What’s the matter, honey? Are you okay?” Paige began to wipe away the dampness from Blake’s forehead. “What is it? Talk to me. What’s the matter?” Paige pressed.
Finally Blake was able to gain enough strength to speak. “When you said everybody and they mama had called, you weren’t lying.”
“Huh? What?” Paige was confused, having just entered the room.
“My mother . . . she called to congratulate me. Well, not personally, but through her attorney, Robin Turner.” Blake looked at Paige with horror written all over his face. “She’s suing me. My mother, who I haven’t seen since I was three years old, is suing me.”
Chapter Three
“So how was Bible Study last evening?” Bethany asked Mother Doreen as the two of them, along with Bethany’s children, Sadie and Hudson, sat at the kitchen table eating dinner.
“Child, Pastor Frey know he taught a mighty good Word,” Mother Doreen replied. “The spirit was all up in that place. I thought we were gonna have church for a minute there.”
“You know that man always could teach a good Word. Every time he’d fill in for Pastor Davidson he’d have the church . . .” Bethany allowed her words to trail off as every eye in the room penetrated her soul.
She’d said it. She knew better than to say that man’s name around her family. After Bethany’s affair with the former pastor of her former church, his name was pretty much mud around there. Losing the baby, her lover’s baby, had added insult to injury. Hudson and Sadie were having a hard time dealing with the situation on top of the loss of their father after his fatal trucking accident. It was three months now since the death of their father and the miscarriage of their unborn sibling. Bethany knew that eventually, time would heal all wounds, but she needed time to move just a little more quickly. She needed to move on with her life, and in order to do so, she needed her children to move on as well. But something was still holding her back.
Mother Doreen cleared her throat. “You know, you really should come back to Living Word, Living Waters. Pastor Frey deciding to serve as interim pastor while . . . you know . . . everything settles down . . . gets back to normal . . . was the best thing that could have happened to the church.”
Bethany gave out a harrumph. “I wish I might show my face up in there. Nobody would be able to keep their eyes on Jesus for having them burn a hole through me. No, thank you.” She thought back to the last couple of times she’d returned to the church after suffering from a miscarriage. That’s when the rumors, whispering, and gossiping started. Bethany didn’t want to subject herself or her children to such viciousness by so-called Christians, so she pulled them, and herself, out of the church. To date, they hadn’t been back to that church or any other one.
“You know, it’s really not like that,” Mother Doreen assured her before taking a bite of corn bread. “Yeah, there was some talk going on for a minute there, but now that’s all old news. You know how Christian folk are—real Christian folk. They pray for you, they pray for the situation, and then they move on.”
“Well, it ain’t the Christian folk I’m worried about. It’s them church folk. You know, the ones with them religious spirits, acting like they have a heaven or hell to put you in.” Bethany shook her head. “Uh-uh. No, thank you. Trust me, Sis; I was a member and had attended that church much longer than you. I know how they are up in there. I can handle it, but the last thing I want is for my kids to be scared by church people.”
“So you gonna run from the church for the rest of your life and keep your kids from growing in the Lord too?” Mother Doreen asked.
“Just as soon as the Lord leads me to another church home, so be it.”
“Child, they the same way up in Living Word as they are in any other church. Don’t you know every church is trying to get it right?”
“Yeah, well, I’m trying to stay saved, so until they get it right, I’ll just stick to Bedside Manor on the Gospel Music Channel. At least then I know I won’t catch a case.”
Mother Doreen shook her head. “Ah, bah, ya, sta, yo, saya mo,” she spoke in tongues, and then took a bite of her baked chicken. After a couple of chews, she turned her nose up. She’d wanted fried chicken, but opted for baked on her sister’s behalf.
Ever since coming to look after Bethany around nine months ago, Mother Doreen had been doing most of the cooking. When she left Malvonia, Ohio to come to Kentucky, her intentions were to make sure her sister walked in her healing. She was going to see to it that Bethany beat this diabetes thing.
She’d helped out by tending to a lot of the house chores; cooking and cleaning. She also kept an eye on the kids, but she quickly learned that keeping an eye on teenagers was not an easy task. At the dinner table was the only time she was ever sure of what those two were really up to. And at the dinner table is also where she could make sure she was helping Bethany keep her diabetes under control. So Mother Doreen had adjusted the preparation of her meals. Every now and then, they would have down-home soul food dinners with desserts made from scratch. She figured Bethany deserved to splurge every now and then. But mostly, she’d replaced her frying with baking, broiling, or grilling.
“Yeah, I’d be speaking in tongues after tasting that chicken too,” Bethany teased her older sister.
Mother Doreen shot her a stern look as the children burst out laughing.
“Oh, so you two agree, I suppose.” Mother Doreen looked at her fifteen-year-old niece and seventeen-year-old nephew.
“No, Aunti, we’re just teasing,” Hudson said, shoving a piece of chicken in his mouth just to show her that he thought it was edible.
“But you know I would have loved some of that special battered-fried chicken you be throwing down on,” Sadie added.
“Y’all just saying that because y’all love me,” Mother Doreen said coyly. “Y’all know just as well as I do that this baked chicken is overcooked. It’s a little dry. I gotta watch my timing next go-round.”
“It might have helped if instead of being on the phone with Wallace . . . I mean, yo
ur pastor . . .” Bethany teased.
“That man ain’t have nothing to do with this chicken being dry.” Mother Doreen stared down at her plate and began to pick at her broccoli with cheese.
“And I suppose he didn’t have anything to do with my white socks being pink either,” Bethany replied. “That last batch of white clothes you did came out looking like a bottle of Pepto-Bismol.”
Once again, the children burst out laughing.
“So that’s why Hudson gave me all of his T-shirts,” Sadie realized.
“Yeah,” Hudson confirmed, “I wasn’t about to be caught walking around in no pink T-shirts.”
“Besides, now they probably go great with your pink underwear, Sadie,” Bethany laughed.
“Why you bunch of ungrateful . . .” Mother Doreen said, playfully pointing her fork at them before stabbing it into a piece of chicken.
“Don’t worry about it, Aunti,” Sadie told her. “We understand how it is when you get a new boyfriend and start falling in love. You sometimes get distracted and pulled away from things without realizing it.”
Hudson nodded in agreement.
“Now just hold on a minute.” Mother Doreen dropped her fork on the table. “Who said anything about me having a boyfriend?”
Everyone tilted their heads and looked at Mother Doreen like she was crazy.
“Are you serious?” Bethany asked her. “Do you really not want people to believe that you and Pastor Frey are not seeing each other? That he’s not more than just playing the role of your spiritual father? You can’t be serious.”
Mother Doreen paused for a minute. “So it’s that obvious, huh?” she finally confessed. It wasn’t as though she had anything to hide regarding her and Pastor Frey’s relationship. She just knew that with so much drama having taken place in the Tyson household, bringing a new relationship into the midst of everything didn’t seem timely. Especially since the man she was seeing had replaced the pastor Bethany had been cheating with.
Pastor Frey had been Pastor Davidson’s co-pastor; his right-hand man. He had known about Bethany’s affair and had been covering for his pastor by keeping it in the closet. Mother Doreen didn’t know how comfortable everyone would be with having Pastor Frey around; how much a reminder of the situation he would be. But now that the cat was out of the bag, she’d soon find out.
