Microphones were shoved into Eric’s face. He stepped back.
“We have received reports that a man employed by you drove the car that hit Terrell Anderson last night.”
Another reporter said, “The car is registered in your wife’s name.”
Still another reporter said, “Terrell just came out of surgery.”
Eric lifted his hands. “Hold up. Is there a question in there somewhere?”
“Why was your gardener driving your wife’s car?”
Calmly he said, “My wife had fallen down the stairs. I was at work, so she asked Michael to run to the store and get her pain medication.”
“Why didn’t he take his own car?”
“I don’t know; I wasn’t here at the time,” Eric responded.
“Where is Mr. Underwood?” One of the reporters hollered out.
“Where is Mrs. Morrison?” Another asked.
“Why? My wife has nothing to do with this,” Eric began and then was interrupted.
“It was her car,” someone shouted out.
“Mr. Morrison, are you aware that Terrell Anderson may not ever be able to play football again?”
A look of anguish crossed Eric’s face as he said, “I am very sorry to hear that about Mr. Anderson. My hope is that his surgery and rehabilitation will be enough to get him back on his feet and onto the field again.” With that he turned and walked back into the house without answering another question.
“Do you think they bought it?” Michael asked as Eric came back into the house.
“I don’t know, but I need to get you out of here. What time of year do you and your family normally go on vacation?”
Michael shook his head. “I have five kids. My wife and I never have enough money to take them anywhere. We barely have enough to stay in our home.”
“What are you talking about? I just gave you fifty thousand dollars.”
“And I thank you for that money, Mr. Morrison, but I’m putting that towards college for my children.”
“Okay, well, spend the night here tonight, but call your wife and tell her to pack some bags for you and the kids. I’m going to pay for a week long trip to Disney World for all of you.” Without waiting for a response, Eric walked out of the kitchen, his mind completely focused on putting out the fire that his wife had set.
Chapter 3
A scorpion was coming at her. Linda leaned back, but no matter how far she moved, the scorpion kept coming after her. She screamed and was jolted out of her nightmare.
She looked at the clock on her nightstand. It was five thirty in the evening. The nightly news was on, so Linda changed the channel to one of the local news stations. They weren’t talking about anything but the weather, so she changed the channel. Eric was on television. He appeared to be in front of their house. But what struck Linda as odd was the fact that he had just told a reporter that Michael Underwood drove her car to get her medication after she’d fallen down the stairs.
At the moment she felt as if a bus had run over her, so she knew she would have been in even more pain last night. Why would Michael have left her to go to the store for pain medicine, when she had a medicine cabinet full of pain killers in the master bathroom? That just didn’t make sense. Something was up, and she was going to get to the bottom of it.
Her door opened and Linda changed the channel.
Eric popped his head in. “You’re awake. How are you feeling?”
“A little better. I think I want to get up and walk around.”
“I’d rather that you stay in bed today. Isaiah’s wedding is this weekend, and I really need you to be in top form for that.”
“What if my face is still swollen? Will you take me, or will you leave me like you did when your family celebrated Elaine’s birthday?”
He stepped into the room and closed the door. He sat down on the bed next to his wife. “You were drunk when I came home to get you. There was no way that you would have been able to get on a plane in that condition. And to be truthful, I would have been mortified to take you anywhere in that condition.”
“Poor Eric, you got the short end of the stick when you married me, didn’t you?”
“Your words, not mine.”
But he hadn’t bothered to deny them, and that’s what hurt her the most. Her husband didn’t love her anymore, but she had never forgotten what their love felt like when it had been new… for her, it had been powerful enough to sustain her through these years that hadn’t been so great for them. But it was hard to be in love alone. “Okay Eric, I’ll stay in bed for the rest of the evening. Can you just bring me some soup or something?”
“Coming right up,” he said as he jumped off the bed as if he couldn’t wait to get away from her.
The next morning, after Eric left for work, Linda made her way down to the kitchen. Every step she took on her way down the stairs was fraught with pain, but Linda’s shakes were worse than her pain. She put a pot of coffee on, grabbed an oversized mug and then searched through her spice cabinet for her bottles of olive oil. She purchased the oil a year ago, emptied the bottles and cleaned them real good. She then put brandy in one bottle and gin in the other.
She pulled out the one filled with brandy and poured half the contents into her cup. When the coffee was ready, she poured some of that in her cup, as well. She took a sip. “Ahhh.”
She thought about fixing herself some breakfast, but then she remembered that Maria would be there in a few minutes. She’d let their maid fix her some breakfast; right now she just wanted to get back to her bed and drink her coffee. She started to put the olive oil bottle back in the cabinet, but then she realized that she would not want to travel all the way back downstairs later on that day when she would need her next fix, so she put the bottle in the pocket of her robe. As she was headed out of the kitchen, the back door opened and Michael walked in.
“Hey Mrs. Morrison, I didn’t think you’d be out of bed this morning.”
She lifted her coffee mug. “Blame it on my obsession for coffee. I’m on my way back upstairs now. Can you please tell Maria that I don’t have a preference for breakfast this morning. She can fix anything she’d like me to have.”
“Sure thing, Mrs. Morrison. I’ll make sure she brings your breakfast to you as soon as it falls off the skillet.”
“Thanks Michael,” she said as she turned to escape with her brandy/coffee. But then she remembered the accident and knew that she couldn’t just leave without acknowledging it. “Uh Michael, I wanted to apologize for sending you out the other night. I’m sure you must be pretty banged up from that car accident.”
He lifted his right arm, touched his left shoulder and began rubbing it. “I banged my shoulder up pretty bad, but I’ll heal; don’t you worry about me.”
“Funny thing is, I look more like I’ve been in a car wreck than you do.” Linda laughed at the notion. As she did so, Michael stopped rubbing his shoulder, but his hand remained on his shoulder as if it was stuck there. That’s when she was reminded of something. She looked closely at Michael’s hand… nothing was there. But Linda now remembered where she’d seen the scorpion that had been in her dreams. Michael’s seventeen year old son had a scorpion tattooed on the back of his hand. She noticed it when his son had helped out with the gardening a time a two before.
He saw her looking at his hand and removed it from his shoulder.
Her brow furrowed. “You know, Michael, what I don’t understand about all of this is if I had fallen down the stairs and gotten this banged up, why would I ask you to go to the store to get pain pills when I have a bunch of them in my medicine cabinet?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe you forgot you had those pills or something.”
“Mmph. Why didn’t you drive your own car to the store?”
“I guess I was so worried about you, that I wasn’t thinking clearly either.” He looked away from her.
“Have you received a lot of flack for hitting Terrell Anderson?”
“Some stupid people have said a few out of the way things, but the police cleared me. I lost control of the car. They took a breathalyzer test that night, so they knew that I hadn’t been drinking.”
Linda looked down at her cup. Driving while impaired by alcohol would be a serious problem. If she had been the one in the car that night, the police would have arrested her on the spot. She looked back up and said, “I’m sorry I caused you all this trouble.”
For the rest of the day, Linda was in and out of consciousness. After breakfast she had taken several pain pills in order to numb herself, so, she slept more than she wanted to. She tossed and turned and then a hand reached out to her. It lifted her head off of the fluffy white cloud she had been laying on. He lifted her into his arms and began carrying her from her car. Linda looked at the hand wrapped around her. She saw a scorpion tattoo on the hand.
She was placed into another car and driven away. As she rode on the passenger side of the car, just before closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep, Linda saw another car. It was black with tinted windows, but what most shocked her about the car was that it wasn’t flat to the ground; two of the wheels were suspended in the air.
Linda’s eyes popped open as she sat up in bed. She looked around trying to get her bearings. “Was I in an accident?”
When Eric came home from work, Linda tried to talk to him about her dream and about the scorpion. But Eric brushed her off, told her that the medication was talking for her and she just needed to get some more sleep.
By morning she was a little groggy, but well rested. She watched Eric as he dressed for work, wanting desperately to talk to him, but she knew that she couldn’t. There just simply wasn’t anything to say… there was no truth left between them. “Have a nice day,” she said as he left their bedroom.
He mumbled something about driving Kivonna to school.
You go ahead, Mr. Mayor, because I’m going to find out, today, exactly what happened to me. She waited in her room until she heard his car pull out of the driveway. She threw the covers back and this time as she got out of bed, Linda was surprised to note that her body didn’t ache as badly as it had the last few days. Early on, she had wondered if Eric had done her a disservice by not taking her to the hospital. She now understood why he hadn’t. No doctor would have believed his cockamamie falling down the stairs bit… not with how bruised she had been, and not with her crushed and mangled car having a starring role on the nightly news as the vehicle that may have destroyed Terrell Anderson’s promising football career.
She went downstairs and then headed out back to find Michael Underwood. Only he had the answers she sought, and today, she was determined to get the man to tell her the truth. But Michael was nowhere to be found. She walked back into the house by way of the kitchen door and found Maria at the stove making breakfast. “Good morning, Maria.”
Maria turned. “Good morning, Mrs. Morrison. You look like you’re feeling a little better.”
Linda touched her face and noticed that the swelling had gone down. She nodded. “Some of the pain is gone. I actually think I’m going to live.”
Maria smiled.
Linda asked, “Have you seen Michael? I need to ask him a few questions.”
“He’s on vacation. Mr. Morrison told him to get on out of here and go enjoy Florida with his family.”
“So, my husband sent Michael on a vacation, huh?”
A worried look crossed Maria’s face, like she might be telling tales out of school. “I thought you knew about the vacation. I’m sure Mr. Morrison will tell you all about it soon.”
“I’m sure he will. I’ve been sleeping a lot lately, so Eric really hasn’t had time to talk to me about much of anything.”
Maria smiled again, relieved by Linda’s response.
“Well, I guess I’ll just talk to Michael when he gets back from vacation.”
Maria shook her head. “Oh no, ma’am. Michael won’t be coming back here. Mr. Morrison gave him a promotion. He’ll be overseeing all of the city’s landscaping projects.”
Isn’t that nice for Michael. But this information from Maria only escalated Linda’s suspicions. Her husband would never reward an employee for wrecking her car by paying for a vacation and giving the man a promotion. Eric would have fired Michael if that accident had really been his fault. But Linda knew that it hadn’t been.
She still didn’t fully remember everything that happened that night, but she did remember that Michael’s seventeen year old son had been working with him the night of the accident. And she knew what her dream had been showing her: Michael’s son had carried her to his car and had driven her back home after the accident. Michael had then stayed at the scene of the crime and took the blame for her.
As she headed back to her room, tears were streaming down her face. She had been driving drunk and she almost killed someone. As she sat down on her bed, her mind’s eye pictured the other car that had been on the road that night. It was leaning on two of its wheels, the other two were in the air. She gasped, “I’m so sorry, Terrell.”
At that moment she knew what she had to do. She jumped in the shower, put on a pair of jeans and a knit sweater and called for a cab. Linda was going to the hospital to see Terrell Anderson and beg for his forgiveness.
Chapter 4
Linda caught a cab to the hospital, and worried herself sick all the way to the ICU. If Eric was trying to hide the fact that she had been driving the car, he would not want her to visit Terrell Anderson. The swelling may have gone down on her face a bit, but she was still bruised up. What if Terrell had seen her before the car struck him. He might recall what had really happened that night and notify the police before she had a chance to explain.
Things were bad with her and Eric already; how would their marriage ever survive her being arrested while he was in the midst of preparing his campaign for governor? Tempted to cut and run, Linda latched onto her sense of rightness. If she had indeed hit Terrell while she was driving drunk, the least she could do was face the young man and apologize for her sins.
She moved forward, knowing in her heart that every step she took was causing a further rift in her marriage. But as she looked at the woman standing behind the desk in front of the ICU door, Linda felt deep within that this moment was bigger than her and Eric. She steadied herself and then told the woman, “I’m here to see Terrell Anderson.”
The woman pointed to the room full of people seated behind them. “Honey, you and everybody else in this city. And I have to tell you the same thing I told most of them: ICU is for immediate family only. You’re welcome to sit with the family in the waiting area, but you won’t get behind these doors unless his mother or father takes you in to see him.”
Linda never used her position as first lady of the city of Cincinnati to her advantage before. She was normally so fearful of embarrassing Eric out in public that she kept her mouth shut and just hoped that no one recognized her. But today she was on a mission and needed to get behind those double doors. She leaned closer to the woman and said, “I’m Linda Morrison, Mayor Eric Morrison’s wife. My gardener hit Mr. Anderson and I just wanted to check on the young man.” Linda hated lying, but there was no way she was going to tell this woman and everyone in the waiting room that she had been out driving while drunk and was really the person who hit Terrell. She was remorseful, but she wasn’t suicidal.
“You would think your gardener would be here trying to find out how Mr. Anderson is doing. But as far as I know, he hasn’t been here yet,” the woman said in an accusatory tone.
“He’s very remorseful. The fact that he has harmed someone is tearing him up inside.” If she replaced him with her… as in herself, she would be telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. “So I decided to come and check on Mr. Anderson; after all, Michael had been driving my car.”
“Oh my goodness, are you the mayor’s wife?” a voice behind Linda asked.
She turned around and came face to face with a young
man who was sporting corn rows, wearing a Cincinnati Bengals jersey and holding a football. The young man looked to be about sixteen or seventeen, so Linda knew he didn’t play for the Bengals. He was either a fan or one of Terrell’s family members. “Yes, I’m Linda Morrison.”
He held out his hand. “I’m Les Anderson. Terrell is my big brother.”
They shook hands, then Linda asked, “How is he doing?”
“Not too good, ma’am. He’s busted up pretty bad. But Terrell’s a fighter. He’s not about to lose his contract over some dumb car accident.”
“The mayor and I are praying for him,” she lied. Linda and Eric hadn’t prayed together or separately in years.
“Why don’t you sit down with us? My mom and dad are in the room with Terrell and his doctors right now. I know they would love to see you,” Les told her.
Could she really face Terrell’s parents? “I don’t want to intrude.”
“You’re not intruding. My mom said just this morning that she was surprised that the mayor hadn’t come to see Terrell, being as how Terrell is so important to this city. But he sent you, right?”
Linda nodded and then followed Les into the waiting area and took a seat next to a young woman with a protruding belly.
Les made the introductions. “Tawanda, this is the mayor’s wife, Mrs. Morrison.” He turned back to Linda and said, “This is my brother’s fiancée. They’re getting married next month.”
With tears in her eyes, Tawanda said, “That’s if he’s out of the hospital by then.”
The Politician's Wife Page 2
