Do You Remember?

Chapter 1

“Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Sevynnnn! Happy birthday to you. We wish you many more.”

My small group of family and friends’ voices were a mixture of sopranos, tenors, altos, and a couple of basses thrown in the mix.

But they all sounded surprisingly well and harmonious.

I closed my eyes, leaned forward, and in the flickering lights of the candles, I made my wish.

Once I was done, I blew out the candles on the monstrosity of a sheet cake that was placed before me.

It was a yellow cake with a photo collage of me through the years. The icing was white, but the cake’s edges were trimmed in purple icing. My grandmother had baked the cake, and she had my best friend, Waverleigh, help her with getting the pictures onto the cake.

Everyone clapped, and our waitress whistled. “Y’all sound like you’re about to cut a record in here,” she declared, causing everyone to laugh and make their predictions on the likelihood of that reality.

“I don’t know about that, but I do know that I would love to hear some of these same voices singing with the church choir this Sunday,” Grammy announced.

“Gram,” I whined.

She never missed an opportunity to encourage people to visit our church, New Bethel Baptist Church.

Once they did, then she would discuss them joining and getting baptized.

I wasn’t mad at my grandmother. She loved the Lord, and so did I, but she firmly believed Acts 1:8 that read, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” She said our corner of the world in Cherokee Springs, Georgia, was this end of the Earth.

“Sugar, we have a calling, and there’s nothing wrong with sharing the good news with others. You don’t want Christ to deny you when He comes back, do you?”

“No, ma’am.” I smiled lovingly at her.

“That’s my baby. Now let’s cut this cake.” She angled the cake knife with one hand and patted me on the back with her other.

“I got it, Gram,” my husband, Ethan, stated, grabbing the cake knife and hovering the knife over the cake. “How big you want it, baby?” he asked with a twinkle in his eyes.

I was going to get him for that later, because I knew what he was thinking. I instantly choked and sputtered when my best friend and coworkers giggled in the background. Gram kept smiling as though she were oblivious to the sexual innuendo my husband had just made.

“Not too big, please.”

Ethan leaned forward and sliced the cake. After he placed it on a plate and handed it to me, he leaned in, rested his hand on my back, and placed his lips on my cheek as though he were kissing me. In reality, he whispered, “That ain’t what you said last night.”

“Nasty ass,” I muttered, swatting his hand as he jumped back. Gram was busily slicing the next piece and thankfully missed the exchange between us.

Ethan laughed as Erin Jensen, one of my coworkers, stepped up to grab the plate that Gram was handing her.

After the cake had been sliced and served, we returned to the other tables in the private dining room of The Ebony Candle, the upscale restaurant where my surprise birthday dinner was being held.

When I’d first arrived, I thought it was just a nice dinner for my husband and me. When we stepped into the private dining room, I was shocked to see my grandmother, Helena; my brothers-in-law, Liam and Kyle; my coworkers, Erin, Jalen and Phoenix; and my best friend, Waverleigh.

I didn’t have much in the way of family.

My mother died in childbirth, leaving me to be raised by my father and my paternal grandmother.

I lost my father to a brain aneurysm when I was only thirteen, and it had been Gram and me since.

Unfortunately, Gram had chosen to go to a retirement home two years ago when she had a stroke.

She refused to come live with Ethan and me, saying that she didn’t want to be a burden on us.

When we insisted that she wouldn’t be, she outright refused to come.

She said we were newlyweds and deserved to have that time alone.

Ethan and I had been together since we were nineteen, when we met during freshman year on our college campus, and we married right after graduation.

It hurt seeing Gram leave her apartment that she had lived in forever to move into the retirement home.

Ethan and I did our research to make sure that it was the perfect place for her.

As a geriatric social worker, I not only had several contacts, but I also knew what to look for when selecting the right place for her.

She was happy there, and I was happy for her.

“Whatcha thinking ’bout, baby?” Ethan asked.

“Just how blessed I am. I might not have the biggest family in the world, but I love who I have. God gave me a beautiful family to replace my loss.”

Ethan’s family was wealthy, and I wasn’t close to them. His mother was cold and judgmental, and his father was distant and stuffy. Neither of them were here today.

His brother, Kyle, who was an addict and had been shunned by their parents, was only here for the free meal and hoping to get a handout from either Liam or Ethan. Liam was only here because Ethan had begged him. He always looked for his older brother’s approval.

Ethan’s family was wealthy, and they expected him to marry someone who came from a similar background, someone like his ex, Pandora. I was from the hood, and they were quick to let me know that I wasn’t on their level through a scathing look or a derisive comment.

“You do have a beautiful family, baby. Gram, Waverleigh, and I love you very much. I can’t wait to grow our little family into three, four, five, six, seven, eight—”

“Excuse me, sir,” I replied, pulling his hands from around my waist. We were dancing in the middle of the private dining room, to the music that the deejay Ethan hired was playing.

“What?”

“It hasn’t been that long since we got back together. Let’s focus on building us strong again before we jump into making babies.”

“But that’s the fun part.”

“We can have fun, but we don’t need to be producing no fruit.”

“Didn’t the good Lord Gram preach about say ‘be fruitful and multiply’?”

“You’d better not let her hear you over here blaspheming, or she’ll pull out a bottle of oil on you in a second.”

He laughed again. “Seriously, baby.”

“I am serious. When we do have kids, I will not be having five or six kids in this body, maybe not even four.”

“You’ll still be fine,” he muttered against my lips before kissing them deeply.

I pulled back. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. That isn’t what I’m worried about. I’m concerned about running behind that many children and trying to keep up my career while you’re out working.”

“I’ve got your back, baby.”

“I’ll bet you do.”

We laughed and giggled some more, enjoying the evening before it was time to thank everyone for coming and for their gifts.

After all my gifts were in the car and Waverleigh had left to take Gram home, Ethan and I linked hands and stepped out of the restaurant onto the sidewalk. We walked to the end, out of the way of new patrons arriving.

“Man, you got me good tonight. I never expected to have a surprise birthday dinner. I thought it was just the two of us. But seeing Gram, Waverleigh, and everyone else just made my night. You didn’t have to drag your brothers out.”

“I wasn’t dragging them. They wanted to be here.”

I rolled my eyes because we both knew that was a lie, at least in Liam’s instance, anyway.

“Let’s not do that.”

He chuckled and kissed me. “You have a good time tonight?”

“Yes, I did. I’m so thankful for you. I love you. Thanks for making this a special night for me,” I replied as we walked to his car.

“You’re welcome, baby. You deserve nothing but the best.”

I stared at the stars twinkling in the sky above before I looked back down and into his eyes.

I wanted to believe both my parents were looking down from heaven and smiling on me.

It was my twenty-fifth birthday. I was a quarter of a century, and I had learned a lot in my short life.

But no matter how much I had learned, nothing could prepare me for what came next.

Just as Ethan opened the passenger door for me, someone called out to my husband. “Ethan, funny seeing you here. I was about to call you tomorrow.”

A chill ran up my spine at the sound of that nasally voice behind me. I squeezed my husband’s hands, kept staring at him, and clenched my jaw. His expression was troubled and anxious rather than soothing and calm.

“Don’t get upset, babe. It’s your night. I’ll get rid of her.”

“Ethan, I doubt that’s going to happen. I’ll be sticking around for at least the next eighteen years,” Pandora, Ethan’s ex, declared.

I spun around even as Ethan pulled me into his side.

“Excuse me?”

She smiled, showing her rows of even, perfect teeth that could only be achieved through an expensive orthodontist. They looked more like shark’s teeth than human teeth.

“Ethan, sweetheart, I’ve been having some concerns lately. Your mother made me an appointment with her gynecologist, since mine is out of town. I just learned today that I’m pregnant. Congratulations, we’re expecting a baby.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Ethan growled, clenching my hand so tightly that I winced.

“I’m pregnant. If you don’t believe me, ask your mother. She accompanied me to my appointment.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“Our little night together that weekend a couple of months ago.”

I turned and stared at Ethan. “What night, Ethan?”

“You all have a nice night. Ethan, I’ll call tomorrow.” Pandora turned and headed to her car and hopped inside. I knew the only way she knew where we were was because of Ethan’s mother.

“Ethan, what night?” I repeated.

“It was while we were separated, baby—and it was just the one time, I swear.”

Ethan and I separated for a few months a while back.

Our relationship had become so tense and communication so strained that we couldn’t work out anything.

He had moved out of the apartment, and I had gotten to a point that I wanted to end it all.

We couldn’t seem to work things out until we’d finally gone to see Dr. Giselle Champagne, a marriage counselor. We had only been reunited a few weeks.

“Take me home!” I demanded and plopped down in the passenger seat.

I pulled the door from his hands and slammed it, while he ran around to the driver’s side. My heart hurt and my spirit just tumbled helplessly into a dark hole. How had this perfect night fallen so easily apart?

Ethan hopped in the car and started the ignition. “Baby, listen to me. When I say—”

“You never told me that you had gotten back with her. How could you do that to me, Ethan? To us.”

“I’m sorry, baby. It meant nothing to me. It was the night you served me with the divorce papers before I convinced you to change your mind. I was broken and struggling, and she was just there.”

“How convenient. Just where, Ethan? At your job? In your apartment? In your bed?”

“She dropped by because I called her,” he confessed.

“I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that you went on a date or two, but I didn’t expect it to be with your ex, and I didn’t expect that you were having sex with anyone. Why would you go back to her of all people? Do you still love her?”

“No, I don’t still love her. She was just convenient for what it was at the time. Just sex. No emotions.”

“How can I believe you when you spent five years with this girl? How do I know that when times get tough between us again you won’t run back to her? How did you sleep with her without using protection?”

“She’s someone I trusted. I always had sex with her unprotected. We didn’t think about it; we just fell back into a habit.”

“You must think that I’m stupid as hell. That girl knew what she was doing. Now you’re stuck with her. I can promise you one thing: I cannot just forgive and forget that easily, especially knowing that a child is coming forth. Now we will always have Pandora in our lives because of this child.”

“Baby, calm down and listen to me. We can figure some things out.”

Ethan sped through the streets on the way back to our condo, trying to calm me down. His words fell on deaf ears. When we arrived home, I jumped out of the car and ran into the house, not bothering to wait for him to turn off the ignition.

When he walked through the door, I threw my wedding ring at him. “I’m done, Ethan!”

“Baby, please don’t do this. We just got back together and are just getting back into our flow.”

“I’m not certain that I can live a life with you and be happy knowing this child will be a part of our lives.

That baby will always be a reminder of what you did.

I can’t take it out on that child, but I also don’t want to live with resentment in my heart against this child—and I refuse to deal with Pandora. ”

“It’s an innocent baby, Sevyn. You can’t blame the child for what his or her parents did.”

“I know. I’m not blaming the child. I’m blaming you.”

“Please, don’t leave me, baby. I love you. You’re my world. I screwed up.”

“Ethan, the reason that we broke up in the first place was because you weren’t able to put boundaries in place where she was concerned.

She was still calling you and texting you, and I wasn’t comfortable with you being her friend.

Your only answer was that her family were old friends with yours, and your mom expected loyalty to that.

Fuck what it was doing to our marriage. We couldn’t agree about her being in your life, and I asked you to give me some space.

You agreed. How did you turn around and screw her when she was the cause of our separation? ” I cried.

My husband reached out to touch me, but I was disgusted by the images I saw in my mind’s eye: him holding her, him kissing her, and him sexing her.

“Baby, please don’t do this. I’m so sorry.”

I pushed him away. “I need some space and time.”

“We’ve had space and time already. How much time do you need now?”

“I need you to leave tonight, and I will let you know when and if I want you to come back.”