His Last Wife

  His Last

  Wife

  Also by Grace Octavia

  Southern Scandal series

  His First Wife

  His Third Wife

  His Last Wife

  Take Her Man

  Something She Can Feel

  Playing Hard to Get

  Should Have Known Better

  What He’s Been Missing

  Reckless

  (with Cydney Rax and Niobia Bryant)

  Published by Dafina Books

  His Last Wife

  GRACE OCTAVIA

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part 2

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part 3

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Teaser chapter

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  DAFINA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2014 by Grace Octavia

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Dafina and the Dafina logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7582-8885-1

  ISBN-10: 0-7582-8885-9

  First Kensington Trade Edition: November 2014

  First Kensington Mass Market Edition: December 2017

  eISBN-13: 978-0-7582-8886-8

  eISBN-10: 0-7582-8886-7

  To all of my old friends with whom I embark upon new adventures that spark new ideas for discovery and change: Thank you for contributing.

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  “Put more of that cheese on my plate.” This directive murmur that edged on the possibility of a growl came from the cigarette-blackened lips of a woman in an orange jail jumpsuit, whose stereotypical back-braided cornrows and decidedly mean mug announced that not only had she been incarcerated for a very long time, but that this was likely not her first incarceration and it wouldn’t be her last.

  Six feet tall with a wide back and muscular arms, she was standing toward the middle of a rowdy line at a metal food-service counter in the gray-walled cafeteria at the Fulton County Jail. All around was a mess of loud, trash-talking female inmates in various stages of eating dinner and wide-eyed guards with their hands on their guns.

  “I can’t do that!” This uneasy response that was dipped in fear came from the Vaseline-coated lips of a woman whose orange jumpsuit was hidden beneath a white apron. However, this inmate’s stylish two-strand twists that only had three inches of gray at the roots made it clear that not only had she just gotten to jail, but also that she didn’t plan on staying and still wasn’t clear about how life had led her to that place. Indeed, like half of the women in the jail, Kerry Ann Jackson had maintained that she was no criminal. But that didn’t stop officers from putting her in handcuffs and placing her behind bars for allegedly tossing her ex-husband off the roof of a downtown Atlanta skyscraper.

  “You better put more of that cheese on my plate, bitch!” The murmur coming from the black lips was definitely now a growl.

  “But I already gave you the serving. One scoop. That’s it,” Kerry tried to rationalize, pointing to the soggy pasta shells on the growler’s plate. Kerry was standing behind the service counter, holding a one-cup serving spoon over the pan of pasta shells and processed cheese that was supposed to be macaroni and cheese. The kitchen manager had given her one instruction: “One serving spoon per inmate. You fuck that up and you’re back on the toilets.”

  “You think I’m simple, bitch? I know what the fucking serving is, but ain’t no cheese on mine.” She slammed the tray on the counter in a way that made the soggy noodles shake in the soupy yellow cheese sauce on her plate, and all eyes to the front and back of the line looked over at the spectacle. Guards chatting nearby craned their necks to get a look.

  Kerry was ready to disappear. If the pan of artificial macaroni-and-cheese surprise were big enough, she would’ve jumped right in and swam to the bottom to escape. Drowned herself in the yellow paste just to avoid what could happen next. And it could be anything. Anything. She’d been in holding at the jail for three months and in that time she’d seen women spat on for less. One woman got stabbed in her right tit for chatting up one of the female guards who’d been sleeping with another inmate.

  “Problem, Ms. Thompson?” a youngish white male guard with tattoos up both arms posed, approaching the confrontation from the back of the line.

  Cornrows looked at him through the corner of her eye and spat, “Nah—none at all.”

  The guard looked at Kerry. “You okay?” he asked rather politely. He’d been working at the jail for over five years and in that time he’d seen Thompson and her cornrows come and go and stir up trouble in the jail each time. Kerry was new to him.

  “I’m fine,” Kerry lied nervously.

  “Move it along then, Thompson.” The guard nudged Thompson in the back with his index finger.

  After taking two steps, she looked back at Kerry and mouthed, “You mine.”

  Fear shot through Kerry’s veins like electricity and she would’ve tried to run right out of that cafeteria had it not been for a whisper in her ear from the inmate serving green beans beside her.

  “Girl, don’t mind Thompson. She all talk. She’ll set shit off, but if you buck up at her, she’ll back off,” she said, dumping green beans onto another inmate’s plate. She was Angelina Garcia-Bell, a Latina with a short black buzz cut and beautiful long eyelashes that looked out of place on her mannish face. She was one of the two friends Kerry had made since she’d been locked up—the other was the inmate who’d gotten stabbed in the tit. “I told you that you can’t let these chicks see you all scared. Bitches feed on that shit in here.”

  “How am I supposed to seem like I’m not scared when I am scared?” Kerry whispered, watching Thompson continue to peek back at her as the guard forced her down the line. “I’ll just be glad when this is all over and I can get away from these people. When I can go home. See my family—my little boy.”

  “Won’t we all be glad when that day comes?” Garcia-Bell agreed, scooping out another serving of green beans. “Won’t we all?”

  Most evenings after dinner, Kerry didn’t go into the recreational common area to watch soap opera reruns on the outdated projection television with the other inmates. Instead, she’d head to the library, pick up a book, and sit at one of the tables in the back of the room where volunteers taught GED prep classes. There, she could read and think and pretend none of this was happening to her.

  But Kerry didn’t do that after the incident in the cafeteria with the macaroni and cheese. To avoid
a confrontation with Thompson, she went straight to her cell and climbed into her bunk, vowing to stay there until the lights went out and later the sun came up. Maybe tomorrow would be different. Maybe Thompson would’ve forgotten their spat in the cafeteria. Maybe Kerry would wake up and be away from this place altogether. Tomorrow, she’d be sitting on the back deck of the Tudor off Cascade drinking margaritas with Marcy. Tomorrow, she’d be driving up I-85 in the old Range Rover with the windows down and the air-conditioning on. Music blasting, open road in front of her. Going to wherever she wanted. Tomorrow, she’d see Tyrian. Jamison. Home.

  Kerry laid back in her bottom bunk and looked up at the picture she’d tucked into the spring beneath the top mattress. Two faces smiled down at her. A man and a boy with the same brown skin, dark eyes, and pug noses. They were standing beside a large wooden sign that read CHARLIE YATES GOLF COURSE AT EAST LAKE. The boy, who was a little taller than the man’s waist, held a golf club in his hand. The man’s right arm was draped around the boy. Both looked proud.

  A tear left Kerry’s eye and rolled back toward the pillow beneath her head. She closed her eyes tightly and tried to go back to the day she’d taken that photo. It was Tyrian’s first golf demonstration, about nine months earlier. She and Jamison were already divorced by then, but that day was peaceful. Agreeable. Tyrian woke up that morning so nervous, anxious, and excited that he wouldn’t stop asking his mother questions.

  “What if I lose? What if it rains? What if it snows? What if I faint? What if my coach faints? What if no one comes? What if too many people come?” he listed so intensely Kerry wondered how a six-year-old could come up with so many worries. But he’d always been very smart. Advanced. Precocious. Like his father.

  “And what if everything is perfect? Just perfect?” she’d said, placing his clothes on his bed. “Have you thought about that, my little worrywart? What if everything is wonderful and everyone has a great time?”

  Climbing from beneath his bedsheets, Tyrian looked off to consider this like he was much older and wiser. “Okay,” he said after a long pause. “It could be perfect. You’re right, Mama.”

  Kerry winked at Tyrian, kissed his cheek, and said, “I’m always right.”

  And she was right. While her ex-husband was usually late to Tyrian’s practices at the golf course and had gotten into the habit of using his recent victory in a tight race for mayor of Atlanta as an excuse to be absent to most of Tyrian’s scheduled events, he was waiting outside the golf course, right by the sign, when Kerry and Tyrian arrived. Sitting in the backseat of his mother’s truck, Tyrian squealed with the delight of a six-year-old son when he saw his father standing beside the sign.

  “Daddy’s here! Daddy’s here already! He really came!” Tyrian cheered, tearing off his booster-seat seat belt before his mother could pull into her parking space and turn off the engine.

  She was about to tell him to wait for her before he hopped out of the truck and bolted right to the person who’d become his favorite as of late—but she decided to let it slide that morning. All of the other little golfers unloading from their parents’ cars had both mother and father in tow. She knew Tyrian wanted that too—for his parents to be together like everyone else’s. And at that moment, he was just ecstatic that his life would look like all of the other kids’ lives that day.

  “My big boy!” Jamison said, gathering his son into his arms. “Man, you’re getting heavy. I’m not going to be able to pick you up much longer!” Jamison laughed. The phone in his pocket was already vibrating with other things he needed to do, but he didn’t reach for it. He promised himself he wouldn’t. Today was about Tyrian.

  “Hi.” Kerry’s greeting was flat and uninspired when she walked up carrying the golf bag Tyrian had left behind for her to caddy.

  Jamison looked over at his first wife. “Good morning,” he offered, smiling civilly.

  “Good morning,” she added to her greeting.

  A few parents walked past with their little golfers straggling behind, waving at Tyrian. The whole time, just seconds really—but to the exes it felt much longer—Jamison and Kerry eyed each other for signs of anything new. Kerry had recently cut off her long, black permed hair and was wearing a short, natural do that Jamison thought made her look younger and thinner. Maybe she’d lost weight too. Jamison was wearing a new, expensive watch. He had the collar on his old gold fraternity golf shirt popped up to hide a hickey on his neck, but even with the carefully planned disguise and brown skin, and two feet of distance, his first wife could see it.

  “Think we need to get to the clubhouse. I’m sure they’re starting the demonstration on time,” Kerry said drily.

  “Of course. Of course,” Jamison agreed and then added, “Hey, can you take a picture of Tyrian and me?” He pulled his phone from his pocket and stretched to hand it to Kerry.

  “Guess so,” she said, taking the phone.

  “Cool!” Tyrian cheered, standing beside his dad.

  The three organized the perfect photo shot in front of the club sign and just before Kerry was about to take the picture, Jamison added one of Tyrian’s golf clubs from his bag.

  Kerry held up the phone and took a few shots. In the background, a new spring had the grass emerald green.

  Once all were satisfied that the moment had been captured, Kerry was about to hand Jamison the phone when it rang and a familiar name came up on the screen Val—Jamison’s sultry assistant, who was making it pretty clear she was sleeping with her boss.

  “Here,” Kerry said, rushing to return the phone to Jamison.

  “Wait, Mama! You get in the picture!” Tyrian posed with a big smile. He was becoming quite the diplomat. “We can take one with all of us.”

  Kerry and Jamison looked at each other like they were heads of nations always on the brink of war. The phone was still ringing with Val’s name on the screen.

  “Oh, we can’t do that,” Kerry said, handing the phone to Jamison. “There’s no one to take the picture.”

  “I’ll take it!” A fourth voice cut into the negotiations suddenly.

  Behind Kerry was a young man in a Morehouse College golf shirt, holding what was clearly an expensive camera in his hand. An overstuffed camera bag with Fox Five News stitched into the top flap was hanging over his shoulder.

  “It would be an honor to take a picture of our new mayor and his family,” the man remarked.

  “Thanks, brother,” Jamison said, flashing his practiced public smile. “We’d appreciate that. Hey, what’s your name? I love meeting my Morehouse brothers, you know?” he continued, reaching out to shake the young man’s hand.

  “I’m Dax Thomas—a reporter with Fox Five News Atlanta,” he said. “Good to meet you, Mayor Taylor. You’re doing us Morehouse men proud.”

  “At your service,” Jamison said and the men chuckled at some inside joke.

  Kerry reluctantly got into the picture, standing behind Tyrian’s shoulder opposite Jamison.

  In minutes, the image would be featured on Fox News’s main Web site. The caption: An awkward moment at East Lake Golf Course this morning, when Mayor Taylor takes a picture with his ex-wife, Atlanta socialite Kerry Ann Jackson, and six-year-old son, Tyrian.

  The bottom bunk where Kerry lay remembering her past rattled with a thud. She quickly opened her eyes, ready to react and jumped up, hitting the top of her head on the bottom of the upper bunk.

  “Owww!”she let out, looking at a boot on the floor beside her bed that was no doubt the source of the rattling. Her eyes left the boot and nervously forged a path up the orange jumpsuit to the face of the kicker she was certain had come to pummel her.

  “Damn! Calm down, boo! It’s just me!” Garcia-Bell held out her hands innocently as she laughed at Kerry’s head bump and fearful eyes. “What? You thought I was Thompson coming to kick your ass?”

  Kerry rolled her eyes and looked out of the cell past Garcia-Bell. “Where is she?” She sat up, rubbing her head.

  “Probably somewher
e starting more shit with someone else. You in here hiding out?”

  “Basically.”

  “Well, what was you gonna do if I was her? This ain’t some dorm room. She can see your skinny ass right through them bars,” Garcia-Bell said, pointing to the open cell door as she took a seat beside Kerry on the bottom bunk.

  The mattress above them was bare. Kerry’s first cell mate, a white woman who’d stabbed her boyfriend five times in the head, had bonded out.

  “Guess I don’t care,” Kerry said. “If I’m going to get beat up, what does it matter if she does it in here or out there? I’m still getting beat up.”

  “It would be worse in here. No one around. It’ll take a while for the guards to get here,” Garcia-Bell explained. “Plus, Thompson got a lot of enemies. You never know if someone might want to sneak some licks in if she starts something with you on the yard.”

  Kerry looked off and laughed a little to herself.

  “What? What’s so funny?” Garcia-Bell asked.

  Kerry’s mind switched from inside the walls of the prison to outside, where her world was so different. A simple word like yard could mean so many other things; however, none of them included a tiny outside space with nothing but dry, depleted dirt and female prisoners fighting fiercely over turns to use deflated basketballs and rusting gym equipment.

  “That word—yard—it reminds me of where I went to college,” Kerry replied, not knowing if she should mention her alma mater, Spelman College, if Garcia-Bell would’ve heard of the historically black college or knew what the term meant there. In 1998, Kerry’s time on the yard included watching her best friend Marcy step with her sorority sisters, sitting on the steps in front of Manley Hall, chatting with her Spelman sisters and professors about images of black women in the media, the future of the black woman in politics and, of course, black love. There she was a third-generation Spelman girl, was called “Black Barbie,” and had dozens of Morehouse brothers from the college across the street chasing after her. There she met Jamison.