“It still didn’t excuse what I did.”
“When did you stop seeing him?” Kayana questioned.
Cherie knew she couldn’t reveal her lover’s name or that she’d had his baby. “It will soon be five years. I’d had enough of being what I considered his side piece. I had wasted so many years wishing, hoping, and praying for something that would never become a reality. The only other thing I’m going to say is that he’s very wealthy.”
“Wealthyandwhite,” Kayana reminded her. “Was it his money or his race that made you stay with him?”
The former psychiatric social worker’s question gave Cherie pause. “His race had nothing to do with our relationship—or I should say our affair. He just happened to be the first and only man I’ve ever been with. But I can honestly say it was all about money. I grew up in a low-income, crime-infested neighborhood, where many girls were mothers even before they were old enough to vote. That’s something I didn’t want for myself. I wanted to live in a place where I didn’t have to step over drunks and crackheads to get to my apartment or install three locks on my door to feel safe. There was a running joke in my neighborhood about the life expectancy for young boys. By twenty-five, they were either in jail or in the ground. And I knew the only way out of that environment was to get an education and meet someone with enough money to give me the lifestyle I’d always dreamed about.”
“Did he?” Leah asked.
A hint of a smile tilted Cherie’s mouth. “Yes, he did. It’s not that he volunteered to make life easier for me; it was what I demanded. Leah, you said you’d become a prostitute when all that you didn’t sell you withheld when it came to having sex with your husband. It was different with me because it wasn’t all about sex. For Wills and me,” she said, using Weylin’s mother’s name for him, “it was about a more visceral connection. I understood who he was, and for him, it was the same with me. He knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in the neighborhood where several generations of Thompson women had been raised and where they’d chosen to raise their children. So he made it possible for me to rent a studio apartment, and then a one-bedroom so that my twin brothers could spend weekends with me. I gave Daniel and David the bedroom, while I slept on the convertible sofa. It began with weekends, school holidays, and summer recess, which allowed them to see there was another world other than the one my mother had brought them into. I’d lost one brother to the streets, and there was no way in hell I wanted to lose another.”
“Where are your brothers now?” Leah asked.
Cherie smiled for the first time since revealing personal things about herself to her book club friends. “They’re both graduates of military academies and are now commissioned officers in the army and air force.”
Kayana applauded. “That’s wonderful! You and your mother must be very proud of them.”
“I am, but my mother’s doubly proud,” Cherie said. “She cried at their graduations, because, I believe, she was grateful they’d made it, unlike my older brother, who had been killed in a drive-by over some bogus BS that he’d been messing around with another dude’s girlfriend.” She told Kayana and Leah about Jamal borrowing a friend’s car to help her move into her dorm room a week before his murder.
Leah draped an arm over Cherie’s shoulders and pressed a kiss to her hair. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
Fighting back tears, Cherie rested her head on Leah’s shoulder; the lingering resentment she’d harbored when first meeting Leah Kent had dissipated like the sun piercing a veil of low-hanging fog. It has taken a while for her to view Leah’s life through a different lens. When first meeting the middle-aged redhead, Cherie had wanted what Leah had: children and a wealthy husband, though she was unaware of what Leah had had to go through to maintain a lifestyle that had allowed her to rub shoulders with the social elite of Richmond, Virginia.
Cherie cried without making a sound. Not for herself, but for her older brother, who hadn’t been given the opportunity to live out his life. Whenever she was in a funk, it was the loss of her brother and her son that sucked her into a morass of despair that pulled her down like quicksand. It would linger for days, and occasionally weeks, before her inner strength reemerged to remind her that she was a descendant of survivors. That the men and women who came before her had overcome insurmountable obstacles to produce future generations.
Extricating herself from Leah’s embrace, she rose and headed to the en suite bath to compose herself. But instead of stopping, the tears continued to flow, and Cherie buried her face in a towel to muffle her uncontrollable sobbing. After what appeared to be an eternity, she blew her nose, splashed water on her face, and patted it dry with a hand towel. Peering into the mirror over the vanity, Cherie groaned under her breath. Her eyes were red, and there were equally red blotches on her cheeks. She sucked in a breath, holding it for several seconds until she was back in control of her emotions, and then returned to the bedroom. Leah and Kayana were where she’d left them.
“You’re still here.”
“Where did you think we’d be?” Leah asked.
“I just thought you’d leave,” Cherie said.
“Friends don’t abandon friends in their time of need,” Kayana said, with a slight edge creeping into her voice.
Cherie sat next to Leah on the bench seat. “Sorry about that,” she said.
Kayana smiled. “Feeling better?”
Cherie nodded.
“There’s nothing like a good cry to get rid of what’s bothering you. I’ve done my share of crying, and I’m here to tell you that I always feel better afterward.”
“I can’t imagine you crying, Kayana,” Cherie remarked.
“Believe me, I have,” the co-owner of the Seaside Café admitted. “I thought my crying about failed relationships had ended once I’d divorced James, but little did I know that breaking up with Graeme affected me more than I was willing to admit because he didn’t trust me enough to let me know he’d planned to live here permanently. Meanwhile I’d been counting down the days when he was going to return to Massachusetts, and that I would have to wait for the following summer to see him again.”
Cherie angled her head. “But now you’re married to the man.”
Kayana nodded. “Very happily married.”
“How does being married to Graeme differ from your first marriage?”
Kayana met Cherie’s eyes. “It very different because I trust him. I know I talk a lot about trust, Cherie, but that’s the glue that holds a relationship together. You can talk about love all you want, but if you can’t trust your partner, it’s like having a bell without a clapper. It’s useless.”
Cherie thought about her relationship with Weylin. She’d fallen in love with him, believing they would spend the rest of their lives together once they graduated college. And now that she looked back, she couldn’t believe she’d been that naïve, that gullible when he told her he wanted to keep their relationship secret from everyone until their engagement.
