Gina fought back tears too. It felt almost mournful whenever she and Dutch were at odds. But what he did was wrong, and she couldn’t just accept that. But she wasn’t going to pretend she didn’t love him anymore. That would be an impossibility.
“Love you too,” she replied to him.
Dutch eventually stood erect, glanced at Brandy, a woman he just didn’t like, and then he left the plane.
Gina stared at him as he made his way back to his SUV. But he didn’t get in and leave. He, instead, stood there and watched as the plane taxied the runway, lifted up, and then took off. Tears were in Gina’s eyes as his tall, muscular frame left their view. Which astounded Brandy. Why in the world, she thought, would a smart, successful black sister like Regina Harber let a hateful man like that make her cry?
But Gina wasn’t thinking about Brandy, or how she felt about her husband. Matters of love were never simple. Not ever.
“Excuse me,” Gina said, and headed for the restroom.
The doors to the Gipson County Sheriff’s department were opened, and to the shock of every deputy in the small building, the former First Lady of the United States walked in. They began scrambling, with one deputy running to get the sheriff, and another deputy hurrying to wipe down one of their folding metal chairs, the only kind of chairs in the building.
But Gina wasn’t interested in sitting down. With Brandy behind her and Mitchell, her Secret Service agent beside her, she asked to see DeAndre Clarke. But just as she asked, the Sheriff, a stout white man, hurried in as if he had run from his office.
“Mrs. Harber,” he said, extending his hand. “It is quite an honor, and I daresay shock, to see you at our station. I’m Sheriff McMurtry.”
“Hello, Sheriff,” Gina said. “I’m here to see one of your prisoners. DeAndre Clarke.”
The Sheriff glanced at his deputies. Then he looked back at Gina. “DeAndre Clarke, ma’am?” he asked.
“That’s right,” Gina replied. “I wish to speak with him privately please.”
The Sheriff again seemed distress. He remembered how much trouble Brandy had given them when that boy was first arrested. And now this.
“Right this way, ma’am, please,” he said as he and one of his deputies escorted Gina, Brandy, and Mitchell into his office. Gina then assumed he would go and get the young man, the brother she’d never met, but instead he just stood there.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, ma’am,” he said. “And you, Miss Clarke.”
Gina looked concerned, but Brandy’s heart began to pound. “What is it?” she asked.
The sheriff frowned. “It’s with deep regret that I have to say that there was an incident in the jail this morning.”
Brandy couldn’t believe it. “An incident?” she asked.
Gina couldn’t believe it either. “What kind of incident?” she asked.
“DeAndre, Miss Clarke’s brother, was found hung this morning.”
Brandy nearly passed out. Gina pressed her hand to her heart. It couldn’t be true. “Hung?” she asked, in a breathless voice.
“He hung himself, yes, ma’am.”
But Brandy began shaking her head. “No,” she said. “That can’t be right. What are you saying to me? My brother didn’t hang himself! What are you saying to me?”
“I’m saying that your brother died this morning,” the sheriff said plainly.
“Nooo!” Brandy screamed and lost her ability to stand on her own. Mitchell caught her, just as she was about to fall. He and Gina sat her in a chair.
The sheriff ordered his deputy to go and get the ladies some water.
“Oh, my Lord,” Gina was saying. Her heart was pounding. He was dead? The brother she was going to meet this very day, died this day? She couldn’t believe it.
“I am so sorry to have to report such horrible news,” the sheriff, seeing her distress, said to her. “We attempted to contact Miss Clarke, we even sent a car over to her home, but nobody was there.”
“What happened?” Gina asked the Sheriff, her heartbeat barely regulated. “Why would he suddenly hang himself?”
“We don’t know that yet. Maybe the guilt of what he’d done.”
“That’s a lie!” Brandy screamed. “He didn’t do anything! DeAndre would have never killed himself. That’s a gotdamn lie!”
Gina felt as if she was coming undone. How could this be? “But nothing happened this weekend?”
“Other than him meeting with a new attorney? No ma’am.”
Brandy looked at the sheriff. “What new attorney? Dray didn’t have any new attorney.”
“He met with an attorney on Saturday, ma’am.”
“The one I hired?”
“No, ma’am. Not Jesse. This new attorney, I believe his name was William Bates, said he was asked by an interested party to speak with Mr. Clarke.”
It was the attorney Dutch had asked to look into the matter. She expected Brandy to rail about that too, but she was still too distraught.
“It can’t be true,” Brandy was saying, crying almost hysterically and still shaking her head. “Dray wouldn’t kill himself. I don’t care what they’re saying. He wouldn’t have done something like that!”
“Did you know this William Bates?”
“What?” Brandy asked. “William Bates?” She looked at Gina. “That’s the man your husband sent over here. How could he get permission to talk to my brother?”
“He came to the jail, asked to speak with your brother,” the sheriff said, “and your brother gave him permission.”
“But what did he say to him?” Brandy asked. “You always have deputies listening to every conversation, even with the lawyers.”
Gina looked at the sheriff. She wanted to know too. But she was still too stunned to speak.
“What did that man say to him?” Brandy asked again. “It’s a part of your investigation now.”
“Yes ma’am, it is,” the sheriff said. “Near as we can figure, it was a normal conversation. The attorney recommended that DeAndre cut a plea deal.”
“A plea deal?” Brandy asked.
“What plea was recommended?” Gina managed to ask, putting on her own lawyer hat. “Guilty in exchange for what?”
“Life without parole.”
Brandy couldn’t believe it. “What?” she asked.
“He was facing the death penalty. If convicted, that lawyer knew he would be put to death.”
“But he didn’t do anything!” Brandy cried. Then she looked at Gina. “How could you do that?” she asked her.
Gina looked at her. She shared her grief, but she didn’t understand what she was talking about. How could she do what?
“You let your husband send that man here! He spoke to Dray Saturday and then Dray’s dead Monday morning? How could you send somebody here to take Dray’s hope away! I told him you was going to send him a lawyer that would get the charges dropped, not get him life in prison! He couldn’t do life in prison! He’s an honor student, not a criminal!”
Gina felt awful. Just devastated. She felt as guilty as Brandy was saying she was. And Brandy was just beginning. The tears were flowing freely from her angry eyes, and her mouth was spewing all manner of venom it could. She hated Gina, she hated Dutch, she knew no good would ever come to an association with a black bitch like Gina and a hateful cracker like Dutch. She spewed it and she cried, she spewed and cried. And Gina, the former First Lady of the United States, a woman who didn’t even know she had a brother until this very day, the day her brother died, stood there and painfully took it. It was, she felt, the least she could do.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The house was eerily quiet when Dutch arrived, around ten that night, after a very long day at work. Ramsey, their handsome, African-American estate manager, met Dutch in the foyer.
“Good evening, sir.”
“Hello, Ramsey.”
“We did not hear from you earlier, so no dinner has been prepared.”
“That’s fine. I grabbe
d something.”
“Very good, sir.”
Dutch began heading toward the stairs. “My wife upstairs?”
“No, sir.”
Dutch, at the bottom stair, turned around. “No?” This surprised him. “She hasn’t returned from Georgia?”
“Yes, sir, she returned. But she went out. With the baby.”
“Oh,” Dutch said. “Did she say where they were going?”
“No, sir, she did not. But . . .”
“But what, Ramsey?”
“But she did take a suitcase with her, sir.”
Dutch’s heart began to pound. “Did she?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did she say why?”
“No, sir.”
Dutch nodded. “Okay. Thank-you, Ramsey. That’ll be all.”
“Very good, sir,” Ramsey said, and then walked away. Like most of the household staff, Ramsey, too, lived onsite in one of the ten guest houses on the premises.
Dutch stood there, unsure what to make of it, and then he headed upstairs to the master bedroom. He immediately opened the double doors of their walk-in closet to see just what she would have had in that suitcase. But Gina had so many clothes, and the closet was so massive, that he couldn’t tell if she’d taken anything at all. Then he pulled out his cell phone and began calling her cell phone number. But, as it had earlier, it rang and rang. Dutch hung up.
He began loosening his tie, but when he walked over to the nightstand and removed his wallet and keys from his pockets and saw that smiling picture of Gina on his nightstand, a queasiness, a loneliness, a fear came over him. Had she left him? Was that what this was about?
He pulled out his cell phone again. But only this time he phoned Ralph Shaheen, the head of the Secret Service.
But Ralph had to remind his old friend and boss of the protocol. “Since she didn’t leave instructions for us to notify you of her whereabouts, you know we are not at liberty to reveal that information, Dutch.”
But Dutch would have none of that. “Bullshit, Ralph. Now where’s my wife? Where is she?”
“Dutch, you know---”
“Ralph. I need to speak to her. Where is she?”
There was a pause, then an exasperated sigh. “She went home,” he said.
“She didn’t go home. I’m at our house. She’s not here.”
“She went to her home. The house she owned and lived in before she married you.”
Dutch frowned. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying she packed a suitcase, picked up her baby, and went home. That’s what I’m saying.”
Dutch could feel his heartbeat quicken. He ran his hand across his forehead. He knew she was angry. He knew they had a lot to talk about. But for her to leave like this? “Okay, thanks, Ralph.”
“Don’t thank me. I just violated protocol. If it comes back on me, I won’t throw you under the bus, I’m going to throw you in front of the bus.”
“Without hesitation,” Dutch said. “Thanks, buddy,” he added, and ended the call.
But he held the phone in his hand, still in deep thought. He couldn’t believe it, but it was true. Gina was gone, and she took Walter with her. Dutch’s heart began to hammer. What in the world was happening?
But he didn’t ponder it long. He, instead, grabbed his wallet, and grabbed his keys, and headed back out of the room.
Gina kissed a sleeping Walter on his forehead and then made her way to her small kitchen, pulling shut her bathrobe as she walked. She had already showered, she had already fed her child, now all she wanted to do was relax. It had been a long day, and an even longer night. Her housekeeper had come over while her plane was still in the air and had cleaned and packed the refrigerator. But not with wine, which was what Gina wanted. She had to settle for juice instead.
She poured herself a glass full and took a seat at her small kitchen table. She almost smiled, remembering how she used to spend many nights at this very table. It was her ritual after those long days at BBR. She’d sometimes entertain male friends at that table. Sometimes a whole host of friends. Now it was just her and Little Walt. And he spent most of the evening asking why were they there, and where was his daddy.
Gina’s heart ached just thinking about his daddy. About Dutch. They’d been through a lot together. Through all kinds of storms. But they were a united front, and they stood together. But now she needed time away. Now she couldn’t do anything but think about that young man that died today, and how she might have been able to prevent his sense of hopelessness somehow, if she’d only been told he existed. If Dutch, her husband, had not withheld that monumental information from her.
She sipped more juice and tried to suppress the pain that kept refusing to go down. She wanted to rationalize it. She loved Dutch so much, she wanted to believe he meant well and therefore should be forgiven. But it wasn’t that easy. Because she agree with Brandy. Things would have been different if she had been in his life. He might not have even been in Gipson, Georgia that night. He might have been with them, in Newark, if she would have known he existed. And the prosecution might not have upheld the arrest, if she would have made some calls.
But it was all water under the bridge now. Dutch didn’t tell her and she didn’t know. And Brandy, rightly, was blaming her.
She stood up and was about to toss the rest of her juice down the drain and head to bed, when her doorbell rang. She hesitated, although she knew who it undoubtedly was, and then she made her way to the front door. When she looked out and saw that it was indeed Dutch standing there, with Addison seated in the parked SUV, she hesitated again. And then opened the door.
She stepped aside and allowed him passage in.
Dutch could feel the chill as soon as he walked in. When she closed the door and turned toward him, and he saw her troubled face, his heart sank. His decision to withhold her brother from her had hurt her. It had hurt her deeply.
He placed his hands in his pants pockets. He was still dressed in his suit, minus his tie, but he didn’t look as pristine as he normally looked. “Where’s Walt?” he asked her. “I wanted to kiss him goodnight.”
Gina absolutely had no problem with that. “He’s down the hall. First bedroom.”
Dutch hesitated and then made his way to his son’s room. It was such a small house that he felt oversized for it, as he had to duck slightly to get through the bedroom entrance. But when he saw Little Walt asleep, clutching the bedspread the way he always did in his own bed, he smiled.
He stood there for more than a few minutes staring at Walt, and then he kissed him on his forehead. He was going to make it clear to Gina that his wife and child weren’t sleeping in anybody’s beds but their own, in their own home. The Harber family was not breaking up. He didn’t care what issues they had to resolve, they were not breaking up.
When he kissed Walt again and finally made his way back up front, Gina was once again seated at the kitchen table. Dutch walked over to the refrigerator, looked inside, and grabbed himself a bottled water. Then he walked over to the table, and sat down across from her.
He looked at her. She looked at her half-filled glass of juice. And that was how she felt tonight. Half filled.
“When did you get back in town?” Dutch asked her.
“Five.”
“That soon?”
She didn’t respond.
“How did it go?”
“Awful.”
Dutch hesitated. “What happened? The police provided you with some evidence that---”
“The police didn’t provide me with shit, okay?” She didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but that was how she felt. “Evidence has nothing to do with it now.”
Dutch didn’t like her tone. “It was your brother then?” he asked. “He didn’t want to see you?”
“He didn’t get a chance,” Gina said bitterly. “Thanks to your decision about my life and my family.”
Dutch didn’t understand. “Gina, what are you talking about?”
�
��I’m talking about my brother, Dutch! DeAndre Clarke. My flesh and blood. I’m talking about flying all the way to Georgia to see him, to introduce myself to him, to see what I can do to help him. But I was wasting my time.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “He was already dead.”
Dutch’s heart dropped. “What?” he asked.
“As soon as we got there, they told us he died this morning.”
“Oh, Gina,” Dutch said agonizingly and hurried from his seat. But when he reached to touch her, she jumped up too.
“Don’t touch me!” she declared, drawing her body back from his reach. Then she calmed back down. “Don’t touch me.”
Dutch felt as if he was in a dream. The ideal that he would make Gina recoil from him, his Gina, stunned him. Not that he wasn’t already stunned. What she had said about her brother, the fact that he was dead, already had him off-balance.
“What happened to him?” he asked her.
“What were the terms of that agreement?” she asked him.
The question itself threw Dutch. She went from telling him that her brother died, to asking about the agreement. “What?” he asked.
“The agreement you made with DeAndre’s mother. What were the terms?”
Dutch exhaled. That situation had been so removed from his life for so long that he actually had to think about it. “We paid the mother, and by extension the daughter, a lump sum payment.”
“How much?”
“Gina.”
“How much, Dutch?”
“I think it was a hundred thousand dollars, or something like that. I don’t remember.”
Gina couldn’t believe it. “You don’t remember?”
“No, I don’t. Don’t use that tone with me.”
“What about DeAndre. What did he get out of the deal?”
“A trust fund was set up for him. Five thousand dollars per month for life once he turned twenty-one.”
“Put that trust fund in Brandy’s name.”
Dutch frowned. “Why would I want to do that? She’s an awful person, Gina.”
“Yes, she’s awful. In a lot of ways she rotten to the core. But she loved my brother. She was all he had. I wasn’t there for him. My deceased father birthed him, but that was the extent of his involvement in his life. But Brandy was there for him. She should get that money for that reason alone.”
For the Love of Gina: The President's Girlfriend Page 11
