His Third Wife

by Grace Octavia

  He pointed to the guy Kerry had talked to in the restaurant standing in the back of the crowd of blue suits pointing at Kerry.

  “No! It wasn’t me! I’m being set up,” Kerry said. “There was someone else up here. You have to believe me. You have to find him!”

  “Kerry Jackson, you’re under arrest for the murder of your ex-husband, Jamison Taylor,” the chief with the gray hair started. He read Kerry her rights and men led her down to the lobby, through the front doors of the hotel and into the flood of lights and eyes gathered in the middle of Peachtree Street. The ambulance that would carry Jamison’s body was on one side of the spectacle. The car that would take who would’ve been his third wife to jail was on the other.

  Coreen

  I was never a wife. Not in Jamison’s eyes. Not ever good enough to be that. But still he lied. He followed me to Los Angeles. Showed up at my doorstep and begged me to let him in. Told me Kerry was a crazy bitch. He was leaving her. Wanted to be with me. Start a life with me. I believed him. In what we could be. And when there was a new life growing inside of me, the only thing that could always keep him tied to me, I knew it was real. But then, when I got too comfortable, I was the crazy bitch again and he wanted to leave and go home to her. Back to her? Again? Come and go. Go and come. And every time I’m supposed to just take it. Bend over and spread and not do anything. I know every woman feels that way in her life with a man. Or maybe every person who’s ever been fucked over by someone. But you can’t play with people and not expect them to react. Reaction is nature. A pack of lions setting a trap. In revenge. In retaliation. Because sometimes you won’t be all right. And you know it. And getting even—no, not just getting even—getting back what was taken from you will require a fresh kill. A reminder that you’re flesh and blood. That you’re a real person and you bleed. I told Jamison that. Showed Jamison that. He only ever listened to himself. Only saw himself in my eyes and never cared enough to look and really see me. At once a pure heart now made into an angry bitch I never asked to be.

  I was tired of being someone’s not-good-enough. And when I realized a dead Jamison would mean I wouldn’t have to keep begging to be good enough in his eyes and my son would be good enough to get his father’s fortune, my decision was easy. And Kerry ending up on the roof, that wasn’t part of the plan. That was luck.

  Epilogue

  There would be no casket at Jamison’s funeral. The coroner, after shaking his head at the muddle of once living parts now dismembered permanently by the weight of the hardest fall, scratched his head at the mess of blood and guts and organs on his table and thought to suggest to the family that cremation would be most efficient. There was nothing for a mortician at a funeral parlor to string together of the man that once was. Only the bones. The skin, a bag burst open and spilling out memories.

  When the next of kin was called into the room to see, to confirm by looking only at a single left hand that had survived the weight of the tumble downward and looked recognizable as something that wouldn’t cause nightmares to any eyes set upon it, there was a tear and acceptance.

  Only flowers, white and red and yellow, sat on the altar as the city mourned the demise of a man who could’ve been great. A procession of wailers and mothers with wide hips and long, silken handkerchiefs pressed to their swollen eyes, sat tight together in pews at the back of the chosen sanctuary right across the street from the crypt that held the body of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In front of them sat the children. Little black boys in cheap suits commonly reserved for church whose mother’s woke them up early that morning and said they were going to say good-bye to a man who’d wanted to do something to change the world they lived in. Closer to the front sat the dignitaries. Politicians. Brothers. And then family and friends. In the front, there was a mourner no one expected to see. His wife. The woman Jamison died married to. The new widow who now inherited his fortune. His story. Val. Beside her: Mama Fee.

  By then, the headlines had turned the death of the Georgia son into a scandal of the haves taking from the have-nots in a consistent and deliberate and historical and traditional plot to stamp out progress from the under. From the west end. From the south end. From the would be’s and seekers.

  But little of this fight reached through the concrete walls and metal bars that became the home of Kerry Jackson. She’d been charged with murder and placed in a cage to rot as an example of how swiftly and efficiently the Atlanta Police Department could do its work to avenge the murder of its leader. The chief, the brother who’d been put in office by the mayor himself, congratulated his team on a job well done. He handed out certificates, medals, raises, and promotions and closed the book on the right side of justice.

  While Thirjane said she’d never visit her child in jail, she all but had to when she realized there’d be no bail set for her daughter’s return home and the only chance Kerry would have of seeing her son again was in short visits in tiny rooms. Kerry begged to see, to just smell Tyrian. To look at his smile. His eyes. Alive and a part of Jamison.

  So, one afternoon, when the inmates had been called to the front to greet visitors who’d braved the touch and prodding of guards funneling them in single file lines to prepare them for a thirty-minute visit with their sequestered loved ones, she was sure she’d find Tyrian and her mother standing at the middle of the line with open arms and smiles. But that wasn’t who she found.

  In a familiar beige Chanel suit and thin-heeled red lacquer pumps that seemed oddly placed in the unadorned, pale blue room that hosted the short unions, there was a female face found less sad than it had been the last time Kerry had seen it.

  The women hardly said anything to each other at first. Awkward greetings and something less than a handshake. They sat and looked into each other’s eyes.

  “I’m going to get you out of here,” one said to the other.

  “They have evidence against me. So many witnesses who saw me on top of that building,” the other said. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t push him.”

  “I know. And I know who did.”

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  HIS THIRD WIFE

  Grace Octavia

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  The suggested questions that follow are included to enhance your group’s reading of this book.

  Discussion Questions

  1. Jamison is Tyrian’s hero in most every respect. Still, while he remains a constant in one son’s life, there’s a child on a different coast who bears his name but only sees him in bits and as his “godfather.” Was Jamison just in his actions concerning the treatment of his unexpected child with Coreen or was he acting selfishly and only seeking to secure his political platform? What effect might this have on the child even if he has Jamison in his life?

  2. Jamison is his mother’s “baby boy” and he assumes all of the rights and privileges of this position in her life—even as a married adult male. Though he realizes his mother’s wrongs, he vows to stick by her side because she’s his “mama.” Was he correct to do this? How might different decisions concerning his mother have changed Jamison’s fate throughout this novel? In His First Wife? How does this interdependent relationship reflect any you see in reality?

  3. During her final reflections on her relationship with Jamison, Kerry reveals that she’s always loved him and because they shared so much together, it was impossible for her to move on. Do divorcees, especially those with long histories together and maybe even children, ever really move on from their pasts? Or was this a unique case of true love?

  4. The politicians and community leaders in the novel just can’t seem to keep their hands clean. Interesting in that much of what they do is allegedly to stop corruption and protect the public from criminals. Who’s the biggest fraud in the story? While much of their dealings may seem out of this world, do the actions mirror what happens in local and national and international politics on a daily basis?

  5. There are so many factions vying for power in the world of the novel. How do
people maneuver to try to protect their elite status or gain it? What does this do to Val?

  6. There are three women speaking directly to the reader in this novel. All are hurt by and in love with the same man. How do their stories differ? How are they exactly the same? What happens when the women look beyond their differences to see their similarities?

  7. It is said that those who are hurting hurt others. Revenge is a major point of motivation for many of the characters in the climaxes in this book. How did a need for revenge control people’s emotions, even in the face of clear wrongdoing on the part of the person seeking revenge?

  Don’t miss Jamison’s scandalous beginnings in

  His First Wife

  Available now at your local book store!

  E-MAIL TRANSMISSION

  TO: Jamison.Taylor@rakeitup.net

  FROM: duane.carter@hotmail.com

  DATE: 3/15/07

  TIME: 9:57 PM

  Hello. If this e-mail works and it’s Jamison Taylor, I think I

  found your PalmPilot in front of my house this morning. All I

  could find was the name Jamison Taylor inside and I

  Googled it and found this e-mail address. If it’s you, I have it.

  E-MAIL TRANSMISSION

  TO: duane.carter@hotmail.com

  FROM: Jamison.Taylor@rakeitup. net

  DATE: 3/16/07

  TIME: 5:03 AM

  You don’t know how happy I was to get this e-mail. I had my assistants running around all day looking for that thing. Where are you located? Can I come pick it up?

  Jamison

  Foolish

  October 26, 2007

  It was 5:35 in the morning. I was doing 107 on the highway, pushing the gas pedal down so far with my foot that my already-swollen toes were beginning to burn. It was dark, so dark that the only way I knew that I wasn’t in bed with my eyes closed was the baby inside of me kicking nervously at my belly button and the slither of light the headlights managed to cast on the road in front of me.

  I-85 South was eerily silent at this time. I knew that. I’d been in my car, making this same drive, once before. I kept wiping hot tears from my eyes so I could see out of the window. I should’ve been looking for police, other cars on the road, a deer, a stray dog that had managed to find its way to the highway in the dewy hours of the morning, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t see anything but where I was going, feel anything but what I didn’t want to feel, think anything but what had gotten me out of my bed in the first place. My husband.

  Jamison hadn’t come home. I sat in the dining room and ate dinner by myself as I tried not to look at the clock. Tried not to notice that the tall taper candles had melted to shapeless clumps in front me. Knowing the time would only make me call. And calling didn’t show trust. We’d talked about trust. Jamison said I needed to trust him more. Be patient. Understanding. All of the things we’d vowed to be on our wedding day, he reminded me. My pregnancy had made me emotional, he said. And I was adding things up and accusing him of things he hadn’t done, thoughts he hadn’t thought. But I was no fool. I knew what I knew.

  Jamison’s patterns had changed over the past few months. And while he kept begging me to be more trusting and understanding, my self-control was growing thin. The shapeless clumps on the table in front of me resembled my heart—bent out of shape with hot wax in the center, ready to spill out and burn the surface. Jamison had never stayed out this late. And with a baby on the way? I was hot with anger. Resentful. I was ready to spill out, to spin out, but I held it in.

  I helped our maid, Isabella, clear the table, told her she was excused for the night. Then I moved to the bedroom, and while I still hadn’t peeked at the clock, the credits at the end of the recorded edition of Ten O’Clock News proved that any place my husband could be . . . should be . . . was closed. I wanted to believe I was being emotional, but that would’ve been easier if I didn’t know what I knew. Maybe he’d been in an accident. Maybe he was at a hospital. Yeah . . . but maybe he wasn’t.

  I lay in bed for a couple of hours; my thoughts were swelling my mind as round as my pregnant stomach. I knew what was going on. I knew exactly where he was. The only question was, what was I going to do?

  Then I was in my car. My white flip-flops tossed in the passenger seat. My purse left somewhere in the house. My son inside of my stomach, tossing and kicking. It was like a dream, the way everything was happening. The mile markers, exit signs, trees along the sides of my car looked blurry and almost unreal through my glazed eyes. The heat was rising. My emotions were driving me down that highway, not my mind. My mind said I was eight-anda-half months pregnant with my first child. I didn’t need the drama, the stress. I needed to be in bed.

  But my emotions—my heart—were running hot like the engine in my car. I was angry and sad at the same time. Sometimes just angry though. I’d see Jamison in my mind and fill up my insides with the kind of anger that makes you shake and feel like you’re about to vomit. And then, right when I was about to explode, I’d see him again in my mind, in another way, feel betrayed, and sadness would sneak in. Paralyzing sadness, so consuming that it feels like everything is dead and the only thing I can do is cry to mourn the loss. I wanted to fight someone. Get to where he was and kick in the door so he could see me. Finally see me and see what this was doing to us. To our marriage.

  I didn’t have an address, but I knew exactly where she lived. My friend Marcy and I followed Jamison there one night when he was supposed to be going to a fraternity function at a local hotel. But having already suspected something was going on, I called the hotel and learned that there was nothing scheduled. That night six months ago, before he left, I gave him a chance to come clean. I asked if I could go. “No one else will have their wives there; it’s just frat,” he said, using the same excuse he’d been using for three weeks. He slid on his jacket, kissed me on the cheek and walked out the front door. I picked up my purse and ran out the back where Marcy was waiting in a car we’d rented just for the circumstance. When Jamison finally stopped his truck, we found ourselves sitting in front of a house I knew I’d never forget. The red bricks lining the walkway, the yellow geraniums around a bush in the middle of the lawn, the outdated lace curtains in the window. It looked so small, half the size of our Tudor in Cascade where the little house might envy a backyard cabana. It was dark and seemed empty until Jamison climbed out of the bright red “near midlife crisis” truck he’d bought on his thirtieth birthday. Then, the living room light came on, my husband walked in. And through the lace I watched as he hugged her and was led farther away from me. I fell like a baby into my best friend’s arms. What was I to do?

  I promised myself I would never forget that house. So there was no need to look at the address. I knew every turn that had brought me there. I just couldn’t figure out why.

  Now, here I was nearly half a year later, dressed in a silk, vanilla nightgown at five in the morning, making the same trip, but with a different agenda. I knew why and where, and something in me said it was time to act.

  I saw that red truck parked in the driveway when I turned onto the street. It looked so bold there. Like it belonged. Like nothing was a secret. They were the perfect family. There was no wife at home, no child on the way; our love, our love affair, was the second life he was living. She was his wife. I was just the woman he was sleeping with. Sad tears sat in my eyes, my anger refusing to let them roll down my cheeks. Every curse I knew was coming from my mouth as I held the steering wheel tighter and tighter the closer I got. My husband, the person I thought knew me better than anyone else in the world, had turned his back on me for another woman.

  I pulled my car into the driveway behind Jamison’s and turned off the ignition. The sudden silence hit me like the first touch of cold beach water on virgin feet. Without the hum of the engine, I realized I was alone. I’d gotten myself all the way there, but I didn’t know what I was going to do. I knew I had to act, but what was I going to do? Burn the house down or ri
ng the door bell and sell them cookies? And if she came to the door, what was I going to say? Ask another woman if I could see my husband? Curse her out? Scream? Cry? Should I hit her? I hadn’t hit anyone in my life. What if Jamison answered the door? What if he was mad and told me to leave? If he said it was over?

  The baby kicked again, but lightly, as if he was nudging me to go and get his father out of that house, away from that woman. Coreen Carter was her name. Marcy found it on a piece of mail she’d snatched from the mailbox when we followed Jamison. It was a simple name, but Coreen Carter couldn’t be that simple. She had my husband inside of her house.

  The anger let go at that thought and the sad tears began to fall again. What was I doing? What was happening with my life? I felt like I was being torn inside out. My baby was the only glue that was keeping me together. I felt so alone in that car.

  I snatched my cell phone from the seat beside me and called Marcy. She picked up her phone on the first ring. She was an RN and her husband was an ER doctor, so she was a light sleeper.

  “I guess little Jamison is about to make his arrival?” she assumed cheerfully, but I couldn’t answer. I was sobbing now. Sadness was coming from deep inside and I was sure the only sound I could make was a scream.

  “Kerry?” she called. “You okay? Where are you?”

  “Here.” I managed. There was no need for me to say where exactly. She knew.

  “It’s six in the.... He didn’t come home?”

  “No.”

  “Kerry, why didn’t you call me? You don’t need to do that right now. Not in your condition.”