Secrets On Lake Drive (35 page)

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“I’m Shanelle McPhearson.”

I couldn’t believe it when she told me who
she was. And why would Sean’s ex-wife be so interested in talking
to me? She looked eager, like we were old friends from college or
something and she was happy to see me. She was a nice looking woman
with a caramel complexion and brown eyes. Her cinnamon-colored hair
was long and lustrous. She smelled like some expensive perfume, and
just by looking at her, you could tell she was high maintenance.
She probably had just gotten pampered, too. She spoke with an
English accent.

“Oh, hi. I’m Monica.” I didn’t shake her
hand or anything like that, but I was courteous. However, I still
didn’t know what she wanted with me.

“I saw your wedding announcement in the
paper. Congratulations! I know Sean is happy he finally found you
after all that searching.”

“Ah…what do you mean? I’m not following
you.”

“You
are
Roman’s birth mother,
right?

“No, I’m not.”

“Hmm…that’s interesting.” She popped her
freshly glossed lips as she looked me up and down.

“Why is that interesting?”

“Well, since Sean put so much time and
energy into finding Roman’s birth mother when we were married, I
thought for sure the next woman he married would be her. I didn’t
know he would put another woman through the same torture he put me
through.”

“Torture?”

“Yeah, torture. He looked for Roman’s
real
mother nonstop, and all I could do was watch my husband
obsess over another woman.”

“Well, Sean loves me, and as far as I know,
he hasn’t been looking for anyone.”

“That’s good. I’m happy for you.”

Reaching for the door again, I was preparing
myself to leave her standing there. Shanelle seemed to have some
hostility towards Sean even after they have been divorced for so
long.

“But you look like Roman’s mother,” she
said. “When Sean and I were married, he used to keep a picture of a
woman in the bottom drawer of his nightstand. I found it under a
lot of papers. Anyway, you kinda look like the woman in the photo.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I had always assumed the woman in the photo
was Roman’s birth mother.”

I didn’t respond to her. There was nothing
for me to say really.

Then she dismissed herself by saying, “Well,
I’m not going to hold you up any longer. It was nice meeting
you.”

She walked away and got into a black Hummer
with a white man.

The woman gave me too much to think about
while I was supposed to be enjoying my day of pampering. She
actually thought I was Roman’s birth mother, and what if Sean was
obsessed with finding Roman’s real mother? Was he still looking for
now?
Crap.
Now I had to force myself to sneak around behind
my husband’s back to see if any of Shanelle’s story was true.

When I got home, I could hear Sean and his
brothers in the family room.

“Hey, baby,” Sean yelled from out of the
room when he heard me come through the front door, but he didn’t
come into the living room where I was.

“Hey, Sean. I have to run upstairs for a
minute. I’ll be right back down, baby.”

I ran up the stairs quickly to start my
investigation. I threw my jacket on the bed and kicked off my
shoes. Then I rolled across the bed to the side he normally sleeps
on. As my feet touched the floor, I opened the bottom drawer of his
nightstand. There were a lot of papers in there like Shanelle had
told me. At that point, my heart began to race. I flipped through
more papers, looking for the photo of this mysterious woman that
Sean was so obsessed over. I kept digging and digging until
finally, I found it. It was at the very bottom of the drawer turned
face down. I picked it up and looked at it. My heart dropped when I
saw it. It was a picture of me – a picture that Cornelius had taken
of me when I was four months pregnant with Eric. Immediately, my
body stiffened up. My hands were shaking so nervously, I didn’t
know if I could make them stop.

“Hey, baby. What you doin’?”

Sean nearly scared me to death. I was bent
over eyeing the photo while sitting on the bed with the bottom
drawer of the nightstand still open. Sean couldn’t see me since I
was on the opposite side of the bed.

“Ahh…I’m just rubbing my toes.”
Yeah,
right.
I was busy trying to contain my nerves so Sean wouldn’t
think something was wrong. I slowly pushed the drawer shut with my
left foot and pretended to be rubbing my big toe on my right foot.
Sean walked over and squatted down in front of me, taking my right
foot into his hand.

“So what seems to be the problem? Didn’t
they do a good job at Azana?”

“Yeah, baby, they did. I just hit my foot up
against the bed post.”

Sean rubbed my toes, then he stood up and
put all of his weight on top of me. “I missed you today.”

“You did?” I asked, lying face up on the bed
and staring into his face.

“Unh huh.”

“I was only gone for a few hours.”

“I still missed you.”

He kissed me around my neck. He knew that
drove me wild. My neck was extremely sensitive to his kisses.
However, every time his lips touched my neck, all I could think
about was that picture and Shanelle’s story.
What if she was
telling the truth?
So far, her story checked out.

“Sean, stop it. We can’t…your brothers are
here.”

Sean kept on kissing me. “I want you. You
don’t want me?”

“Of course, I do, but not while they’re
here.” I really didn’t want him. The only thing I wanted was to
find out how he came into possession of a picture of me from years
ago.

“I’ll tell them to leave, then.”

He got up in a hurry and ran downstairs. The
next thing I know, Derrick and Warren were gone. Sean put Roman in
his room and then came back in our bedroom and broke me off.

While we were making love, I didn’t think
about the picture or Shanelle or nothing. All I could do was focus
on Sean. He was very thorough when he made love to me. He was
attentive to my needs. Anything I wanted, he was willing to give
me, just as long as I was satisfied.

When we were done, though, I couldn’t help
but think about the picture. A picture of me from years ago was in
his nightstand drawer – the same picture Shanelle said Sean used to
carry around looking for Roman’s birth mother. It just didn’t make
any sense to me. So, I thought it would be a good idea to find out
what the deal was. There was no need for me to stress myself out
over this.

“Sean, how long have you known me?”

He smiled. “Huh? What you talking about,
baby?”

“How long have you known me?”

“Ah…since last June. You know that.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how you came to be
in possession of a picture of me from like five years ago.”

“What picture?”

“The picture in your nightstand…the one
where I have my hand on my stomach. I was pregnant.”

“Oh…that one. Okay, you got me. I lifted it
from your apartment.”

“You did?”

“Yeah. I’m busted. You got me.”

I could breathe a sigh of relief. That would
explain it. However, if he took that picture out of my apartment,
then what picture was Shanelle referring to? I was beginning to
think she was making the whole thing up.

“Sean, can I ask you something?”

“Sure you can, baby. Shoot.”

“Did you ever find Roman’s birth
mother?”

Sean took a moment, like he needed to think
about my question before he answered it. “Nah.”

“Then why did you stop looking?” Sean was
slow responding to my question, if he was going to respond at all.
“Sean, did you hear me?”

“Yeah, I heard you.”

“So why did you stop looking?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to think about
that right now. I just want to enjoy you.”

I smiled. Sean was a master of changing
subjects, especially when he was the one in the hot seat. He put
his arm around me and I melted into his chest. Shanelle sure threw
some doubts my way. I don’t know what to think. What I do know is
that I trust Sean. He would never lie to me. Never. I trusted him
with every fiber of my being.

SEAN INVITED THE family over for
dinner out of the blue. We hadn’t planned on having them over. It
was a spur of the moment decision made solely by Sean that I agreed
to at the last minute. Sean had the dinner catered since there
wasn’t enough prep time to actually put something together. It was
just an immediate family dinner that included me, Sean, Victoria,
Nikki, Roman and Sean’s brothers and nephews. I didn’t know what
the urgency was to get the family all together in such a hurry.
Maybe it had something to do with last night.

Last night, after we’d made love,
I must have immediately fallen asleep. Then later that night, I was
awakened by sniffling and crying. I peeped from under the covers
with my eyes cracked just enough to see Sean wasn’t in bed. He was
in the bathroom crying. And this wasn’t a normal cry. This was a
very distressing cry, more like weeping. After a few minutes of it,
he stopped. Then he turned on the faucet maybe to wash his
face.

I put my head back down in a
hurry. I didn’t want him to know I was awake. I’m sure he thought I
was sleep, and I wanted to keep it that way. I heard him leaving
the bathroom and I listened acutely to hear his footsteps as he
crept closer to the bed. He rested in his usual position, right
behind me. He kissed the back of my neck three times and then
whispered, “I love you, Moni.”

My first thought was,
does he know I’m
awake?
He couldn’t have. I wasn’t moving a muscle. Second, why
was Sean crying hysterically in the bathroom? What if something was
wrong with him? What if there was another woman? What if he didn’t
want to be married to me any longer? So many questions were burning
in my head while I pretended to be sleep. There was no way he was
going to find out that I was awake and had heard him crying.
Hopefully, he would come to me at the right time and tell me what
was bothering him. It’s not like I could bring up the subject. Then
he would know I wasn’t sleep. Either way, I was screwed. But I
would rather know than not know.

Chapter 33 -
The Confession

Dinner was awkward. Sean was quieter than normal. He
was not the bubbly, full of life, confident man that I married
earlier this year. It wasn’t the norm for him to be silent over
dinner. Sean always had something to say. He was the entertainer,
the life of the party. I wasn’t sure who this man was.

Sean had ordered lasagna, garlic bread, and a huge
Caesar salad from an Italian restaurant called Buca di Beppo on
North Van Buren Street. The food was so good and everyone was busy
getting their grub on – everyone except for Sean that is. His food
remained untouched. He was definitely troubled about something. In
the midst of silverware clinging against fine china plates, Sean
stood up.

“I have something I need to say,” he said without
even looking at me.

“What’s the matter, son?” Victoria asked.

“I just need to say this.” When he turned his
attention towards me, so did everyone else. “Monica, I love you
from the depths of my heart.” He paused after the statement,
collecting his thoughts. “You’ve been looking for your son, Eric,
and it hurts me every time I see you disappointed and sad because
you don’t have him in your life.”

Has he found Eric?
I was becoming more anxious by the minute,
sitting on the edge of my chair like I was watching the good part
of my favorite movie. I wanted Sean to spit out whatever it was he
was trying to say in a hurry.

“I wanted to help you look for Eric. I really did.
But I couldn’t because I would be looking in vain.”

I butted in. He hit a nerve with that comment. “What
do you mean you would be looking in vain? Finding Eric is important
to me. You know that.”

“Monica, I know that. I know you want to find Eric.
What I’m trying to tell you is that you can stop looking. Eric is
sitting right there.” Sean pointed to Roman.

Boy was I heated. I bet my temperature went from
98.3 to 101.0 in a matter of seconds. Now wasn’t the time to teach
me a lesson about the value of family. I knew Roman was my son by
marriage and I loved him as such. There was no need for Sean to
keep emphasizing that to me. He had used that same analogy before
when I spoke about finding Eric. I certainly didn’t need to hear it
again.

“Sean, what is this about?” I asked.

“I love you,” he said, completely evading my
question. “I’m tired of lying to you…I’m tired of lying to my
family, and I don’t want to keep this secret from my family any
longer. I can’t. I can’t go on living this lie, lying to the people
that I love.”

Those were words I never wanted to hear. Of course,
my mind gravitated to the worst – that he’d done some unforgivable
act that would leave me heartbroken and lonely. Anxious to know
what it was, I just let him talk.

“Monica, last summer was not the first time we met.
The first time I met you, you were walking down Hampton Avenue with
your hair thrown back in a ponytail and a black book bag hanging
from your shoulder. I was riding down the road and you waved at
me.”

I had absolutely no idea what Sean was talking
about. The last time I can remember walking down the street with a
book bag was when I was in high school. I sat there for a moment,
racking my brain trying to figure out if I had met him before.

“You were eighteen, a senior in high school. I don’t
recall exactly how it happened, but we started dating.” Sean began
crying, but still forced himself to talk through the tearful
confession. “I told you that my name was Cornelius Hill and that I
was in college, but really, I was in my late twenties when I met
you. We formed a beautiful relationship.”