Chapter 2
Immediately after receiving the call from the ME’s office that morning, Vanna had sent a text to let everyone at her job know she was going to be late. Herbert Cahill Hampton Sr., as expected, had been the first to respond to the message. As the senior partner at Hampton Associates, he liked to keep his nose and his unnecessary comments in everything except the right thing at the firm. HC Jr. had more important matters to tend to at that time of morning: making sure he woke up in the right bed—meaning the one beside his wife of twenty-two years—being the top one. Sanni, the paralegal, and Neshawn, the secretary, couldn’t care less when Vanna came in, mostly because they were usually late themselves.
While Vanna was in the car on her way to the rental-car lot, she called HC Sr. to tell him that her husband had been found dead, she was having car trouble, and, subsequently, she would not be coming in today. Surprisingly, he hadn’t given her a smart retort. His curt “Okay, keep me posted” signaled he was in the middle of dealing with an insurance company that had offered an insufficient amount to settle one of their cases. That always put him in a bad mood. Vanna didn’t have the mental capacity or enough give-a-damn to inquire about it at the time, so she hadn’t. After that, she’d called AAA to arrange for her vehicle to be picked up from the house and taken to her mechanic.
Now it was a little past one in the afternoon when she pulled up in front of the row house on Bryant Street.
She’d been to this house many times in the twenty years since she’d known Caleb. Had stood on this front porch, her body trembling with rage over something that someone in Caleb’s rude-ass family had said. Had sat in the backyard during summer cookouts and at the dining room table for Thanksgiving and whoever’s birthday was being celebrated, or dinners ... She knew the scent of coffee and cigarettes that would greet her the moment the red door was opened, just as she anticipated the scowl that would be on Gail’s face the second she noticed it was her.
That’s why she needed a few extra minutes to get her head right. She pulled down her visor and looked into the mirror.
Who was this woman staring back at her?
She was a smart and driven thirty-nine-year-old with fabulous cheekbones; flawless walnut-brown skin, thanks to an expensive skin-care regimen; a soft, full hourglass figure; and straight white teeth, which Granny’s good city-employee dental insurance had financed. She was a fighter, a survivor, generally a morning person, and a lover of the color pink. She was not built to break.
Not even when the world steadily threw punches at her. Because that’s exactly what this morning had been: a sucker punch to the gut that would’ve knocked the wind right out of her had she not been so used to taking her licks and keeping it movin’. That’s what she was supposed to do—or at least, that’s what she’d been taught.
Granny had never faltered. Not when her daughter showed her ass and proved she wasn’t made to be a parent, and not when the courts had given her grief about getting guardianship because Diane had shown up crying a river of tears about missing her child. The report from the police officer who’d found seven-year-old Vanna sitting alone in the bus station where Diane had left her had, fortunately, sealed the deal. But Granny never bristled about having to start all over raising a child, not that Vanna ever heard.
Her grandmother had continued to work and moved into a bigger house, since she’d been living in an apartment during those early years when Vanna had lived with her mother. And Granny proceeded to do whatever she had to do to make sure Vanna had everything she needed, including working a part-time job during the last three years Vanna was in high school to pay for all the things that came with a child graduating from school and applying to colleges.
The woman she was today was completely thanks to Granny and the handful of friends her grandmother had who’d been like aunties to her. Each of them had taught her how to hold her head up high, to be the best she could be, and to never take any crap from anyone. She’d failed dismally at that last part in all the years she’d put up with Caleb’s nonsense.
But now wasn’t the time to take that trip down memory lane. Too many flashes from her past had been attempting to take control of her thoughts today. She couldn’t allow them in, not right now. There would be a time and place for the breakdown she knew was coming, but it definitely wouldn’t be here at her mother-in-law’s house.
A few more minutes passed before she finally stepped out of the SUV she would now be paying for, in addition to her car payment, for who knew how long. Her heels clunked over the sidewalk as she made her way up to the front steps. She took them one at a time, in no particular hurry, and yet trying to get through this as quickly as she possibly could.
In the time since she’d walked out of that room at the ME’s office, she’d gathered her thoughts and emotions, putting them in that same trash can in the corner of her mind where she’d stored all the other memories of Caleb and what they had together. She’d told herself it was okay to shed a few tears for the death of a man, a son, a friend to many. Then she’d resigned herself to taking care of business.
This was the last thing on her agenda for today. Then she was going home to fix herself a drink—an alcoholic beverage, to be clear. Not because she needed it to calm any grief or sorrow threatening to surface, but because she wanted it. Badly.
The turquoise gel nail polish her nail tech, Gemini, had applied almost two weeks ago to the day had just started to peel back from the nail of her pointer finger. She frowned a bit when she noticed it as she pressed the doorbell. Thankfully, she had an appointment tomorrow after work for a mani-pedi.
Not twenty seconds later, the door opened and Gail’s forehead furrowed as she glared at Vanna. “What are you doing at my house?”
“Hello, to you too, Gail.” Vanna had long ago dropped the Ms. she’d been taught to put in front of any name of elder women she came in contact with, when the woman had continually disrespected her. “May I come in?”
“No,” Gail snapped. “You’re not welcome in my home. Just like you told my son he was no longer welcome in the house that has his name on the deed.”
“His name was never on the deed,” Vanna replied, even though she’d told this woman all this before.
Gail pursed her lips. The woman would be three inches shorter than Vanna’s five-foot-eight-inch stature if Vanna weren’t lifted an additional three and a half inches thanks to the chunky heel of her sandals. Gail had the same complexion as her son’s—when he’d been alive—a rich cocoa brown. Her hair was a sandy-brown, gold-highlight mix of sisterlocks that were always maintained and styled. Today’s style was an updo that almost made her look younger. The wrinkles at her eyes and around her mouth, which could’ve easily come from her being a bitter tyrant, prevented that from happening.
“Selfish ho,” Gail spat.
“Again,” Vanna said on a huff, “may I come in?”
Gail looked her up and down. “Again, no.”
“Fine,” Vanna said. “I’ll tell you right here. Caleb is dead. I just came from the medical examiner’s office, and I have identified his body.” She reached into the front pocket of her pants, where she’d slipped the card the receptionist from the ME’s office had given her and extended it to Gail. “You can call the number on this card and arrange for where you want the body transported.”
Then, relieved to have gotten that over with, Vanna turned and was about to walk away when Gail’s scream halted her.
By the time she turned back around, Gail was screaming again. She gripped that card in her hand, held on to the door with the other, and let her head fall back. The noise was as jolting as the sight of her completely losing it in the doorway. Vanna wanted to fast-walk to the SUV parked at the curb and get out of there, but she couldn’t.
With a groan, she stepped closer to Gail and reached out to put a hand on her shoulder. “C’mon inside. You need to sit down.”
Which was what the annoying woman should’ve done when Vanna had originally asked if she could come in. But noooo, Gail loved to make a scene. Still, Vanna was able to push her former mother-in-law back into the house. She had to step into the vestibule to do that, but Gail was too busy screaming to protest.
“What did you do? What did you do to him?” Gail wailed, and Vanna rolled her eyes.
“I didn’t do anything to him,” she replied. “I hadn’t seen Caleb in months. And even that was by chance when I went to the Cheesecake Factory after church one Sunday.”
Caleb had been sitting at a table with a woman, on a date or whatever. Vanna had intended to go on about her business, until he’d come over to her table to speak. The exchange had been brutally cordial, since she was with Jamaica and Ronni, either of whom would’ve quickly put him in his place if he said something out of the way to Vanna. But he hadn’t. If she recalled, he’d actually been really nice that day. Overly nice. The way he always was when he wanted to apologize and get back in Vanna’s good graces. She’d sent him back to his table and his date with the kindest smile she could muster.
“Then what happened to him?” Gail raged. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Vanna said, shaking her head. “I mean, I guess he drowned. All the ME said was that his body was pulled out of the water. Over at National Harbor.”
Right, Caleb had drowned. Maybe that’s why there’d been no police call to notify her. He’d somehow fallen into the water and drowned.
“I told them at the ME’s office that you could make all the decisions regarding transporting the body, as Caleb and I have been separated for some time,” Vanna said. And she’d been happy to relinquish those duties.
Gail was shaking her head now. She leaned forward, her hands resting on her knees. “My baby! My baby!” she screamed.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Vanna said, and took a step back toward the door.
“My baby! My baby!” Gail screamed again.
But she didn’t look up at Vanna. Hadn’t accused her of doing something to Caleb again either. So Vanna left her there.
She walked away, stepped outside, and closed the door behind her. Just as she’d done five years ago when she put Caleb out of her house.
It was later that night, while Vanna was soaking in a tub filled with lavender-scented bubbles—which she prayed would promote sleep once she was finished—that the breakdown she’d been pushing aside all day broke free.
Caleb was dead.
Her trifling, lying-ass ex-husband—well, not officially ex , a fact that honestly had been haunting her in the last couple of months—was dead.
She leaned her head back against the ergonomic bath pillow and closed her eyes. So many memories, so many plans. More disappointments, more anger, more heartache. Had she failed? Was she destined to be alone? Abandoned by those she’d desperately wanted to love her back?
One deep inhale, a shaky-ass exhale. Repeat. Refocus. Breathe. Emotions volleyed for first place, slapping against her psyche like a hurricane rolling in from the sea. Confusion, relief, annoyance, and, yes, sorrow—she tried hard not to tremble. Tried not to travel further down the path she knew all too well.
Her chest heaved, and her fingers fluttered on the lips of the tub where her arms rested. Beneath the bubbles, her legs twitched, water sloshing with the motion. Her breaths came quicker, the scent of lavender wafting up until her nostrils stung. She knew exactly what this was, and hated that he’d brought her to this place once again.
Forcing her legs to still took an extreme bout of concentration. Then came the breathing, different from the pants that had her clenching her teeth just moments ago. Deeper inhales; slow, concentrated exhales. Good thoughts, positive words. This would pass; she just needed to help it along. Anxiety was a sneaky bitch.
It was also a liar and a thief, but she was going to be okay.
Several moments—and several deeper, slower breaths later—she let those last words continue to play in her mind until they grew louder than the thoughts, the memories, the questions. She was going to be okay.
When she finally opened her eyes again, her lids felt heavy, and tears that had accumulated beneath them streamed down. She swallowed and stared up at the ceiling. Caleb was gone.
He was a huge part of her past—the biggest part of her adult life so far. He was a mistake. Every second since that first night they’d kissed when they were sophomores in college had been a mistake. One she continued to make for fifteen years, until she’d found the nerve to stop the madness. At one point, she thought maybe they just weren’t compatible; that had been the stage right after What the Hell Am I Doing Wrong? , about three years into their marriage. During the course of their relationship, she’d believed that prayer and hard work would help put the pieces that so blatantly didn’t fit into the puzzle of her life together. She’d forgiven, excused, faked, and ignored every warning sign that had flashed like neon lights in her face before finally admitting the truth: Caleb had never been good enough for her.
And in the five years she’d been single—in every sense of the word except for legally—she’d been certain of that fact. She deserved more from a man—any man, whether he be simply a lover or if she ever took the plunge and got married again. She deserved and would demand more. Or she would be alone.
Like she was now.