For the Love of Gina: The President's Girlfriend (13 page)

“Okay.”

“You
call me if there are any problems at all, Gina.
 
Any problems.
 
You hear me?”

Brandy
didn’t like the way he spoke to Gina, as if he was the great white father and
she was his child.
 
But Gina, to Brandy’s
surprise, didn’t seem to see anything wrong with his tone.

“I
will,” Gina responded.

Dutch
continued to stare at her.
 
Then the
feelings overtook him and he couldn’t help himself.
 
He knew he might be rebuffed, but he couldn’t
help it.
 
He walked over to her, leaned
down, and kissed her lovingly on the lips.

Gina
knew she should have recoiled.
 
They,
after all, still had major issues to work out.
 
But as soon as he came near her, and she smelled his familiar cologne
scent and felt his wonderfully sensual lips on hers, she couldn’t recoil or
resist.
 
She returned his affection.
 
Dutch placed his hand on the side of her face
as he couldn’t stop kissing her.
 
They
had an audience, and he knew it, but he couldn’t help it.
 
He loved Gina and he didn’t want her to ever
think otherwise.

When
they stopped kissing, a frown appeared on his face as he fought back tears, and
then he rested his forehead against hers.

“I
love you,” he said to her so heartfelt that it made his chest hurt.

Gina
fought back tears too.
 
It felt almost
mournful whenever she and Dutch were at odds.
 
But what he did was wrong, and she couldn’t just accept that.
 
But she wasn’t going to pretend she didn’t
love him anymore.
 
That would be an
impossibility.
 

“Love
you too,” she replied to him.

Dutch
eventually stood erect, glanced at Brandy, a woman he just didn’t like, and
then he left the plane.
 

Gina
stared at him as he made his way back to his SUV.
 
But he didn’t get in and leave.
 
He, instead, stood there and watched as the
plane taxied the runway, lifted up, and then took off.
 
Tears were in Gina’s eyes as his tall,
muscular frame left their view.
 
Which
astounded Brandy.
 
Why in the world, she
thought, would a smart, successful black sister like Regina Harber let a
hateful man like that make her cry?

But
Gina wasn’t thinking about Brandy, or how she felt about her husband.
 
Matters of love were never simple.
 
Not ever.
 

“Excuse
me,” Gina said, and headed for the restroom.

The
doors to the Gipson County Sheriff’s department were opened, and to the shock
of every deputy in the small building, the former First Lady of the United
States walked in.
 
They began scrambling,
with one deputy running to get the sheriff, and another deputy hurrying to wipe
down one of their folding metal chairs, the only kind of chairs in the
building.

But
Gina wasn’t interested in sitting down.
 
With Brandy behind her and Mitchell, her Secret Service agent beside
her, she asked to see DeAndre Clarke.
 
But just as she asked, the Sheriff, a stout white man, hurried in as if
he had run from his office.

“Mrs.
Harber,” he said, extending his hand.
 
“It is quite an honor, and I daresay shock, to see you at our station.
I’m Sheriff McMurtry.”

“Hello,
Sheriff,” Gina said.
 
“I’m here to see
one of your prisoners.
 
DeAndre Clarke.”

The
Sheriff glanced at his deputies.
 
Then he
looked back at Gina.
 
“DeAndre Clarke,
ma’am?” he asked.

“That’s
right,” Gina replied.
 
“I wish to speak
with him privately please.”

The
Sheriff again seemed distress.
 
He
remembered how much trouble Brandy had given them when that boy was first
arrested.
 
And now this.
 

“Right
this way, ma’am, please,” he said as he and one of his deputies escorted Gina,
Brandy, and Mitchell into his office.
 
Gina then assumed he would go and get the young man, the brother she’d
never met, but instead he just stood there.

“I
don’t know how to tell you this, ma’am,” he said.
 
“And you, Miss Clarke.”

Gina
looked concerned, but Brandy’s heart began to pound.
 
“What is it?” she asked.

The
sheriff frowned.
 
“It’s with deep regret
that I have to say that there was an incident in the jail this morning.”

Brandy
couldn’t believe it.
 
“An incident?” she
asked.

Gina
couldn’t believe it either.
 
“What kind
of incident?” she asked.

“DeAndre,
Miss Clarke’s brother, was found hung this morning.”

Brandy
nearly passed out.
 
Gina pressed her hand
to her heart.
 
It couldn’t be true.
 
“Hung?” she asked, in a breathless voice.

“He
hung himself, yes, ma’am.”

But
Brandy began shaking her head.
 
“No,” she
said.
 
“That can’t be right.
 
What are you saying to me?
 
My brother didn’t hang himself!
 
What are you saying to me?”

“I’m
saying that your brother died this morning,” the sheriff said plainly.

“Nooo!”
Brandy screamed and lost her ability to stand on her own.
 
Mitchell caught her, just as she was about to
fall.
 
He and Gina sat her in a chair.

The
sheriff ordered his deputy to go and get the ladies some water.

“Oh,
my Lord,” Gina was saying.
 
Her heart was
pounding.
  
He was dead?
 
The brother she was going to meet this very
day, died this day?
 
She couldn’t believe
it.

“I am
so sorry to have to report such horrible news,” the sheriff, seeing her
distress, said to her.
 
“We attempted to
contact Miss Clarke, we even sent a car over to her home, but nobody was
there.”

“What
happened?” Gina asked the Sheriff, her heartbeat barely regulated.
 
“Why would he suddenly hang himself?”

“We
don’t know that yet.
 
Maybe the guilt of
what he’d done.”

“That’s
a lie!” Brandy screamed.
 
“He didn’t do
anything!
 
DeAndre would have never
killed himself.
 
That’s a
got
damn lie!”

Gina
felt as if she was coming undone.
 
How
could this be?
 
“But nothing happened
this weekend?”

“Other
than him meeting with a new attorney?
 
No
ma’am.”

Brandy
looked at the sheriff.
 
“What new attorney?
 
Dray didn’t have any new attorney.”

“He
met with an attorney on Saturday, ma’am.”

“The
one I hired?”

“No,
ma’am.
 
Not Jesse.
 
This new attorney, I believe his name was
William Bates, said he was asked by an interested party to speak with Mr.
Clarke.”

It
was the attorney Dutch had asked to look into the matter.
 
She expected Brandy to rail about that too,
but she was still too distraught.

“It
can’t be true,” Brandy was saying, crying almost hysterically and still shaking
her head.
 
“Dray wouldn’t kill himself.
 
I don’t care what they’re saying.
 
He wouldn’t have done something like that!”

“Did
you know this William Bates?”

“What?”
Brandy asked.
 
“William Bates?”
 
She looked at Gina.
 
“That’s the man your husband sent over
here.
 
How could he get permission to
talk to my brother?”

“He
came to the jail, asked to speak with your brother,” the sheriff said, “and
your brother gave him permission.”

“But
what did he say to him?” Brandy asked.
 
“You always have deputies listening to every conversation, even with the
lawyers.”

Gina
looked at the sheriff.
 
She wanted to
know too.
 
But she was still too stunned
to speak.

“What
did that man say to him?” Brandy asked again.
 
“It’s a part of your investigation now.”

“Yes
ma’am, it is,” the sheriff said.
 
“Near
as we can figure, it was a normal conversation.
 
The attorney recommended that DeAndre cut a plea deal.”

“A
plea deal?” Brandy asked.

“What
plea was recommended?” Gina managed to ask, putting on her own lawyer hat.
 
“Guilty in exchange for what?”

“Life
without parole.”

Brandy
couldn’t believe it.
 
“What?” she asked.

“He
was facing the death penalty.
 
If
convicted, that lawyer knew he would be put to death.”

“But
he didn’t do anything!” Brandy cried.
 
Then she looked at Gina.
 
“How
could you do that?” she asked her.

Gina
looked at her.
 
She shared her grief, but
she didn’t understand what she was talking about.
 
How could she do what?

“You
let your husband send that man here!
 
He
spoke to Dray Saturday and then Dray’s dead Monday morning?
 
How could you send somebody here to take
Dray’s hope away!
 
I told him you was
going to send him a lawyer that would get the charges dropped, not get him life
in prison!
 
He couldn’t do life in prison!
 
He’s an honor student, not a criminal!”

Gina
felt awful.
 
Just devastated.
 
She felt as guilty as Brandy was saying she
was.
 
And Brandy was just beginning.
 
The tears were flowing freely from her angry
eyes, and her mouth was spewing all manner of venom it could.
 
She hated Gina, she hated Dutch, she knew no
good would ever come to an association with a black bitch like Gina and a
hateful cracker like Dutch.
 
She spewed
it and she cried, she spewed and cried.
 
And Gina, the former First Lady of the United States, a woman who didn’t
even know she had a brother until this very day, the day her brother died,
stood there and painfully took it.
 
It
was, she felt, the least she could do.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The
house was eerily quiet when Dutch arrived, around ten that night, after a very
long day at work.
 
Ramsey, their handsome,
African-American estate manager, met Dutch in the foyer.

“Good
evening, sir.”

“Hello,
Ramsey.”

“We
did not hear from you earlier, so no dinner has been prepared.”

“That’s
fine.
 
I grabbed something.”

“Very
good, sir.”

Dutch
began heading toward the stairs.
 
“My
wife upstairs?”

“No,
sir.”

Dutch,
at the bottom stair, turned around.
 
“No?”
 
This surprised him.
 
“She hasn’t returned from Georgia?”

“Yes,
sir, she returned.
 
But she went
out.
 
With the baby.”

“Oh,”
Dutch said.
 
“Did she say where they were
going?”

“No,
sir, she did not.
 
But . . .”

“But
what, Ramsey?”

“But
she did take a suitcase with her, sir.”

Dutch’s
heart began to pound.
 
“Did she?”

“Yes,
sir.”

“Did
she say why?”

“No,
sir.”

Dutch
nodded.
 
“Okay.
 
Thank-you, Ramsey.
 
That’ll be all.”

“Very
good, sir,” Ramsey said, and then walked away.
 
Like most of the household staff, Ramsey, too, lived onsite in one of
the ten guest houses on the premises.

Dutch
stood there, unsure what to make of it, and then he headed upstairs to the
master bedroom.
 
He immediately opened
the double doors of their walk-in closet to see just what she would have had in
that suitcase.
 
But Gina had so many
clothes, and the closet was so massive, that he couldn’t tell if she’d taken anything
at all.
 
Then he pulled out his cell
phone and began calling her cell phone number.
 
But, as it had earlier, it rang and rang. Dutch hung up.
 

He
began loosening his tie, but when he walked over to the nightstand and removed
his wallet and keys from his pockets and saw that smiling picture of Gina on
his nightstand, a queasiness, a loneliness, a fear came over him.
 
Had she left him?
 
Was that what this was about?

He
pulled out his cell phone again.
 
But
only this time he phoned Ralph Shaheen, the head of the Secret Service.

But
Ralph had to remind his old friend and boss of the protocol.
 
“Since she didn’t leave instructions for us
to notify you of her whereabouts, you know we are not at liberty to reveal that
information, Dutch.”

But
Dutch would have none of that.
 
“Bullshit, Ralph.
 
Now where’s my
wife?
 
Where is she?”

“Dutch,
you know---”

“Ralph.
 
I need to speak to her.
 
Where is she?”

There
was a pause, then an exasperated sigh.
 
“She went home,” he said.

“She
didn’t go home.
 
I’m at our house.
 
She’s not here.”

“She
went to
her
home.
 
The house she owned and lived in before she
married you.”

Dutch
frowned.
 
“What are you saying?”

“I’m
saying she packed a suitcase, picked up her baby, and went home.
 
That’s what I’m saying.”

Dutch
could feel his heartbeat quicken.
 
He ran
his hand across his forehead.
 
He knew
she was angry.
 
He knew they had a lot to
talk about.
 
But for her to leave like
this?
 
“Okay, thanks, Ralph.”

“Don’t
thank me.
 
I just violated protocol.
 
If it comes back on me, I won’t throw you
under the bus, I’m going to throw you in front of the bus.”

“Without
hesitation,” Dutch said.
 
“Thanks,
buddy,” he added, and ended the call.

But
he held the phone in his hand, still in deep thought.
 
He couldn’t believe it, but it was true.
 
Gina was gone, and she took Walter with her.
 
Dutch’s heart began to hammer.
 
What in the world was happening?
 

But
he didn’t ponder it long.
 
He, instead,
grabbed his wallet, and grabbed his keys, and headed back out of the room.

Gina kissed
a sleeping Walter on his forehead and then made her way to her small kitchen,
pulling shut her bathrobe as she walked.
 
She had already showered, she had already fed her child, now all she
wanted to do was relax.
 
It had been a
long day, and an even longer night.
 
Her
housekeeper had come over while her plane was still in the air and had cleaned
and packed the refrigerator.
 
But not
with wine, which was what Gina wanted.
 
She had to settle for juice instead.

She
poured herself a glass full and took a seat at her small kitchen table.
 
She almost smiled, remembering how she used
to spend many nights at this very table.
 
It was her ritual after those long days at BBR.
 
She’d sometimes entertain male friends at
that table.
 
Sometimes a whole host of
friends.
 
Now it was just her and Little
Walt.
 
And he spent most of the evening
asking why were they there, and where was his daddy.

Gina’s
heart ached just thinking about his daddy.
 
About Dutch.
 
They’d been through
a lot together.
 
Through all kinds of
storms.
 
But they were a united front,
and they stood together.
 
But now she
needed time away.
 
Now she couldn’t do
anything but think about that young man that died today, and how she might have
been able to prevent his sense of hopelessness somehow, if she’d only been told
he existed.
 
If Dutch, her husband, had
not withheld that monumental information from her.

She
sipped more juice and tried to suppress the pain that kept refusing to go
down.
 
She wanted to rationalize it.
 
She loved Dutch so much, she wanted to
believe he meant well and therefore should be forgiven.
 
But it wasn’t that easy.
 
Because she agree with Brandy.
 
Things would have been different if she had
been in his life.
 
He might not have even
been in Gipson, Georgia that night.
 
He
might have been with them, in Newark, if she would have known he existed.
 
And the prosecution might not have upheld the
arrest, if she would have made some calls.

But
it was all water under the bridge now.
 
Dutch didn’t tell her and she didn’t know.
 
And Brandy, rightly, was blaming her.

She
stood up and was about to toss the rest of her juice down the drain and head to
bed, when her doorbell rang.
 
She
hesitated, although she knew who it undoubtedly was, and then she made her way
to the front door.
 
When she looked out
and saw that it was indeed Dutch standing there, with Addison seated in the
parked SUV, she hesitated again.
 
And
then opened the door.

She
stepped aside and allowed him passage in.
 

Dutch
could feel the chill as soon as he walked in.
  
When she closed the door and turned toward him, and he saw her troubled
face, his heart sank.
 
His decision to
withhold her brother from her had hurt her.
 
It had hurt her deeply.

He
placed his hands in his pants pockets.
 
He was still dressed in his suit, minus his tie, but he didn’t look as
pristine as he normally looked.
 
“Where’s
Walt?” he asked her.
 
“I wanted to kiss
him goodnight.”

Gina
absolutely had no problem with that.
 
“He’s down the hall.
 
First
bedroom.”

Dutch
hesitated and then made his way to his son’s room.
 
It was such a small house that he felt
oversized for it, as he had to duck slightly to get through the bedroom
entrance.
 
But when he saw Little Walt
asleep, clutching the bedspread the way he always did in his own bed, he
smiled.
 

He
stood there for more than a few minutes staring at Walt, and then he kissed him
on his forehead.
 
He was going to make it
clear to Gina that his wife and child weren’t sleeping in anybody’s beds but
their own, in their own home.
 
The Harber
family was not breaking up.
 
He didn’t
care what issues they had to resolve, they were not breaking up.

When
he kissed Walt again and finally made his way back up front, Gina was once
again seated at the kitchen table.
 
Dutch
walked over to the refrigerator, looked inside, and grabbed himself a bottled
water.
 
Then he walked over to the table,
and sat down across from her.

He
looked at her.
 
She looked at her
half-filled glass of juice.
 
And that was
how she felt tonight.
 
Half filled.

“When
did you get back in town?” Dutch asked her.

“Five.”

“That
soon?”

She
didn’t respond.

“How
did it go?”

“Awful.”

Dutch
hesitated.
 
“What happened?
 
The police provided you with some evidence
that---”

“The
police didn’t provide me with shit, okay?”
 
She didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but that was how she felt.
 
“Evidence has nothing to do with it now.”

Dutch
didn’t like her tone.
 
“It was your
brother then?” he asked.
 
“He didn’t want
to see you?”

“He
didn’t get a chance,” Gina said bitterly.
 
“Thanks to your decision about my life and my family.”

Dutch
didn’t understand.
 
“Gina, what are you
talking about?”

“I’m
talking about my brother, Dutch!
 
DeAndre
Clarke.
 
My flesh and blood.
 
I’m talking about flying all the way to
Georgia to see him, to introduce myself to him, to see what I can do to help
him.
 
But I was wasting my time.”
 
Tears welled up in her eyes.
 
“He was already dead.”

Dutch’s
heart dropped.
 
“What?” he asked.

“As
soon as we got there, they told us he died this morning.”

“Oh,
Gina,” Dutch said agonizingly and hurried from his seat.
 
But when he reached to touch her, she jumped
up too.

“Don’t
touch me!” she declared, drawing her body back from his reach.
 
Then she calmed back down.
 
“Don’t touch me.”

Dutch
felt as if he was in a dream.
 
The ideal
that he would make Gina recoil from him,
his
Gina, stunned him.
 
Not that he wasn’t
already stunned.
 
What she had said about
her brother, the fact that he was dead, already had him off-balance.

“What
happened to him?” he asked her.

“What
were the terms of that agreement?” she asked him.

The
question itself threw Dutch.
 
She went
from telling him that her brother died, to asking about the agreement.
 
“What?” he asked.

“The
agreement you made with DeAndre’s mother.
 
What were the terms?”

Dutch
exhaled.
 
That situation had been so
removed from his life for so long that he actually had to think about it.
 
“We paid the mother, and by extension the
daughter, a lump sum payment.”

“How
much?”

“Gina.”

“How
much, Dutch?”

“I
think it was a hundred thousand dollars, or something like that.
 
I don’t remember.”

Gina
couldn’t believe it.
 
“You don’t
remember?”