When her eyes could produce no more tears and her throat felt as thick as peanut butter-soaked cotton, she stood up, spent and tired. What would she do now?
William could not escape the cameras or the incessant ringing of the telephone. “William, you’ve got to stay the course,” Winston pleaded, knowing their months of hard work were in real jeopardy.
“I can’t do this anymore,” William said, his head in his hands. “The cameras. The stories. I can’t.”
“You can and you will,” Olivia said, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all of this, but maybe it’s all for the better. You were able to see what kind of woman your wife truly is. And even if you don’t win this election, it positions you to win the next because your name will already be out there. This is all for the better.”
William looked at her incredulously. “Do you think this is a game? This is my life. I don’t care anything about name recognition right now, especially when I’ve just realized the woman who has carried my name has been lying to me all along.”
Olivia rubbed his back. “It’s a shame, isn’t it?”
The phone jarred Nikki from her thoughts. She slowly stood from her perch on the edge of the tub and walked with wooden steps toward the ringing. Maybe it would stop by the time she got there. She could think of no one in the world she wanted to speak to right now.
The ringing was still going on when she got to the kitchen. She sighed and picked up the receiver. “Hello.” Her voice sounded dead, even to her own ears.
“You have a collect call,” the automated voice informed her. She couldn’t understand the name, but numbly accepted. The call connected.
“Nikki, I’ve been arrested, please come and get me.”
The voice crackled through Nikki like an electric shock. Danielle. She snapped into action, the numbness of a moment ago being replaced by fire. “I know you are not calling me to help you!”
“Please,” Danielle implored. “There has been some mistake. They’re saying I killed Troy. You know I didn’t do that!”
“I don’t care if they send you straight to the electric chair!” Nikki shouted. “I would cut off my right arm before I lifted even a finger to help you, after what you did to me.”
“I didn’t do anything!”
“Yeah,” Nikki said. “Just like you didn’t tell the press about me using that credit card. Just like you didn’t sleep with my boyfriend all those years ago. Just like you didn’t stab me in the back a hundred times.”
“Nikki, please!”
Nikki slammed down the telephone.
“I need to run an errand,” William said. If Winston or Olivia or any of the rest of his staff so much as breathed another word to him, he knew he would blow up. His face felt hot with embarrassment and his gut was tight with so many other emotions. He needed to find a quiet spot.
“I’ll go with you,” Olivia quickly spoke up.
“No,” he said, standing. “I’ll go alone.”
He saw Olivia and Winston exchange glances. Winston cleared his throat. “You have appointments. And the phones keep ringing, we’ve got to devise a plan to recover from this latest Jimmy Vaughn story.”
“I said, I need to run an errand.” William’s words were coarse. He grabbed his keys and jacket.
“Well, when will you be back?” Olivia pressed.
He gave her a withering look and strode away, ignoring her question.
Danielle slumped against the gray, concrete wall of the cell in which gruff, uniformed officers had unceremoniously dumped her into just moments ago. She bit down hard on her bottom lip, knowing she could draw blood but not caring as she welcomed the pain.
The floor was a darker gray than the walls, with a light covering of dust and stray hairs she could clearly see. The only other person in there was a woman who slept on the flat mattress. Danielle could smell the stench of alcohol emanating from the woman and moved as far away from her as she could. She could hear a den of noise all around as guards shouted obscenities and other arrestees cursed back.
Danielle paced back and forth in the tiny space, wringing her hands. She didn’t know if she could survive this.
William’s cell phone rang even before he turned the key in the ignition. He thought to ignore it but snatched it up instead. Whoever it was would get an earful. “What!” he said.
“Who are you talking to like that?” his mother’s sharp tone drilled into him.
He was instantly chastened. “Oh, Ma,” he said. “I didn’t know it was you. I’m sorry. What’s up?”
“What’s up is this mess I’m reading all over the papers and seeing on this television,” she said. “What is going on?”
“I really don’t know,” William said. “I just don’t know.”
“Well, I could have told you that girl was no good,” she said. “I did tell you, as a matter of fact. I told you to marry a good, Christian girl. Somebody who knew the Lord.”
“Nikki does know the Lord,” William shot back.
“Hmmph!” his mother said. “I don’t know anybody who knows the Lord who would be caught up in all that mess. She’s full of sin, I tell you! That’s what you get for hanging out with the wrong kinds of people. I told you and I told you, but no, you wouldn’t listen. And now look at you. Married to a prostitute!”
The statement ripped through William’s gut. Even in his anger, the words hurt. “Nikki isn’t like—”
“Well, now, everybody ain’t lying,” his mother said. “The news makes up some stuff, but I guarantee they didn’t make this up. What does she have to say for herself?”
William wondered the same thing.
“Mommy, I want to watch TV,” Psalm said, picking up the remote from the table.
Nikki snatched the device from the girl’s hand. “No!”
At Psalm’s startled look, Nikki smiled and said in a softer voice, “No, baby, we’re not watching TV. Let’s read. Go get one of your favorite books and Mommy will read it with you.”
“But I don’t want to,” Psalm whined. “I want to watch cartoons.”
“Maybe later,” Nikki said, but she knew she would keep Psalm away from the television. She didn’t need her child seeing all those bad things about her.
Ring! Ring! The phone startled Nikki. She snatched it up. “Hello?”
“Is this Nikki Broussard? This is Jimmy Vaughn from the newspaper.”
“Jimmy, I can’t talk to you,” Nikki said tersely.
“Come on, Nikki,” Jimmy said. “Just tell me what’s going on. Give me the scoop.”
“There is nothing going on!” Nikki said.
“Nikki, all those stories we’ve worked together on . . .” Jimmy tried to lean on their professional relationship. “How many stories did we cover together when you were an intern, you shooting photos and me reporting? You know I’ll be fair to you.”
“Not interested, Jimmy,” Nikki’s voice was firm.
“Nikki—”
“Good bye, Jimmy.”
She placed the receiver back in its cradle.
The phone rang again. She sighed and rolled her eyes before snatching up the receiver. “Jimmy!”
“Excuse me?” the female voice caught Nikki off guard.
“Oh, who is this?”
“This is Jamie Nettles from Channel twelve. I was looking—”
“You have the wrong number,” Nikki cut the woman off.
Nikki hung up the phone. When it rang again, she took the phone off the hook.
While Psalm rummaged in her bedroom for a book, Nikki’s mind went back to a time in her distant past. She had been a freshman at college—broke. The school was threatening to cancel her classes if she didn’t come up with payment. She had enrolled in school, not realizing her scholarship hadn’t covered all of her tuition.
She had tried asking her family. But her mother had reminded Nikki that she should have gone to school near their home, like her mother had told her to do. Nikki was fre
sh out of ideas when she literally bumped into Spencer Cason.
She crashed into Spencer as she walked across campus, her mind replaying that conversation with her mother. Nikki’s books spilled to the ground and she immediately bent to reclaim them, but he was quicker. He scooped them up.
She had looked up at him, mesmerized by the hazel eyes twinkling back at her. His wavy hair was cut close and his smile was inviting. She felt herself blush at the attention. “I’m so sorry!” she gushed, reaching to get her books, but he had held on to them.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s not every day that I get almost knocked down by someone as innocent and cute as you.”
She smiled shyly and cast her eyes down. “Oh . . .”
“So, can I walk you across the Quad and buy you a burger inside the student center?” he asked. He snapped the fingers on his free hand. “Sorry. My name is Spencer.”
She knew exactly who he was. He was a star athlete and the son of a rich doctor. He was always surrounded by pretty girls—she had watched this from afar. She knew he was popular.
He looked at her expectantly, then grinned even wider. “You’re not going to tell me your name?”
She had realized belatedly that she had just been staring at him. She quickly recovered and stammered out her name. “Ni—Ni—Nikki.”
“What a beautiful name for a beautiful woman,” he said, seeming to enjoy watching her squirm under his compliments. He looked around. “So, Nikki, let’s get to know each other. I think we can be really good friends.”
She later found out he was one of Danielle’s friends. Danielle started pushing Nikki to go out with Spencer and later, to do much more than that for him. Danielle told her to listen to Spencer’s idea about making money.
The clanking of keys in the lock jolted Nikki from her thoughts. She sprang from the chair.
William stood in the doorway.
She froze.
The sight of Nikki jarred William. He had somehow known she would be here. When he rounded the corner and saw her car in the driveway, his heart had quickened. But what emotions the sight of her standing here evoked, he couldn’t discern at the moment. He wanted to shake her, to hug her, to tell her the past didn’t matter.
“I assume you’ve read the papers,” he said coolly, and he could see from the way her head jerked up that she had. He wanted his words to hurt. “Seems that I should just open the newspaper to find out who my wife really is.”
Nikki finally found her voice. “I . . . I wanted to tell you.”
“But what? Did you not have enough time? Could you not find the chance over seven years to say, ‘Oh, by the way, baby, I sold my body for money’? Was that it?” Anger laced his voice and he didn’t hold back. “After all we’ve been through, after all the things we’ve shared, to find out my wife is a . . . .” He closed his mouth against saying the words that came to mind. He balled and released his fists. “Dang it, Nikki!”
She jumped. She had never seen him like this. She could see a vein vibrating in his temple.
“Will, I tried to tell you.”
“You tried to tell me?” His laugh was hollow. “Oh, that’s rich. You go make a fool out of me and then say, ‘I tried to tell you.’ What man wants to find out his wife used to be a prostitute? I bet every time we were together, you were thinking about all those other men and their money. So, what was it about me? What was it about me that made you give it up for free? I know that must have been really hard, lying down with me for free when it used to go for what, $100, $200? Did you feel like you were doing volunteer service? Did you hold out on giving me your best stuff, because it was free?”
“Will, stop it!”
“What, you don’t want to hear the truth? Am I striking a nerve?” He jabbed the words at her. “I bet it burned you up to know that you were married to a man who didn’t have any money. Did you think you made a bad move?” His mind flashed to something else. “Oh, and Spencer. You never told me you slept with him! Why didn’t you tell me he was your pimp?”
“I told you he and I were friends,” Nikki said weakly.
“Yeah, but not sex buddies! You think you could have mentioned that? Got me walking around here looking stupid. I know he must have been laughing at me every time he saw us together, knowing how I had gotten married to one of his girls.”
William shoved his hand into his pocket, snatching out his wallet. He grabbed several bills, tearing them out from their leathery confines, letting them flutter to the floor. “Here! Take this!” he grabbed her and pulled her to him. “So, does that mean I can have you now? Will you let me have you like before? Will you let me do anything I please?”
Nikki shoved away from William, her voice shaky. “You will not talk to me that way!”
“What! I thought that’s how you liked it,” he said.
“Will, you can’t treat me any kind of way. You can’t treat me like a . . . like a . . . .”
“Prostitute? I can’t treat you like a prostitute?”
“Mommy! Daddy! Stop being mean to each other!” Both their heads snapped around to see Psalm standing in the doorway to the living room, her teddy bear clutched to her chest. Her face was contorted with fear.
Nikki rushed to her child and scooped her up. “Shhh, shhh,” she said. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
“Why were you and Daddy yelling?”
“It’s nothing,” Nikki said, carrying the child back to her bedroom.
William rushed out of the house.
Chapter 110
Danielle tried again to reach her sister, but the call just went to voice mail. Her sister had to get her out of this jail cell. Her sister had promised nothing bad would happen to her, if Danielle just did what her sister told her to do. Danielle’s mind went back to her childhood. When the man she grew up thinking was her father left, her uncle’s abuse had gotten even worse. Danielle had even tried to bring up the subject with her mother. Her mother had been painting her nails in her bedroom on a Friday night as Danielle was supposed to be getting her clothes ready to go visit her uncle. She had stepped into her mother’s bedroom, her heart pounding, and closed the door.
“Mama?”
“Uh-huh?” her mother hadn’t looked up from the red lacquer she was carefully spreading on her nails.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Go on now,” her mother had said. “Go on and get dressed. You don’t want to be late for your uncle.”
“That’s what it’s about.”
“I said, go get dressed,” her mother’s voice was stern.
“But, Mama—”
“Danielle, whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it,” her mother’s voice raised. “Get on now, don’t mess up my day!”
“But Mama, you don’t under—”
Before she knew what was happening, the bottle of polish had hit the floor and Danielle felt the sting of her mother’s hand go across her face. Danielle stared at her equally shocked mother for a moment before turning. Her mother called out to her, “Danielle, baby, I’m sorry.”
Danielle kept walking. She quietly went back to her bedroom and finished packing her clothes for her overnight visit.
They never spoke of that evening again.
Danielle finally quit trying to get out of the visits and had somehow retreated into herself. Whenever she was with her uncle, she became another person. She knew what he liked. She would do what he liked and he would lavish gifts on her and would sometimes fold a wad of money into her palm and tell her to give that to her mother. Her twin hated Danielle, as did her cousins because they all saw how he favored her and would allow her to get away with not doing chores and would still buy her pretty ribbons for her hair or dresses or shoes.
The rift in her family grew. And the pressure on her mind expanded. Danielle was a junior in high school when her mother walked into the bathroom and found her in a bloody mess in the tub, her pulse weak, her slender fingers still clutching a sharp razor. Her mother had screamed,
had run to the phone to call for help.
Doctors had patched up Danielle’s body, but told her mother something had to be done about the girl’s mind. “We must figure out why she did this,” one doctor said. “Is there any abuse that you are aware of?”
Danielle’s mother had shaken her head emphatically, telling the doctor that the very idea was absurd. “Danielle has always been a drama queen. She just likes attention.”
“Well, that may be so, but this was a bit extreme,” the doctor had cautioned. “Perhaps we should have someone interview her.”
“No, she’s fine,” Danielle’s mother had insisted.
“I really think—”
“I said she’s fine.” Without looking at Danielle, she had told her, “We’ll be taking you home. You’ll be just fine.”
Chapter 111
William bowed out of the remainder of the afternoon’s appointments. It was in the hands of the voters now. After all this campaigning, they knew what he was about and what he promised to do for the city. Either they would vote for him, or they would not, he reasoned with philosophical resignation. He pulled into the driveway at Olivia’s. He had made a decision. He would move out of her house. He would stay at a hotel for a while, as he tried to figure out his next step. The house Hicks had arranged for him would no doubt be snatched from him to be loaned to a more viable candidate. That was okay; William had already decided he would get out of the house anyway. He didn’t want Olivia’s hook-up or Reverend Hicks’s handout. All of this had gone too far. Whatever he got from here on out, it would be on his own. He would go to the dealership the next week and turn in the Yukon and get something he could afford, especially now that his business was picking up after hiring two people to handle his workload.
Scandalous Truth Page 28
