by Tyora Moody
When Memories Fade: Victory Gospel Series
Tyora Moody
www.urbanchristianonline.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter One - Charlotte, North Carolina, 2011
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thrity-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Fourty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three - A year later . . .
Discussion Questions
Resources
About the Author
Copyright Page
Dedication
This book is dedicated to caregivers. Please know your sacrifice and love are highly appreciated by your loved one.
Acknowledgments
God is amazing! I sensed as I was writing the first book in the Victory Gospel Series that there were minor characters that had stories to tell. As I entered this fictional world, I was led to research and then develop characters with very relatable issues that any of us could face at some point in our lives.
Did you know African Americans are twice as likely to die from a stroke as Caucasians?According to a 2010 special report by the Alzheimer’s Association, older African Americans are probably about two times more likely than older Caucasians to have Alzheimer’s and other dementias.
I knew when I started this novel, the story line would be centered around a missing person’s case. Over the years, when an African American woman goes missing, her plight does not always receive the same attention as that of a Caucasian woman. Did you know that according to FBI figures, nearly 40 percent of all missing persons are people of color? That’s an incredible percentage. The cable network TV One broadcasts a much-needed program about African Americans who have vanished under suspicious circumstances, Finding Our Missing. This is a start.
If you find at any time while you are reading this book that you have more questions about the subject matter, I have included online resources at the end of the book to provide some answers.
Now, there are a few people I want to acknowledge. Thank you to Robin Caldwell for reading through the manuscript. Your friendship, advice, and encouragement are priceless. To Dr. Jeffrey Brown, M.D., thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to answer my questions about stroke and Alzheimer’s. I can Google all I want, but there’s nothing like talking to a medical professional. Joylynn Ross, thank you for always being available to address my many questions as a newly published author. I’ve learned so much from you and look forward to continuing to work with you.
I want to take a moment to acknowledge the people who helped me push the first book in this series, When Rain Falls. I can’t name everyone, but to all my family and friends, book reviewers, bloggers, online radio hosts, book clubs, and readers, thank you for your support of When Rain Falls. It’s truly appreciated.
Thanks, Dad, for helping me spread the word about When Rain Falls locally. Your enthusiasm and support mean the world to me.
Last, but not least, I want to acknowledge my two best friends, my mom and my sister. You two have been the best with helping me get galleys out, finding readers and venues to promote the book, and being traveling companions. You two are my bookends.
Thank you, readers, for taking the time to read the second book in the Victory Gospel Series.
Prologue
She gripped the steering wheel in fear as she calculated every move he made. For the last hour, he had held the gun in her direction. What if she jerked the car off the road? No. She wanted to live. Still, a car accident had to be better than what he would do to her. She had no idea where they were going.
“Pull over right up here.” He turned his hot breath on her. “Do it now.”
With as much ease as her trembling body allowed, she slowed the car and pulled to the side of the road. There hadn’t been another car for miles on this back road. The sun had disappeared as cloudy dark gray skies loomed ahead.
He cocked the gun toward her chest. “Get out.”
Her hands felt ice cold as she struggled to grasp the door handle.
“Come on,” he growled.
She yanked the door handle and scrambled out of the car to face her abductor.
The man waved the gun and yelled, “Start walking.”
Sticks and leaves crunched as they walked into the mass of trees. From a distance, she saw lightning streak across the sky. A cool breeze whipped through the trees, but it brought no comfort. Her heart raced as if she had just run a marathon. She choked back a sob. He was going to kill her.
To think how much she had trusted him. It never would have crossed her mind that he would hurt her. More lightning split the sky, followed by an intense rumble of thunder. The trees shook their limbs, as if taunting her for being so naive.
“Stop.”
She turned and noticed he’d cocked his head like he’d heard something. Was someone else out here?
He swung the gun an inch from her temple. “Get down.”
“What?”
“Get on your knees,” he snarled.
She fell on her knees, feeling the earth beneath her. Her heart lurched as the thunder roared like an angry lion above their heads. Big drops of rain began to crash down around them. She shut her eyes tight, not believing this was her fate. “Please, God, help me,” she prayed fervently.
When she opened her eyes, an answer lay near her, barely covered by leaves. She glanced up at him. His eyes had grown wilder as he paced around her. He seemed to be having a conversation, but she couldn’t understand a word he was saying. The rain was falling harder now, soaking her clothes. She peered down at the ground again. Why not? What did she have to lose? She had to do something.
She scooped the smooth rock up from the muddy ground. Her dormant softball skills kicked in as she homed in on his hand. Not waiting another second, she swung the rock with all her might.
The rock smacked him square on the hand, and he dropped the gun. “No, you . . .”
She leapt forward like a track runner and headed into the trees. As she ran, the oddest memory of a Sunday schoo
l lesson entered her mind. The one about Lot’s wife. God told her not to look back, but she did and lost her life.
His voice bellowed behind her.
“Don’t look back,” she told herself as she ran. “Don’t. Look. Back.”
Chapter One
Charlotte, North Carolina, 2011
“We both know she’s dead.” Angel Roberts tightened her grip around the steering wheel, realizing too late she’d destroyed a beautiful evening. A harsh silence sucked the air from inside the car. After a minute, her grandmother responded softly, but firmly. “Angel, I can never give up hope.”
Angel took her eyes off the road to peer at her grandmother’s face. A warmth of shame washed over Angel as she witnessed the pain in Fredricka Roberts’s eyes. Why now? It’s my birthday.
Less than fifteen minutes ago, Angel had driven away from Victory Gospel Church, still grateful for the love shown to her. A year ago, Angel would have never imagined herself regularly attending church, and definitely not Bible study. Tonight the members of the Overcomers Women’s Ministry had presented Angel with a surprise twenty-fifth birthday celebration. Angel had loaded the remains of the almost eaten butter cream cake and birthday gifts into the backseat, not realizing her joy would be short-lived.
Angel slowed the car down as she approached the red light. All had been well until her grandmother had said, “You look so much like your mother when she was twenty-five.”
Despite confessing her faith in Christ nine months ago at Victory Gospel Church, Angel had continued to struggle with resentment. It seemed like every year, Angel’s birthday turned into more of a memorial for her mother. There was this gap between Angel and her grandmother where her mother should have been. Angel barely remembered the woman who had disappeared twenty years ago.
The question that haunted Angel the most was the same one that brought her grandmother hope. What if her mother were alive? To Angel that meant Elisa Roberts had abandoned her daughter. That night after Angel’s fifth birthday party, her mother had walked out and had never returned. Elisa had provided no clue about where she was going or whether she was going to meet someone. Just vanished. Due to foul play or on purpose. Surely, her grandmother didn’t want to hope to find a woman who had done the latter.
As she drove through the green light, Angel chided herself for getting angry with her grandmother. It was just her and Grams now. She cleared her throat. “Grams, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to blurt out that we know my mother’s dead. We don’t really know.”
No response.
She glanced at her grandmother. Fredricka’s face was turned toward the passenger window. Not wanting to upset her grandmother any more tonight, Angel became engrossed in her own thoughts. What Angel didn’t want was for Grams to find out what she was doing. She was on a mission to find out what or who had led to her mother’s disappearance. Five years ago, she’d started working on a documentary of her mother’s life, but various circumstances led her off track and she abandoned the project. Now she was determined to complete it. Anything to bring attention to her mother’s short-lived legacy.
Her grandparents had raised her, doing their best to keep memories of her mother alive. Even though she was young, Angel remembered her mother being sad all the time. Angel was born a few months after a devastating breakup between Angel’s mother and father. It didn’t help that her mother, a protégée, had struggled to regain her footing in a once promising singing career while trying to raise Angel.
In many ways, Elisa had shown signs of either desperately wanting a new life or ending the dismal life she perceived she had. Reaching her own breaking point four years ago, Angel longed for a connection with her mother.
Angel maneuvered her grandfather’s old Buick into the driveway of the only place she called home. Her grandmother shuffled behind her as they made their way down the cobblestone walkway toward the front door. Once inside, Angel headed toward the kitchen to find a spot for the leftover cake inside the refrigerator. She had an urge to leave the cake out and eat the rest of it, but weariness invaded her body. She slammed the fridge door shut and turned around.
“Whoa, Grams.” Her grandmother had managed to sneak up behind her. Angel didn’t remember hearing her walk in the kitchen.
Her grandmother sputtered, “Angel, we should have stopped by the store on the way home.”
Angel frowned. Maybe she had agitated her grandmother too much with her outburst in the car. “I can go back out, Grams. It’s not a problem. What do you need?”
“Aspirin.” Fredricka held her hand to head. “I’m not feeling well.”
Angel placed her hand on her grandmother’s shoulder. “Why don’t you lie down? I will bring you some aspirin. I’m sure we already have a bottle.”
Angel walked across the kitchen to the cabinet where they kept a medicine supply. She searched among the orange and white labeled bottles. There were so many bottles. A lot of the labels bore her deceased grandfather’s name. She really needed to work with Grams to throw away his old medicine. Finally, Angel saw a bottle of aspirin.
“Here is the bottle.” Angel flipped the bottle in her hand to check the expiration date. A forceful thump startled her. Angel turned around. “Grams!” she cried out. She ran over and knelt beside her grandmother on the linoleum floor.
The right side of her grandmother’s face twitched. “Ang . . .”
Before Angel could stop them, tears sprang to life, blurring her vision. “Grams, hang in there. You are going to be okay.”
Angel sprinted to the phone on the wall, and with trembling fingers, she dialed 9-1-1.
Oh, God, please don’t take Grams yet.
Chapter Two
Grateful for the interruption, Wes Cade removed Serena’s arms from around his neck and pulled himself up from the couch. What was he thinking? He crossed the room to where his suit jacket was lying across a chair. He wrestled the ringing BlackBerry out of his jacket pocket.
From behind him on the couch, Serena Manchester hissed at him. “Did you really need to answer that call?”
Wes ignored Serena, like he should have done earlier, when she requested he come inside her apartment. He glanced at his phone. Voice mail had already kicked in. The missed call was from his mother’s cell. He clicked the voice mail button and then held the phone to his ear to listen to his mother’s message.
Wanda Cade’s panic-stricken voice alarmed him. “Wes, I need you. Your grandfather . . . I can’t find him.”
He groaned. Not again. Wes Cade clicked the button on his phone to end the voice mail. His mother’s voice sounded tired and panicked at the same time. What would it take to convince his mother that Pops had grown to be too much for her? The old man’s memory had been affected for years. Some days he no longer recognized his daughter or his grandson. He turned around to his female companion for the evening. She glared at him.
“Is everything okay?” Serena sounded more like she wanted to slap him.
Wes was drawn to her steely but seductive brown eyes. “I’m sorry. You know my grandfather has Alzheimer’s. He’s missing again, so I need to go.”
Serena’s eyes softened as she rose from the couch. She slinked toward him, placing her hand on his arm. “Again? Shouldn’t you put him in a place where he’s safe?”
Wes stepped away from her and started putting his jacket on. “Believe me, I know.” He’d been fighting an uphill battle with his mother, a nurse for eighteen years, who was convinced she could handle everything. As a single mother, Wanda Cade was a strong woman, but at this rate he needed her to be around for a few more years. The woman was killing herself trying to keep up with Pops.
“I have to go.” He moved toward the door, but not before Serena placed her hand on his shoulder. Before he could protest, she squeezed in front of him, blocking his hand from reaching the doorknob on the front door.
“We need to finish this. Soon.” She reached for his neck and drew his head down toward her lips.
Knowing in
his mind that he shouldn’t, he kissed her back. When she moved away, he refused to look at her. “I’ll see you in the newsroom tomorrow.”
Not until he was safe inside his Honda did he exhale. Wasn’t there a rule that said a person shouldn’t get involved with a coworker? Especially one as hot as Serena. More importantly, what had happened to him practicing celibacy? If the phone hadn’t rung, he doubted he would have stopped. This was what he got for being super busy and not honoring his commitments.
It had been a year and a half since his last relationship, and he really wanted to settle down and find the right woman. He was approaching thirty, and something in him longed for family life. At a men’s conference last year, he’d made a commitment to stop dating and remain celibate. He’d been doing great until Serena started messing with his head. There was no doubt in his mind, Serena was not a woman he wanted to get involved with, but he kept being drawn toward her.
He blew out his breath and dialed his mom’s cell number.
“Hello.”
“Mom, did you find Pops yet?”
His mother let out a deep, long sigh. “We found him. Praise the Lord! My next-door neighbor and I went looking for him. He was sitting at the park with some of his old buddies. Bless their hearts, they looked out for him. I just can’t figure out if he walked there or hitched a ride. It’s almost a mile from the house.”
“Mom, don’t you think it’s time?” Wes couldn’t picture Pops sitting in a nursing home. They both knew Pops preferred being around family. He used to be such a vibrant and fun-loving man. At least when he was sober. Despite Pops’s love for alcohol, the man was the father Wes never had.
He nudged her. “Mom, did you even look at the brochures I dropped off last week? Those nursing homes are well rated. One of the reporters at the station did a broadcast series on them not too long ago.”
“I’m still not ready.”
“What is it? Money? You know I would help you.”
“No. I’m just not—”
“Ready. I know,” Wes responded sharply. He couldn’t stand this arguing every week. “I know he’s your dad, but he’s my grandfather. You’re my mother. You got to think about you now. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how worn-out you’ve been. I can’t lose both of you.”
