Stand Your Ground: A Novel (31 page)

And then I opened my eyes. It took a moment to remember who I was, where I was—and then it came back and I remembered it all. It took another moment as I wondered if I had opened my eyes on the same day that I’d fallen asleep. But the brightness of the sun breaking through the living room’s bay window told me that Friday had turned into Saturday morning.

And I didn’t even have to get up to realize that my husband had not come home last night.

This was not the first time that Tyrone hadn’t come home without a call, without a text, without me knowing where he was. That last time, three years ago, had led to bad things happening.

I prayed that this wasn’t the worst part of my history returning for a repeat visit.

I
tried my best to hold on to hope.

It was just a little before nine when I went into the shower, hoping that by the time I came out, Tyrone would be home.

It was 9:13 when I stepped from the shower into my bedroom, and still he wasn’t home. I tried his cell; it went straight to voice mail.

It was 9:27 when I started getting dressed, and I hoped when I finished, Tyrone would be downstairs in the family room watching TV like my testimony never happened.

It was exactly 9:45 when I walked down the stairs and into the family room. It was empty, just like every other room in the house. Another call to his cell, and just because I wanted to hear his voice, I listened to his entire voice-mail message. Twice.

So, I sipped one cup of coffee after another, and prayed that Tyrone would come home before I got some kind of caffeine poisoning.

By 11:02, I could feel the coffee floating in my belly, and my hope was fading. I wandered back to the front of the house and sat on the bottom step.

So many times I’d heard of a family breaking up after the death of a child. But that wasn’t supposed to happen to me and Tyrone. We’d been through the fire already. And since the fire hadn’t killed us, weren’t we supposed to be stronger?

It seemed ridiculous . . . that I was paying for a three-year-old sin. I’d repented, I’d begged God and Tyrone for forgiveness. And I’d been grateful when I received it.

I guess when it came to humans, the ransom for sins was never fully paid.

The cold, empty, sad silence of our home hummed in my ears as I stared at the door, willing it to open and for Tyrone to enter. The minutes passed, the humming got louder, and the door never opened.

It was when the silence started to scream that I jumped up, grabbed my purse from where I’d dropped it last night, and ran out the door. I revved up the engine to our car and the tires screeched as I sped out of our driveway to a destination unknown. All I knew was that I had to find my husband.

So, I made a list in my head. First stop—Raj’s. It didn’t take me ten minutes to pull up to my brother-in-law’s row house. Before I turned off the ignition, I already knew he wasn’t home, and Tyrone probably wasn’t there either. Both Raj’s truck and motorcycle were missing from where he usually parked them.

Still, I knocked on his door. And after I knocked for a solid five minutes, I got back in the car.

Before I pulled away, I called Delores, thinking that I might save myself a trip.

“No, baby, he’s not here and he hasn’t called me,” she said after we got all the greetings and how-are-yous out of the way. “But I don’t expect him to call me ’cause he knows I’m gonna tell him to take his butt home.”

“Thank you. Thank you for forgiving me.”

“Baby, our sins are forgiven before we even commit them. Forgiven and forgotten as far as the east is from the west. And Tyrone’s
gonna remember that. Just give him a minute, and he’ll remember that he ain’t no saint either.”

I told her good-bye, and then drove to Tyrone’s auto shop. There was no way I was going to go inside looking for Tyrone. No way I was going to let people know our business like that. Enough of our life was already on display.

But even from where I sat, I could see a good many of the guys in the shop. And there was no sign of Tyrone. I eased the car around to the back, just in case he’d parked Raj’s truck or motorcycle (I didn’t know which he’d taken) back there.

No sign of my husband.

If Tyrone wasn’t at Raj’s, Delores’s, or his shop, I had no idea where to go next. Tyrone had never been a hanging-out-with-the-fellas kind of guy; he always said that with his wife as his best friend, who else did he need?

With nowhere else to look, I just drove through the streets. Making lefts and making rights. I wandered through just about every street in West Philly, then made my way up to Germantown before I hooked back around through North Philly, Center City, and then home to my neighborhood again. I just drove, stopping nowhere, seeing nothing.

I was about two hours into my drive when I started to cry. And pray. As time passed, my tears thickened, really blurring my vision. At a red light, I rested my head on the steering wheel, needing just a moment. A moment to control my tears, a moment to figure this all out.

When the car behind me honked, I jumped, looked up, and right there on the corner was Sweet Carolina’s! Tyrone’s favorite restaurant.

That had to be a sign, and I made a quick, sharp turn, lined up my car into a parking space, wiped my eyes, then ran inside. I
had such a good feeling because there were no coincidences in life.

“May I help you?” the hostess asked.

“Uh . . . I’m looking . . . for a friend. I was supposed to meet him here.”

She looked behind her. “There are only a few people here; you can look around.” She moved to help a couple who’d walked in behind me and I rushed through the informal restaurant that raved about having the best soul food north of the Carolinas.

I checked every table, every booth, not caring about the question I saw in everybody’s eyes as they stared back at me.

When I didn’t see Tyrone, I checked every table, every booth again. Just in case he’d been hiding during my first go-round and I could catch him as I doubled back.

But there was no sign of my husband. And that meant riding past Sweet Carolina’s hadn’t been a sign at all.

As I walked back toward the door, I was filled with a dread that made my heart sink to my feet. Maybe this time, it had been too much for Tyrone. Maybe between Marquis’s death and the resurrection of my infidelity, it was all too much and Tyrone couldn’t take it anymore. Maybe this time, he wasn’t coming back.

I tried to hold my feelings in until I got to my car. Really, I did. But I didn’t. And I cried. I mean, I really cried as I stumbled through the restaurant’s doors, bumping into someone on my way out as they came in.

“Janice?”

I could hardly see him. But I knew his voice.

“Janice . . .” Caleb called my name again. “What’s wrong?”

My tears not only blinded me, they choked me. And I couldn’t get a word out.

Caleb took my hand and led me away—just like he did three
years ago. And I followed him because, like before, I didn’t know what else to do.

He led me to a car—a Lexus, the same car he’d had when we were lovers.

I slid into the passenger seat, and I cried. He slid in on the other side, and I cried. I cried and Caleb just sat there, as if crying was just something I had to do and he was patient enough to wait until I finished.

There came the time when I finally stopped. And found my voice. And said, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?’

“For . . . this. For this . . . again.”

I looked up at him and could tell that he remembered, too. That day, three years ago, when he’d found me in the church’s parking lot, a crying mess, just like this.

Tyrone had been so angry when Raj called him from the police station, telling him he’d been arrested and needed an attorney and bail.

“I can’t believe you did that, Janice!” Tyrone screamed. “I can’t believe you turned my brother in.”

“What was I supposed to do?” I shouted back. “Just let him keep beating on Syreeta? Your brother has a problem, and now maybe it will stop.”

“You should’ve let them handle it.”

“Well, Syreeta didn’t want to handle it.” Then I thought of another approach, another way to get him to see what I was trying to say. “If someone were beating on Marquis, you would want it reported.”

“Marquis is a boy, Syreeta is a woman. You should’ve let grown folks handle their own business.”

Tyrone stomped out of our house pissed, but I was as angry as he
was. I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to stand by and let my friend be beaten no matter who was doing the beating.

Tyrone didn’t come home that night and I was really pissed. But when he didn’t come home the next night, I was frantic. By the third night, I was truly scared.

Had Tyrone really left me? He was willing to break up over his brother?

I called his cell, every hour on the hour, and every fifteen minutes in between. But he never answered. And though Delores did answer her phone, she didn’t say too many words to me, and the ones she did utter gave me no information about where I could find my husband.

I did my best to hide my distress from Marquis, telling our fourteen-year-old that his dad had an emergency business trip, though I wasn’t sure he believed that since Tyrone, an auto mechanic, had never gone out of town on business before.

But that’s all I had to give him, and now I needed someone to give something to me, someone to give me hope. It couldn’t be Syreeta; she was part of the problem and felt bad enough about what was happening with me and Tyrone.

So my pastor was my only choice, but the best choice because he would do more than talk to me . . . he would pray, too.

On the fourth day, once Marquis had left for school, I ditched work and went off to church, crying all the way, and asking God not to let my marriage end just because I was trying to do the right thing.

By the time I got to the church, my tears had blinded me, weakened me. I couldn’t even get out of the car.

Then a tap on my window made me look up.

“Janice?”

“Pastor . . .” That was all I could get out.

He opened the door, took my hand, and led me away. Not into the church, but into the parsonage next door, where he lived.

His voice brought me back from my memories. “You don’t have anything to apologize for,” Caleb said. “No one ever has to apologize for being hurt, for being upset.”

I looked at him for a quick moment, then turned away. “You know what’s going on?”

He nodded. “I think so . . . the trial? And you? And me? Last night, every station recapped everything about yesterday. And you. And me.”

“Oh.” I prayed that wherever Tyrone was, he hadn’t seen any of those reports.

“And then,” Caleb continued, “my phone started ringing. Members of the church started calling.”

“Oh,” I said again. I hadn’t thought about that. I hadn’t thought about what this news that was destroying me and Tyrone was doing to Caleb. Again I said, “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “It’s been going on all summer. Since all of this first broke back in June. It’s been tough, but it looks like the congregation is willing to stand by me.”

“I’m sorry.”

He chuckled just a little bit. “You can’t think of anything else to say, can you?”

I shook my head.

He said, “I really should be the one apologizing to you. If I hadn’t let it get out of hand . . .”

“You were grieving, too,” I reminded him. “We were both at fault, and then neither of us was at fault. It was just the time, and circumstances, and—”

“Two people who needed to be comforted,” he finished for me.

I nodded, thinking about his words. Thinking about how I had really needed to be comforted then.

Caleb said, “So is that why you’re upset? About what happened at the trial?”

“I can handle what happened in court. But Tyrone can’t. He’s gone . . . again. Just like last time.”

“Wow,” Caleb said, making the word sound like it had five syllables. “I thought you guys had worked it out. I thought that’s why you didn’t come to church anymore.” He held up his hand. “Which I understand.”

“I thought we had worked it out, too. But I guess we really hadn’t, because at the first sign of trouble—” I stopped because I could feel the tears and I tried my best to send them back to wherever they were coming from. I just didn’t want to cry anymore.

He reached for my hand. “I want to pray with you.”

I looked down to where he touched me. And once again I thought about his words.

Two people who needed to be comforted.

Again I thought about all the comfort that I’d really needed then. And I thought about all the comfort that I could really use now.

As gently as I could, I slipped my hand from his. There was only one man who could give me what I needed.

I looked up at Caleb so that I could explain to him what I knew now that I didn’t know then. But the tap on the window made me turn the other way.

“Janice!”

“Oh, my God!” I screamed as if I’d seen a ghost. And in a way, that’s exactly what I was seeing.

The car door opened. “Get out.”

For a second, I stayed right where I sat. Because I was hoping
and praying that this wasn’t real. How could it be? Lightning didn’t strike twice in the same place.

“Get out of the car, Jan,” Raj repeated.

It was only because I was so scared that I did what my brother-in-law told me.

Caleb leaned over from his seat. “Raj, it’s not what you think. We were just—”

Raj slammed the door on the rest of Caleb’s words. Then, with a gentle hold on my arm, he led me to his truck, parked right next to the Lexus.

There were a gaggle of thoughts going through my mind. And at first, I wasn’t able to capture a single one. But then, when I stood on the passenger side of Raj’s truck, one thought became clear—Tyrone was inside!

I trembled as Raj opened the door, almost wanting to close my eyes. There was no way I would be able to stand if I had to see the hurt on my husband’s face.