His Third Wife Page 22

  When he thought he was all alone in the world, he turned and behind him was his assistant.

  Leaf said, “I think I’ll drive you home. I know you can’t stand being in that funeral car. It’s too damn slow. We can speed all the way to your house if you want. That cool?”

  Jamison actually smiled and said yes before sharing a masculine hug with his new friend.

  “Jamison, I’m glad I caught you!” an excessively friendly voice with the octave register of an older white man interrupted the moment.

  “Governor Cade, how are you?” Jamison and Leaf fumbled these words into one big group greeting before taking turns shaking Cade’s hand.

  “Thanks for coming. I thought I saw you at the church earlier,” Jamison said. He’d only seen Cade a few times since he’d been in office. They’d had lunch at the governor’s mansion once, and Jamison thought he was a nice man, one who held his cards close to his chest and had eyes with secrets. There was nothing on him that made Jamison consider him one way or the other. They disagreed on policy, but they were from different worlds. That kind of polarity wasn’t uncommon in Southern politics. It was actually what had made the transition through the ages.

  “Yes, I had to come when I heard about your mother passing. Had to come and give my condolences in person,” Cade said. “That’s how we did it in the old days. None of this emailing and stuff. My wife actually sent a cake over to your house.”

  “Yes, I got it.”

  “I hear your mother was a good Christian woman. Had a church home. Served on the usher board for many years.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we know where she went then. Praise the Lord.”

  “Yes-yes,” Jamison stuttered. “I’m sure that’s true.”

  “Well, you rest in faith,” Cade said, reaching out and clutching Jamison’s shoulder. “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” He looked at Leaf with polite suspicion. “Alone?”

  “Sure. Leaf, can you go and get the car? I’ll catch up.”

  “As you wish,” Leaf agreed.

  Cade used his grasp to pull Jamison toward him.

  “I know this isn’t the best time,” he said, “but I just wanted to make sure we’re still on the same page about this WorkCorps thing.”

  “WorkCorps?”

  “Yes. Judge Lindsey spoke to you about it, right? Now I know some time has passed and you’ve been through a lot with your mother and your child passing, but I hope I’ll still have your signature on that. Right?”

  “I haven’t promised anything to anyone.”

  “Lindsey said you’d back it. Now that we got that other terrible business with Ras out of the way, we can move forward.”

  “Honestly, I haven’t thought much about it. Where’s the logic? Putting young men to work in minimum-wage jobs?”

  “Any work is good work,” Cade pointed out.

  “Would you work for minimum wage?”

  “I went to college, son. And so did you.”

  “Then where’s the program for that?” Jamison asked. “Those young men will be grown men one day, with families and homes. They can’t do anything with just a trade. Not more than the minimum. That’s no way to set anyone up. I don’t know.”

  “There are a dozen other programs just like this one,” Cade said. “All around the country. We’re not inventing anything new. I need your signature on that contract.”

  “I’ll need to look it over again. I can’t answer you right now.”

  “I’m telling you it’s good, son. For your own good. I’ve looked it all over myself.” Cade paused and thought a second the way a salesman does at the end of the day when he’s speaking to the last customer on the floor. “Now Emmit bought into the company organizing the construction. His name isn’t on the paperwork, nothing can come back to him. We have more space for another partner.”

  “So?”

  “You want in? I can give you the same deal. Cash under the table.”

  Jamison just started walking away. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He’d heard it before. It was rare that such deals didn’t exist behind contracts in the city. The disappointment, the reason for walking away, was in the details.

  Jamison’s sudden departure made already ogling eyes turn toward the governor.

  “All right, son,” he said loudly. “We’ll have lunch next week.”

  Jamison showed up at his ex-wife’s house drunk, bewildered, and with no way home. In the car with Leaf on the way to his house, they’d decided that they needed somewhere to talk, to sift through the governor’s offer in connection with rumblings down under that were no doubt in connection with the scene at the funeral. Of course, Cade knew about Dax and Keet and probably even the confrontation Jamison had with Emmit outside the jail. His position though wasn’t to play as a man who was in the know. His visit with Jamison was a final plea. Or a warning. Still, there was no simple way to explain everything. They decided the best place to consider the chessboard from every angle was a bar. There they had drinks that turned to shots, and soon both men were so drunk they had to use each other as crutches to make it to Leaf’s car.

  When Jamison told Leaf to drop him at Kerry’s house, Leaf asked if that was a good idea. Jamison hid behind a desire to see his son, but at Kerry’s door it was a different situation.

  “I can’t go home. I can’t,” he said, lifting a ban on emotional exchanges he’d had in place since the day he’d realized he would have to see her as an enemy to move on.

  Kerry looked out the door and noticed that she didn’t see Jamison’s car—or any car. Jamison had made Leaf drop him off at the head of the driveway.

  “How are you getting home?” Kerry asked. She still hadn’t decided if she’d let him into the house. Tyrian was with her mother and she was not in any mood to handle a drunk man after hours, who was coming from his mother’s funeral.

  “I’m too drunk to drive,” Jamison muttered.

  “Then how’d you get here?” Kerry asked.

  “You going to let me in?”

  Kerry backed up and let Jamison in the door. He smelled of smoke and scotch.

  “Can’t look at all those cakes. Everywhere,” he half whispered.

  “What?”

  “Cake. Pots of collard greens. Fried chicken. All over the house.”

  “Here, come sit down,” Kerry said, pulling Jamison to a seat in the living room. “You want some coffee?”

  “There you go! Trying to make me feel better already,” Jamison said laughing drunkenly.

  “You say that like it’s about you. I just don’t want you to throw up on my floor.”

  “Humph.”

  Kerry went to the kitchen to get the pot of coffee started. She stood at the sink and stared out of the window at the pool. Somehow she wasn’t so surprised that Jamison was at her door. She knew better than anyone that losing his mother meant he’d have nowhere to go with his emotional pile-up. Mrs. Taylor had always been his official unloading station, a voice that confirmed his divinity in any situation and cursed anyone who questioned it. Now, there was no one there to tell him everything would be okay and that this death didn’t mean the whole world had come to conspire to kill him. Then Kerry considered that maybe Jamison thought she was supposed to be that someone. She looked over at the coffee machine, remembered opening her front door and letting him in, offering him comfort in her chair, offering him a drink for clarity. There she was, so quickly a fool. She decided not to put any creamer in the coffee the way he liked it. She cursed herself for remembering that.

  “My mother’s dead, Kerry,” Jamison said. He’d left the living room and was kind of propped up against the wall in the entrance of the kitchen. He’d been standing there watching Kerry at the window for a few seconds before he spoke.

  Kerry looked away from the window and at him. “I know.”

  “I knew it would happen someday, but, you know, that doesn’t make it easier.”

  “I don’t think it’s supposed to
be easy. It’s death,” Kerry said.

  “Oh, shit, don’t tell me I’m supposed to learn something from this.” Jamison pushed up and attempted to stand on his feet for a second, before falling back into the wall. “Everyone keeps saying that.”

  “You learn something from everything. You know that,” Kerry said just when the green light flickered to signal that the coffee was ready. She didn’t rush over to it. “Jamison, I can’t do—”

  “I love you,” Jamison cut in before Kerry could finish. Even in his diminished state, he’d felt Kerry’s concern.

  “Don’t do that. Don’t go there.”

  “I always have.”

  “You’re drunk,” Kerry said. “And your mother just died.”

  “You don’t think it’s true?”

  “I don’t care if it’s true.”

  Jamison recoiled like someone who’d been dismissed and sort of smiled at Kerry’s defiance.

  “You love me?” he asked.

  Kerry paused and looked at the green light.

  “I’m out of creamer,” she lied.

  Jamison told Kerry about Governor Cade showing up at the funeral. Shared with her every angle he’d considered with Leaf through careful examination. With no contemplation, Kerry summed it up: “Shady son-of-a-bitch. It’s greed. Nothing but greed. That’s what this shit is all about.”

  “Well, money’s always the motive, but that doesn’t explain why there was so much heat on Ras,” Jamison said. “That’s the one piece that doesn’t fit.”

  “You were doing business with Ras. Maybe they thought if you worked with him, you wouldn’t work with them,” Kerry said.

  “Leaf and I considered that, too. But it doesn’t add up. I could do both. I could do whatever I want.”

  The two of them sat and thought of other solutions, like time was running out on something.

  There’d been a second pot of coffee and soon that creamer did come out. They’d already talked about Tyrian and how hard he’d taken his grandmother’s death. Kerry revealed that he was now focused on her mother and had practically begged to go to her house after the funeral. Jamison told Kerry about Val leaving and how she had been there the night his mother died. Kerry didn’t tell Jamison about Val showing up at HHNFH. Or their conversation. Or Val’s plan to move back to Memphis to be with her mother.

  And there was more to what Kerry was being silent about during the coffee chat that saw the sun set and had the exes sounding like old friends. She wasn’t lying to Marcy when she’d said she’d stopped paying the private detective she’d hired. Only she never told Marcy why. It wasn’t because she was over Jamison or trying to move on with her life. It was because of something the detective discovered on one of the recording devices he’d planted in Jamison’s office—another detective planting a recording device. In fact, there were many voices whispering on the 3 AM. recording. “Sounds like the FBI. This is big shit. They’re watching him,” he’d said. Kerry told him to find out who was watching Jamison and why. The detective called in favors from all of his old friends at the Bureau and the result was a map that led to a probe that had Jamison at its center. She knew about Cade and the setup, but it didn’t take long for the investigators to figure out that she’d been investigating them and when they did, they swore Kerry into silence, the lead investigator telling her that if Jamison wasn’t guilty of any crimes, it was actually for his own good that he not get involved with the process and make any questionable moves. She’d have to stand down and wait it out.

  But that wasn’t all. There were other things that Kerry had been silent with Jamison about—the things about Coreen and Jamison’s other child that Kerry had learned about and that she could bring up.

  So when the conversation lulled and there were more pauses for sips of coffee than questions and solutions, and Kerry couldn’t handle her avoidance any longer, she decided to broach the subject in a way that so many other women had, to bring to the surface information they already knew. “Jamison,” she started slowly in a voice that Jamison knew and feared, “is there anything you’ve always wanted to tell me, but didn’t know how?”

  Now, it might seem that a secret child on another coast would be the most obvious response, but that wasn’t how men like Jamison worked with such questions. Rightly so, he first considered what Kerry might know and be speaking about, as he’d heard this kind of question from women before and knew what it indicated. He thought of what Kerry might know and came up with nothing, so he answered with, “No.”

  “Are you sure? Anything you did in the past when we were married that maybe you need to tell me? Something maybe you’re afraid to tell me? Something you—”

  “No, I can’t think of—”

  “Maybe something you know of but that’s not at the top of your mind right now?” Kerry’s prompting was getting desperate. She wasn’t pushing to get Jamison to fall into a fight with her, though that was all too possible. She’d already mourned the secret, the betrayal. She’d seen pictures of a little boy playing soccer, looking like Jamison and even Tyrian. She couldn’t hate the boy with the soccer ball. Wasn’t he Tyrian’s brother? His little brother. Tyrian had a little brother who looked just like him. Those realities had come to her after she’d gotten an email listing the many flights Jamison had taken to Los Angeles after he’d found out about the boy. His teachers knew the Atlanta mayor as his godfather. He hadn’t missed one school play, parent-teacher night, or concert. His Sunday school teacher told the detective that she thought Jamison was the boy’s father and asked if he was. Then there was the information about the money being wired every week. How it had gone up to six thousand dollars and sometimes ten thousand dollars at a time. The detective made it rather clear what was going on between Jamison and Coreen. He was no counselor though, so he couldn’t ask her how she felt or advise her on what to do with the situation. It was communicated like items on a shopping list.

  “No. Nothing.” Jamison became comfortable in his denial.

  “Nothing?”

  “Is there something you think I’m keeping from you?”

  “Whatever.” Kerry got up, frustrated, from the couch. “I knew you wouldn’t tell me.” She grabbed the two cups and went back into the kitchen for a refill. It was dark outside then. Her mother would be calling soon.

  “What? What does that mean?” Jamison was following right behind her.

  “What does what mean?”

  “What you said.”

  “Never mind.” Kerry threw the mugs into the sink.

  “No more coffee left?” Jamison asked. “I wanted more.”

  “No.”

  “No?” Jamison looked at the opaque carafe. “You sure?”

  “Just tell me!” Kerry leaned against the sink.

  “Tell you?”

  “About Coreen.”

  “What about her?”

  “Don’t mess with me, Jamison. Not right now! You showed up at my house drunk and you’re in here drinking my coffee and I have to carry your ass home before my mother gets here with Tyrian and he’s looking at us crazy because you’re here.”

  “Shit!” Jamison said.

  “Tell me!”

  “Okay. You know about Coreen.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Val told you?”

  “Why would Val tell me anything? How would I even talk to her?” Kerry said. “Just tell me.”

  “Why would I tell you what you know?”

  Kerry crossed her arms and pressed her lips together. The steam coming from her brain was almost visible.

  “Okay. Okay.” Jamison gave in. He knew sooner or later he’d be having this conversation with Kerry. He’d planned it in his mind so many times, but never did his rationalizations sound right or the blows come easily to someone he was tired of hurting. “I have a son. His name is Jamison. That’s all.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “The same reason I didn’t tell anyone else. I was ashamed. I wasn’t raised to have chi
ldren out of wedlock,” Jamison said.

  “So you were raised to have children in secret?”

  “You don’t understand. That’s not how it was. Coreen—she’s different. Worse than before.”

  Kerry remembered the psychotic break Coreen had had when her dwindling affair with Jamison had fallen through before she left Atlanta. She was a widow. A young widow. Her hurt and all the loss had led to a full unraveling, and Jamison’s presence had been the only thing that kept her from suicide. That was how she’d lured him to California for those weeks. She’d needed him.

  “What does Coreen have to do with you telling me about your child?” Kerry asked.

  “I didn’t even know about him. When she called to tell me about Jamison, he was already walking and talking. She just asked me for money. Said she didn’t want me in his life. She just wanted the money,” Jamison said. “Then, when I became mayor—”

  “She’s been blackmailing you?”

  “Kerry, I wish it was that simple,” Jamison said solemnly.

  “I have time,” Kerry said. “And I’m pretty smart.”

  “She’s been, I guess, worrying me,” Jamison got out uneasily. “It’s like she’s more erratic. Something about me marrying Val and the baby. She started threatening me. Said she’s going to take me to court. Last month, I sent her twenty thousand dollars.”

  “What’s the money for?”

  “She keeps saying her son should live like my other son and she’s not letting me get away with just abandoning him. It changes every day.”

  “Do you have a lawyer? Anyone looking into your options?”

  “With everything happening with Val and the news and Ras, I just wanted to keep things low for a while. I’ve been trying to keep her calm, but it’s getting worse. She wanted to bring Jamison here for the funeral.”