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Rayna began to cry. Tears filled my own eyes.
“But this is our home. Don’t you have a heart? How—how can you be so cold?” I cradled Rayna’s head to my shoulder to comfort her as she cried. Neither man batted an eye. I wondered if Tassie had hired them from Rent-A-Thug.
“I have a baby,” I went on. “You can actually kick me out of my home with no concern at all for my child?”
“We have our orders,” the men said in unison.
“Please,” I begged, as Rayna cried louder. “Please, have a heart.” One man took hold of my left arm, the other my right arm, which was secured around Rayna. “No,” I said defiantly. “Nooo!”
I backed up until my body was against the door. I wriggled around, fighting to free myself. And then my eyes popped open. It took me a good couple of seconds to realize that I was in my bed, and that a pair of over-steroided thugs weren’t in the room with me. I was sitting up, my body tangled in my sheets.
I’d been dreaming. Thank God.
I let out a relieved chuckle.
But my relief was short-lived. Because reality came crashing down on my shoulders, knocking me backward onto the pillow. Tassie Johnson, my late fiancé’s estranged wife, wanted me out of the home I’d shared with her husband. Yes, it’s a crazy and convoluted story, but I didn’t know that Eli Johnson, my fiancé, was still legally married at the time I was involved with him. He’d romanced me, seduced me, then proposed. We’d moved in together and had been planning a life together. How was I to know that he had an estranged wife and a couple kids somewhere? But Tassie didn’t believe me—or maybe she did, and she just didn’t care. All I knew was that as his official widow, she was making my life hell regarding the property I’d shared with Eli.
Tassie had insisted that I buy out her husband’s share of the condo, an all but impossible feat for a single mother like me. But despite the unlikelihood of me coming up with that kind of cash, I had. Only now that I’d come up with a way to buy her out and get her off my back, she up and changed her mind…and changed the game.
The sound of my door opening drew my gaze in that direction. The moment Rayna saw me, her face erupted in a smile.
Mine did, too.
“Mommy!” she cried, and sprinted toward me on the bed.
“Morning, sweetheart.” I reached for my daughter and pulled her onto the bed with me. I hugged her against my chest tightly.
“It’s morning,” Rayna went on, her way of telling me that it was time for me to get out of bed.
“Yes, it’s morning,” I agreed, then glanced at the clock—7:12 a.m.
It was the perfect time to get up—if I was heading to work. But it was a Sunday morning, the perfect time to sleep in.
My nightmare had gotten me up, and now that Rayna was awake, I was up for the day.
I lay down with Rayna, tucking her against my side. Maybe we’d both drift off.
“Mommy?” Rayna said, her little voice sounding serious.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Want Daddy.”
“Oh, baby.” I hugged her small frame. “I know you do.”
Eli hadn’t just been my fiancé, he’d been a father figure to my daughter, whose own father had abandoned her while I’d been pregnant. Since Eli’s death a few months earlier, Rayna hadn’t really asked for him much. I knew she missed his presence, and I’d tried to explain to her about heaven, but I also knew that she was too young to really understand that he’d never be coming back.
“Want Daddy come home,” she said.
“I know, baby. We miss him a lot. And I’m sure he misses us, too. But we can’t feel sad about that, remember? Because he’s in heaven, a very beautiful place, and he’s happy there.”
“Want to go heaven,” Rayna said, pouting.
“You will, one day. One day, we all will go to heaven. And you’ll see daddy again.”
Given the adulterous circumstances of Eli’s passing and the numerous lies he’d told me, I doubted we’d be reunited beyond the pearly gates. But Rayna didn’t need to know that. She never needed to know the ugly truth about what had happened. Some things, children deserved to be protected from.
I pressed my lips to Rayna’s forehead, feeling a moment of sadness for her sake. Eli’s public and scandalous death had thrown my life into upheaval and I guess, because of that, I’d had to quickly put the pain of his betrayal—being killed while in the arms of another woman—behind me. Certainly for my daughter’s sake, because she’d needed me to be strong.
But I felt for her, worried for how she was dealing with Eli’s sudden loss in her tiny heart.
“You want to go to the zoo today?” I suggested. “See all the animals? Maybe Amani can come with us.” Amani was my babysitter Carla’s daughter, and she and Rayna were only a year apart. They were playmates each day when I was at work.
Rayna clapped her hands together. “Party, party!”
The last time we’d been to the zoo, five months earlier, we’d gone for Amani’s birthday party. Which is why Rayna was associating another visit to the zoo with another party.
“It won’t be a birthday party,” I told her. “But it will be fun. We can take that train around the zoo. And you can play at the park.”
Rayna nodded enthusiastically. “Zebras!”
“Yes, you’ll see lots of zebras.” Rayna was a huge horse-and-pony fanatic, and hadn’t wanted to leave the zebra exhibit the last time we’d been to the zoo. She literally could have stayed there for hours and been content. “And maybe after we can go to the lake and feed the ducks.”
“Feed ducks, feed ducks,” Rayna chanted.
There were countless small lakes in South Florida, most with ducks and herons and cranes. The ducks, of course, were the only animals that cared to get close to humans. Bring food, and you were their best friend. I enjoyed seeing Rayna’s face light up when she tossed bread to them, getting a thrill out of the ducks surrounding her feet for a feast.
Yes, Rayna and I would spend a fun day together.
Put all the men we’d loved and lost out of our minds.
I decided I’d wait until ten to call Carla about going to the zoo, it being a Sunday morning and all. On the weekends, I didn’t like to phone people too early. It was sort of an unwritten rule with friends and family: I didn’t call them before ten in the morning, and they didn’t call me. In fact, I liked to laze around in my pajamas most of the morning, sometimes later.
When Eli had been alive, Sunday mornings had often become family bed time, with me, him and Rayna in our bed, watching the Disney Channel, snuggling and giggling—not having to worry about interruptions from the outside world.
So I was a little surprised, when, at 8:40 a.m., my phone rang.
I snatched the receiver off of the wall base in the kitchen, where I was mixing batter for pancakes. Seeing my sister’s number on the caller ID and given the time, I couldn’t help wondering if everything was okay.
“Hello?” I said.
“Morning, Vanessa.”
My sister didn’t sound stressed. “Morning, Nikki.”
“I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No, you didn’t. What’s up?”
“Well…” she began, then hesitated.
I frowned. Maybe everything wasn’t okay. Was my sister having a problem with her husband, Morris? They’d gone through a brief rough patch, but as far as I knew, they were blissfully in love again.
“Nikki?” I prompted.
“I have something to ask you. Something important.”
“Okay,” I said cautiously.
“I know this is going to seem a bit weird, but given everything that’s happened, I think it’s right.”
“Just tell me already.”
“All right.” Now, I heard a smile in my sister’s voice. “I’m hoping that you’ll agree…to be the maid of honor at my wedding!”
It took a good couple of seconds for my sister’s words to register. And then I was confused.
Considering she was already married.
“Your what?” I asked.
“My wedding,” Nikki repeated.
“You already had one of those. Eight years ago.”
“I know, silly,” Nikki said. “But Morris and I are renewing our vows.”
“You are?” I asked, my voice a croak. Not because I wasn’t happy for my sister, but because I vividly remembered her first wedding. It had been a very elaborate and expensive affair. Mostly, I remembered how my sister had turned into Bridezilla as she planned the most important day of her life. She complained about practically everything. The floral arrangements weren’t big enough, not pretty enough, the bridesmaids dresses were too long, then too short. The menu changed at least once a week before it had to be firmed up. She wanted over-the-top elaborate on a scale that only celebrities typically indulge in. Anyone who tried to reason with her—namely, me, Morris and their wedding planner—got an earful and often a bout of tears thrown in on top of that.
Nikki is my only sibling, and eight years my senior. She can be trying on a good day, but when she’s stressed out, she’s pretty much unbearable.
“I know what you’re thinking. That a second wedding now is at least fifteen years too soon. But after Morris’s indiscretion, we felt it was best to have a brand-new start. You know.”
“Hey, you have to do what you need to do,” I said. If she felt a renewing of vows was in order, who was I to argue? “What are you thinking? A small ceremony somewhere?” Hopefully a city hall wedding, where she couldn’t be too demanding. A justice of the peace could marry them, and then we all could be on our merry way without the headaches that would come from a bigger wedding.
“Nothing too big,” Nikki said. “Maybe seventy-five or a hundred people.”
“What?”
“And it’s got to be on the beach. I said I want to go somewhere exotic, like Thailand. But Morris says the Keys will be fine, or maybe Jamaica or the Bahamas.”
Was my sister serious? Or was she pulling an early morning prank? I didn’t know what was worse—that she thought one hundred people constituted a small wedding, or that she expected a hundred people to travel across the world to Thailand for her second “once in a lifetime” day.
That had been her mantra the first time around. That she needed this extravagant thing, or that impossible to get thing because it was for her “once in a lifetime” day.
How nice she got to have two.
“Are you serious about Thailand?” I asked, half-chuckling. “I mean, you can’t be—right?”
“What’s wrong with Thailand?” she asked, sounding a little dismayed.
I felt the headache coming on already. Bridezilla Part Two. Oh, the joy.
“I hear Thailand is one of the most beautiful places in the world,” my sister went on.
“I’m sure it is…but I don’t think anyone has ever traveled there to have what they’d describe as a ‘small’ second wedding. Seventy-five to a hundred people? That’s not a small wedding, sis.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Nikki asked. “Aren’t you happy for me?”
“Of course I’m happy for you. I’m very happy that you and Morris are staying together and that you’re working things out. It’s just—”
“That it hurts you to see me having a second wedding when you haven’t even had your first?”
I gritted my teeth at the comment. Counted to three. Made sure that when I spoke, I didn’t say something I would end up regretting.
“No,” I began. “I was going to say that what you’re proposing sounds very expensive. A small, intimate wedding at city hall would accomplish the exact same thing. A renewal of your vows. And if you still want to go to Thailand, go for your second honeymoon.”
Silence. Nikki must have been mulling over my suggestion.
“You think seventy-five of your closest friends will be willing to hop on a plane to Thailand?” I asked, my tone saying the question was rhetorical.
“Probably fifty or sixty of them.”
I highly doubted that. My sister’s friends were all like her—married with children. Not to mention their careers. I didn’t see that many of them being able—or willing—to head to Thailand for her second wedding.
“Will you do it?” she asked. “Be my maid of honor?”
“Yes,” I answered. “Of course.” I really didn’t have a choice. I could only hope that as the weeks passed—and common sense set in—Nikki would decide on having her wedding a little closer to home.
“Good. I’m so excited!” she squealed. “A second wedding, a fresh start. This is going to be wonderful.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“I was thinking maybe December. Over Christmas, when everyone will have time off. That’ll give everyone time to start making travel arrangements now for their trip to Thailand.”
I suddenly realized that when it came to Nikki, “common sense” wasn’t necessarily a factor. For some reason, she was stuck on Thailand. “I thought you said that Morris wanted to go to the Keys or the Bahamas,” I said, hoping to steer her off the far east course.
“Yes. But I want to go to Thailand.”
I shook my head. My sister. There was no getting through to her. When she got an idea about something, no one could change her mind.
I wondered if Morris even wanted a second wedding, or if he was strictly going along with the suggestion as penance for his sin of adultery.
“Oh, I have to run,” Nikki suddenly said. “We’re going to church.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”
“If you want, you can meet us there for the later service. There are a few eligible bachelors in the congregation.”
