Irrevocable Love (Crestwood Chronicles #3)

Prologue

The lie started in church.

That was the funny thing about sin. Folks always imagined it beginning in motel rooms with sweaty bodies and whiskey breath. But the worst kind of evil? The kind that rooted itself deep and stayed there for years? It usually started somewhere holy.

Somewhere respectable. Somewhere, people are called blessed.

I hated being a first lady. Everyone always needed my man after hours.

They needed him for prayer, needed him for the sick and shut-in, and needed him to pray over a blind baby.

It all got on my fuckin’ nerves. And Andre loved doing God’s will, but really, I think it made him feel needed and important, something that he was missing growing up with two parents strung out.

His grandmother had him in church all of the time, and it became his life’s mission to save as many lost souls as he could.

But the problem with saving lost souls is that you begin to lose your own.

Andre didn’t put himself first at all. He would let his health decline and go weeks without sleeping in the name of the Ark of Salvation Missionary Baptist Church.

Even worse, he was letting our marriage die, which is why I didn’t feel bad finding a life of my own outside of him and this damn church.

I sat in the second pew wearing cream linen and pearls while Andre prayed over the congregation, sweat gathering beneath my breasts despite the February cold. My stomach tightened beneath the oversized church coat I’d buttoned all the way to my throat.

I was six months pregnant, and while that wouldn’t bring pause to anyone here because I was a married woman, this child did not belong to my husband.

He couldn’t know I was pregnant. I thought of just telling him and faking the baby’s death, but I had no friends in the healthcare industry, and I didn’t feel like having the church mothers pray over a womb that wasn’t shit wrong with for the foreseeable future.

So I had a plan. I had to get away and help my sickly sister recover.

That would give me time to have this baby.

The father, Alan Price, paid me top dollar not to terminate, and he threatened to stop funneling his drug money through the church.

My gullible ass husband thought the new young career folks were tithing higher than usual because of their promotions.

Little did he know them Niggas didn’t give a shit about tithing.

I was keeping this place afloat. I was funneling his dream of being Robin Hood to the lost souls of Crestwood with drug money.

As Andre preached, my baby boy, Jared, colored in his Spider-Man notebook, and Kenya lay asleep against his shoulder. Kenya’s little mouth hung open while gospel music floated through stained glass and cheap speakers.

Everybody loved Andre Davis.

I was the woman standing beside him, smiling pretty, while another man’s baby kicked beneath my ribs. I kept my face calm when Sister Hightower glanced down at my stomach during the altar prayer call. Her eyes narrowed slightly.

Nosy bitch.

I smiled anyway. Women like her always notice everything. Weight gain. Ring placement. Bruises. Tears. The church fed women like that. Gave them purpose.

I pressed my palm lower against my belly when the baby moved again.

Aggressive little thing.

Just like its father. I loved Alan. I loved that he could cosplay as a distinguished professor at several renowned universities but still move cocaine through the city.

He made me feel alive and cherished. But even though Alan gave me butterflies, I was no fuckin’ fool.

A man like Alan probably had several kids and several women waiting for him up and down the tri-state area.

Alan Price walked around Crestwood like he owned every back room, every envelope, every dirty dollar moving through the church accounts.

Men like him thought money made them untouchable.

And stupid women got caught beneath men like that every day.

Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t stupid.

I just got careless once.

One time.

That was all it took.

“Mommy, do you like my picture?”

I nodded my head, smiling at Jared. I felt bile rise in my throat. I covered my mouth and reached for a plastic grocery bag I kept in my purse. Even at five years old, Jared watched people like he already understood they lied.

“Mama,” he whispered, rubbing his eyes. “Are you sick again?”

As quickly as I could, I lowered my head and released the contents of my stomach into the bag and wiped my mouth. Jared stared at me with worry in his eyes.

“I’m just worried, baby,” I said carefully. “Aunt Lorraine needs help right now, remember?”

His little face fell immediately.

That guilt irritated me more than it should have.

I hated emotional children.

“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled.

After service, I walked over to my Oldsmobile Cutlass. Andre held Jared’s hand as he carried Kenya over to the car behind me.

“Are you sure you want to stay at Lorraine’s?” he asked quietly. “ Can you see if she can have her surgery here so she can stay with us?”

Absolutely not.

Panic flashed sharp and ugly through me before I buried it beneath another soft smile.

“No,” I answered too quickly. “Her transplant cannot be transferred. Moving her could risk everything.”

Andre looked at me.

I adjusted my tone immediately.

“She’s my sister,” I said softer. “And those dialysis treatments got her depressed. She needs family around her.”

Another lie. Lorraine wasn’t dying. Lorraine was in Kellertown with a man who sold car parts and smoked Newports until his fingertips turned yellow.

But nobody in Crestwood knew that except me.

And Lorraine knew better than to come home right now. I had paid for her silence already. I stared ahead at the giant wooden cross mounted on top of the church’s front pillar.

No guilt.

No shame.

No fear of God.

“That’s why I love you, Shar. You put everyone else above yourself. Go take care of your sister. The church family will help with Jared and Kenya.”

I drove to my sister’s place without stopping.

Lorraine’s apartment sat nearly five hours outside Crestwood in a run-down complex with cracked sidewalks and rusted balcony rails.

The kind of place respectable church women pretended didn’t exist unless they were driving through it with locked doors and judgment in their mouths.

I hated coming here. Her house smelled like old grease and mildew, and cigarette smoke lingered thick in the carpet, no matter how many times Lorraine sprayed cheap floral deodorizer.

I unlocked her door slowly, one hand pressed against my lower back.

My ankles were swollen.

My nerves were worse.

The moment I stepped inside, Lorraine looked up from the couch and rolled her eyes.

“You look miserable.”

I shut the door behind me harder than necessary.

“And you look poor. Yet here we are.”

She sucked her teeth loudly. “See, that evil shit right there is why God keeps humbling you.”

I ignored her.

Her home was dark except for the kitchen light glowing over stacks of unpaid bills and ashtrays. The Young & the Restless played low on the television while rain tapped softly against the windows. I set my purse down carefully before loosening the buttons on my coat with a hiss of relief.

Lorraine stared immediately.

“Damn,” she muttered. “You’re carrying small. I was wondering how you were getting away with shit.”

“It’s measuring early,” I muttered coldly.

Lorraine stood slowly from the couch, crossing her arms over her faded robe. “You still ain’t told him?”

“No.”

“Sharon, you have a good man. He would forgive you.”

“I said no.” My voice cracked through the apartment sharply enough to silence her.

I rubbed my temples afterward, exhaustion making me meaner than usual.

The truth was, my nerves had been unraveling for weeks.

I had to move with Lorraine because Alan was getting sloppy.

He was acting too attached and was beginning to call too much.

He was showing up at the house unexpectedly, and Jared was beginning to be weary of me calling him the mailman.

He was acting as if this baby meant we were connected somehow beyond business and sex.

Men always became dangerous once feelings got involved.

That was why Andre worked so well for me.

He was predictable and useful. Andre worshiped me enough not to ask too many questions.

He trusted me. We met in the very church he pastors, and he told anyone who would listen that I was his gift from God.

I believe Andre could forgive the cheating, but if he ever discovered where the church expansion money really came from, or who had been quietly moving it through the outreach accounts, everything would collapse.

The church.

The businesses.

The political favors.

All of it.

One scandal could destroy years of work, and behind God’s people, Andre would put my ass in prison.

Once I got to eight months, Alan tried to convince me to stay comfortably with him.

He said his amenities in his penthouse apartment would make me more comfortable.

While that may have been true, I needed my routine.

I spoke to Andre on the phone daily, led prayer calls, and listened to Jared watch cartoons.

Alan didn’t give a shit about my family.

Knowing him, he would purposely talk in the background.

As dingy and gross as my sister’s place was, it gave me some much-needed planning time. I had to put distance between Alan and me. Once this baby was born, I wanted no emotional ties to him or his child. If it wasn’t about business, I wouldn’t answer, and the sooner Alan accepted that, the better.

I walked toward the kitchen to make myself a turkey-and-cheese sandwich when I felt a contraction. Shit, I thought. I’m supposed to have another four weeks.

Lorraine noticed immediately.

“How far apart?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you timing them?”

“No. I was just trying to eat.”

“Sharon—”

“I said I don’t know.”