Our Wicked Lies by Gledé Kabongo (story read aloud TXT) 📗

From: Empress Faith

To: Alicia Gray

Re: Eliot Gray

Listen, you ugly cow. It’s over. We’re starting a new family. Your days as Mrs. Eliot Gray are numbered. Just accept it, Alicia. You’re old news, his past.

Empress Faith

New family? With trembling fingers, she tapped the attachment in the email and for the second time that week, an avalanche cascaded over her. The attachment was a photograph. A sonogram, to be exact.

Eliot was having a baby with his mistress.

Alicia hunched over in the chair, as if her skeleton could no longer hold her. The photo shot straight through the heart. Numbness overtook her. She couldn’t muster the energy to cry.

The world moved in slow motion. A thick, horrific, nightmarish fog had a stranglehold on her thoughts, emotions, and physical state. She trembled as if it were freezing cold instead of a warm spring night.

Was this her punishment? Was God still angry with her for what she’d done? She had prayed with Tina, her pastor’s wife, and she’d assured Alicia that she was forgiven because Christ had died for her sins as it says in John 19:30: it is finished. And she’d thought it was. But look what was happening now. It didn’t seem finished.

The tears suddenly broke like a dam, and then the wounded howling began, followed by heavy crying that made coherent speech impossible. She was so deep in her misery she didn’t hear the door open.

“Mom, what’s wrong?”

She jerked upright, placed the phone face down on the desk and wiped her face with the back of her hand as Lily came farther into the room.

“Mom, are you okay? You look terrible. What’s going on? Should I get Dad?”

“No,” she said sharply. She took Lily’s hand for emphasis. “It’s okay, baby. I’m fine.”

“Then why were you wailing?”

Alicia hated lying and she hated liars—like Eliot—but she had to protect her child. “I was thinking about your grandmother. About when I lost her, how it felt to be all alone in the world at twenty years old.”

“It’s okay, Mom. You’re not alone anymore. You have us.”

Lily placed her arms around her mother and hugged her tight. What would she do if she didn’t have her girls?

“And when you get old, I won’t send you to a nursing home,” Lily promised. “You can come live with me and my family.”

Alicia chuckled. “Thank you, Lily. It’s nice to know I have options.”

“I wish I had met her—your mom. Grandma Ella is great and all, but it would have been nice to know my maternal grandmother, too.”

“She would have loved you. You’re like her in so many ways.”

Lily took a seat on the antique sofa. “Tell me how I’m like her. You never talk about her much. Is it because it makes you sad?”

“Well, a little. Your grandmother was feisty. She wouldn’t want us crying. She cursed out the landlord one time because he refused to fix a broken window. I thought he would evict us because she mouthed off to him. She wouldn’t back down, though. She withheld the rent and got in his face when he made demands. Eventually, he caved. Only then did she pay the rent.”

“Wow, she does sound fierce.”

“She was. She told the guys who hung around the neighborhood, ‘undesirables’ she called them, that if they even so much as looked at me sideways, she would cut off their you-know-what.”

“What about Grandpa Reginald? What was he like? You never talk about him, ever. That’s not healthy, Mom. You’re stuffing your feelings.”

Tell me about it.

“You’re chatty tonight, Missy,” Alicia said, changing the subject. “Did you need something?”

“Yes. I came to tattletale on Marston.”

“What’s going on?”

“Marston is not okay, Mom.”

“What are you talking about? What’s wrong with her?”

“It’s the real story behind why she won’t go to prom. She’s hurting. It was more than Brandon asking someone else instead of her. She’s going to kill me for telling you, but I can’t watch her suffer anymore. She would rather die than tell you.”

Alicia switched to mama-bear mode. Forget her husband’s deceit—the lying rat. Her daughters were what mattered now.

CHAPTER 23

“Is everything okay, Eliot?”

“What?”

His administrative assistant, Erica Jones, asked again, “Is everything okay? Do you need some tea or coffee? Can I get you anything? You seem distracted.”

“I do?”

“Yes. You asked me to schedule a meeting with Tom Pfeiffer at JC Stanfield. But you already spoke to him last week about his issues with the Sterling pharma project.”

Eliot rubbed his temple as if trying to remember.

“You told him if he wouldn’t play ball, you would advise your client that another investment bank would be a better fit and have them divest their assets from JCS.”

“Oh, yes. Yes. The ball is in Tom’s court now. I’m sure he’ll tell me what I want to hear soon. Not to worry.”

He sat behind his cluttered desk. File folders, documents, pens, and notebooks were strewn all over. This was not normal for him. He liked things neat and organized. What was happening to him? Thank goodness he had Erica to keep him on track.

“Have you spoken to Alicia lately?” Eliot asked her casually. “Perhaps she tried tracking me down at the office and you forgot to mention it?”

She wrinkled a curious brow. “No. Alicia rarely calls your office line, if ever, and even if she did, I wouldn’t forget to tell you. Is something wrong?”

Faith’s bombshell revelation from yesterday afternoon had shaken him. Long after he returned to the office, it continued to rattle around in his head. He’d lost his focus on work. He was making ridiculous inquiries, and Erica, by the look on her face, thought he’d left his brain on the breakfast table this morning. But he needed to be sure Alicia didn’t suspect a thing.

“Nothing’s wrong. Everything is great,” he reassured Erica.

The possibility that Faith was lying to force him to end his marriage was real. However, if she was telling the truth, that would be the least of his problems. He would not ask her to terminate