Page 68 of His Third Wife

“So, you killed him?”

“I’ve never killed a man in my life. Not even when I was at war. I’m smarter than that. Smart men have men killed. Right?”

“I didn’t tell you to do anything—” Jamison exclaimed.

“You think you had any say in that, son? That all of that was for you?” Emmit laughed.

“Then who was it for? Who’s pulling the strings?” Jamison asked. “Look, I get it. You didn’t want me behind the scholarship fund; you were on the job to get me to support that WorkCorps proposal. That’s all you kept saying. Trying to get me to bet on that horse. Did you think I’d be that predictable?”

“You’re being predictable right now,” Emmit spat. “Putting all your cards on the table like a cheap prostitute.”

“You assume these are all of my cards,” Jamison replied, opening his car door. “And you know what they say about people who assume.”

“So, y

ou think you have it all figured out?” Emmit asked as Jamison got into the car.

“No. But I think I have you thinking. All of you.”

“I was trying to help you.” Emmit held up the fraternity hand sign. “On the brotherhood, I was trying to help you. I’m your brother. Not your enemy.”

“Yeah, well, with brothers like you, who needs enemies anyway?”

Val was driving down 20 West in that shiny new Jaguar two-seater with the top down, shaking something awful. While the sun was out and the flowers, all pleasant purple and happy yellow, were sprouting randomly out of the green grass on either side of the highway, setting an irresistible tone of happiness, her heart and mind and spirit were in dread. Someone, her mama or some wise woman with gray, kinky hair, should’ve been riding beside her in that car to tell her that this was what moving on felt like—contractions hard against your very soul on earth, pushing you forward no matter how much you wanted to stay behind. To stay small. The truth was that Val, with a heart so angry from birth, was about to begin a journey that would take her into her destiny. Someplace where she’d find the love she wanted in her own reflection. And that love would blossom into a beautiful life. There’d be a man, three babies, tall trees in the yard out back, and cooking and baking contests on Sundays. She’d be a rich woman someday, and not only in her heart. But she still had to survive this. And not knowing the end made this all the more painful.

While Dawn and another woman from the Hell Hath No Fury House volunteered to go with Val to get her things from Jamison’s house that afternoon, she felt she should go alone. She wanted it to be quick and easy, and when Jamison answered his phone and said she could take whatever she wanted from the house without so much as asking where she was going, she thought she’d get just that.

She remembered what Kerry had said about her old red self when she pulled into the circular drive with the perfectly shaped creamy stones and purple pebbles. She’d thought about how she’d changed over those months trying to patch things up with Jamison—holding her tongue and watching what she wore and locking herself in the bathroom all day long. None of that was her, and while she didn’t want this new self, she wasn’t sure she wanted the old Val back either. She wanted the fighter, but even fighters get tired sometimes. When she stopped her car beside Jamison’s, she wondered who she’d be when she got her things out of that house in front of her and turned the key in the ignition. She looked up at the windows staring down at her. In one rectangular pane that completed a series of windows toward the back of the dining room, she saw the fading face of her mother. She was wearing the dress she’d worn the day she came to Atlanta for the wedding. Val remembered that the rectangular pane was the very window Mama Fee had been standing in that morning when Jamison came home. While the image was fading in and out like an old vision, Val realized it wasn’t her memory because she’d been sitting in the room when her mother had been standing there, and when she went down to greet Jamison at his car, she hadn’t looked up. Mama Fee smiled at Val. She waved. She beckoned her daughter with a pointed index finger that slowly led her to the front.

Val didn’t try her key. She turned the knob and the door opened right up.

Jamison was sitting on the couch in the living room, obviously waiting for her.

The fresco was already gone—compliments of Mrs. Taylor.

Neither Jamison nor Val knew what to say at that point, so they said hello to each other.

Though he had so many questions, accusations, and contentious exchanges in his thoughts, Jamison typed a few words on his cell phone in a decisive move to show he was busy and didn’t want to be bothered with Val. If this was his “out” from this relationship, he’d take it. He’d already called a lawyer and planned to tell Val he’d pay for hers. He just wanted it to be over. His emotional landscape looked something like someone who’d been in a long-term relationship that shouldn’t have made it past the first date. And that “someone” wasn’t just Val—it was both of them. Days later, he’d look at Kerry and realize he’d never gotten over his marriage. He wasn’t fit to date anyone, let alone get married. Maybe that was why he had been with Val—some kind of personal sabotage to make himself hurt so he couldn’t feel his real pain. But, again, like Val, he didn’t know the future and hadn’t yet considered that, so he typed on his phone.

Val, who’d never really felt like more than a visitor in the house anyway, was made more nervous by his detachment. She readjusted her purse on her shoulder.

“Guess I’ll go get my stuff,” she said coldly.

“Do your thing.”

Val turned to the staircase and found her foe looking down at her.

“No, you aren’t. Only over my dead body are you coming up these steps,” Mrs. Taylor said. She was wearing one of her sweat suits and one of her wigs and one of her attitudes.

“Have it your way,” Val said, climbing the steps.

Mrs. Taylor started coming down toward her and they met in the middle.

Jamison was on his feet and begging his mother to calm down.

“Mama, I told you Val was coming to get her things,” he argued.

“And I heard you. Don’t mean I’m allowing it.” Mrs. Taylor eyeballed Val from a step right over hers.

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