by H.H. Fowler
“Mother, let me in. Please!”
“Over my dead body! Two times in one week is enough. Go home to that man,” Delores called back.
Michelle blinked away the tears that wanted to drop. “Mother! Please! Open the door.”
“For what? I don’t wanna hear you complainin’. You females of this generation are too weak. You can’t stand pressure. You women run away from everything. No backbone. Stand up and fight for what’s yours.”
“I don’t want to spend the night. I just need someone to talk to.”
“No! Talk to Jesus,” Delores advised.
“Mother! Mother?”
Michelle felt as if her world was coming apart. How could her own mother reject her in a time when she needed her most? She knew she was not as strong as her mother was. Delores had grown up in a time when women kept their homes together with an iron fist. Nothing shook them away from their marriage vows. They had ambition and they had staying power. Michelle would be the first to admit, she didn’t think she could have survived that era. Leaning against her mother’s front door, she closed her eyes, and allowed the tears to spoil her makeup.
Abraham got out of the Escalade and left it in the street, not liking the scene unfolding in front of him. He’d had a premonition that this situation would end in tragedy if Leroy didn’t man up and get rid of Shaniece. That woman would not let up until she destroyed the church and sent the pastor’s family scurrying in confusion. He took Michelle by the arm and pulled her away from the front door. Though he was only forty years old, holding Michelle in his arms made him feel as if he were her father.
“Abraham, I’m so tired,” she kept repeating, trembling in the breeze as it picked up strands of her thick curls. “I don’t know what else to do, I just don’t know…”
“Shhhh, you don’t have to think about that now,” he told her. “Let’s get you out of this breeze.”
“Don’t take me back to that house…”
“I’ll do whatever you want,” he whispered, as he gently patted the center of her back. “Leroy is a fool to ignore how this is affecting you.”
Michelle rose up from Abraham’s chest and managed a tight smile. “I’ve never heard you call my husband a fool before.”
“Well, Lady Paxton, there’s many things you haven’t heard me say,” he said, returning her smile. “I was simply speaking the truth.”
6:31 p.m. – Brandon, Florida
“Is that everything?” Shaniece asked Ellie, who was holding her only suitcase.
Ellie gave her bedroom one last look. “I have all that I need,” she said. “I'm not gonna miss this place.”
“What about ‘lil man's things?” Shaniece asked, as she pulled a Tampa Bay Buccaneer's cap over her nephew's head.
“They're in my suitcase. We're packed and ready to go.”
“You sure you wanna go through with this, Ellie? This is it. No turning back.”
“As long as we are with you, we'll be fine,” she said, as she shut off the lights in the room, a room that was filled with many dark memories. “You are a mother to me, Shanny. Both to me and my son.”
Shaniece swiped her tongue over her teeth, biting back her intolerance. She couldn't stand Ellie calling her Shanny, but she didn't know how to tell her about it. Her sister meant well, and possessed a heart of gold, but had a problem understanding simple logic. She was the type one would call a 'hopeless romantic', a very delicate and trusting soul indeed. Shaniece was convinced those traits drew all sorts of men to Ellie, who took advantage of her body and her mind. And her sister was too naïve to realize the damage being done to her. She was sure if she hadn't come home early that night, Leroy would have gotten away with raping her sister. She remembered that disgusting look on his face when he realized he'd been caught…
“ELLIE!” Shaniece had screamed when she saw them. They were so sexually taken with each other that they hadn’t heard her when she cracked open Ellie’s bedroom door – something she’d done every night after the death of their mother. Horrified, Leroy jumped up, and scrambled for his clothes. He was so shaken up that he’d tripped and fallen on his face.
“How could you do this to her, you sick pervert?” Shaniece ran over to him and plunged her foot into his ribs. “She’s only fifteen! You better believe that I will have your tail arrested for rape!”
Ellie’s heart-shaped face was covered in tears. She draped herself over Leroy, trying to protect him from her sister’s fury. “Stop it, Shanny, stop it! I love him! He didn’t do anything to me! I wanted it. I wanted it–”
“Girl, shut your mouth!” She yanked Ellie by her arm and swung her naked body across the room.
Ribs aching like mad, Leroy had managed to push his legs through his pants. He grabbed the rest of his belongings and made his escape while Shaniece dealt with her sister. But the distraction was short-lived.
“Oh no, you’re not getting away that easy!” She spun on her heels and rocketed after him.
Leroy burst through the front door and bolted down the path toward his ‘getaway’ car. Feeling as if she was losing ground, she called out to her ‘gang banging’ neighbors, who immediately responded to her alarm. She looked on as the two young thugs, whom she’d helped get their GEDs, sprinted behind Leroy with their pistols held in the air.
“Bring his tail back here to me!”
That image of Leroy in bed with her baby sister was as fresh in Shaniece’s head as it’d been five years earlier. It was the fuel that drove her vendetta against the Paxton family. Ellie had prevented her from pressing charges, but she would not allow anything to prevent her from flying on easy street. She and her family needed money and Leroy had lots of it. She never dreamt things would have worked out in her favor the way they did. She’d thought Leroy was dead, but several days down the road, she found out he was recuperating in a Brandon hospital. She vowed to find a way to extract revenge.
She frightened Ellie into telling her everything that had gone down, from how they first met to how he’d manipulated her to have sex with him. Ellie told her they’d communicated on the Internet for months and that he was a very important man (Leroy had left out that part of him being a pastor), who held an elite position in the community. Obviously taken with this man, Ellie arranged the set up. But Ellie didn’t expect her sister to return home early that night, as Shaniece’s second class in Journalism had been cancelled.
Ellie had told Leroy she was eighteen and that she lived alone. Back then, Ellie could have passed for eighteen, with her big breasts and curvy form, but Shaniece believed Ellie only said that in an attempt to protect a man she barely knew. That alone piqued her curiosity. Why was Ellie so smitten with Leroy? And why was she so determined to be with him?
For weeks, Shaniece kept an assiduous eye on Leroy’s progress, learning about him bit by bit. She discovered that he had a wife, who was at his side at every waking moment. She learned that he was the pastor of a fast-growing church in Tampa that was undergoing a transitional change in their leadership. The man even had bodyguards. That spelt money. Ellie had been accurate in her description of Leroy Paxton. That’s when the idea smacked Shaniece upside the head. With her natural ability to command the English language, both in written and oral expression, and after enrolling in a six-week Bible course, she convinced herself she was capable of stabilizing a congregation in mourning over their wounded pastor.
“Auntie Shanny! Look!” Her nephew's squeaky voice jerked her back to reality. They were ten minutes into their commute back to Tampa.
“What is it, honey?”
“The cows! Look at them!”
Ellie rubbed his head, beaming at his excitement. “This is the first time he's really seen them this close,” she said.
“Oh really?” Shaniece raised her brows in surprise. “Well, he's gonna have a fit when we take him to Busch Gardens. That place is packed with animals. Lions, tigers, elephants, you name it, they've got it. You’ll see, life will be different.”
Life would certai
nly be different, Shaniece thought. Ellie hadn’t any idea what she was getting herself into, and if she knew the real reason why Shaniece was bringing her to Tampa, she would crop out from heart failure.
“Thank you, Shanny,” Ellie said, her eyes twinkling with appreciation. “We could always depend on you.”
Don’t thank me just yet, little girl. I hope you have the guts to face the music. “Of course, Ellie. I told you that I would take care of you two. You haven’t any idea of all the fun that we’ll have together.”
“I love you, Shanny. I really do.”
Shaniece cringed. Her sister insisted on calling her by that silly name. She must find a way to tell her about it. “I love you too, Ellie,” she said, and then smiled at her nephew. “I love you too, buddy. A whole new life awaits you in Tampa.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
