His Third Wife

Marcy looked at Kerry. “You did stop paying that man? Right? Please tell me you don’t have a detective following your ex-husband around.”

“Yes. I did,” Kerry whispered unconvincingly.

“Paying that man $5K a week! I don’t care if he was in the FBI. Ain’t no fuzzy pictures from the Ramada worth that much money.”

“Now you know that wasn’t what I was looking for.”

“Whatever, Kerry. Just tell me you stopped paying that man.” Marcy locked her eyes on Kerry.

“I stopped paying him,” Kerry said.

“Good.”

“And, for the record, I repeat: I was just doing that to make sure he was handling his business correctly. We both had a lot of money wrapped up in his campaign. Those were funds from the business.”

“Yeah, girl, I hear you,” Marcy agreed comically before laughing with Kerry.

“And I don’t care a thing about the new Mrs. Jamison Taylor,” Kerry said. “I just need to know who’s going to be around my son. And I don’t see why he didn’t tell me he was going to marry her.”

“I agree. Your son’s father getting married is your business. He should’ve told you something, Kerry.” Marcy crossed her arms and scrunched up her face at the sun. “All that shit he put you through—please. He owes you.”

A reel of dark images from the past played out in Kerry’s head as she pretended to watch Tyrian play—Jamison leaving her twice for the same woman with red hair, coming back to Atlanta on his knees, her trying one last time and realizing there was no candle Jamison could light to resurrect her dead heart.

“Where’s that crazy girl, anyway?”

“Coreen? In Los Angeles where Jamison left her, I guess,” Kerry revealed. “I haven’t heard anything else about her. His story was that she claimed she was pregnant, but when he told her he was coming back home to me, she went and got an abortion. He said it was over. But he still goes back and forth to LA. Claims it’s for business.”

The women fell silent.

“All that shit stirred up—courtesy of Jamison’s silly-ass mother, Mrs. Taylor. All because she couldn’t stand the idea of you two being together,” Marcy remembered. “I’m like, did she really think her little plot to ruin your marriage would work? Set her married son up with some widow from her church?”

“Actually, if you really think about it, her plan did work. We’re not together anymore.”

“Old battle-axe! I sure hope she’s getting what’s coming to her.”

“Don’t say that, Marce. That woman is very sick,” Kerry reminded her friend, and Marcy sobered up fast. Jamison’s mother had had a stroke at Tyrian’s birthday party a year back. Everyone, including a tear-soaked Tyrian, had thought she was dead. She’d been in and out of the hospital ever since.

“I just want to know how Jamison is going to explain all of this to his son. I mean, how could he get married without even having his son there?” Kerry said. Marcy sucked her teeth at Millicent climbing out of the pool with a head of wet hair.

“I guess we need to get going,” she said. “It’s going to take me all night to dry this girl’s hair. And she’s tender headed. What time is Jamison supposed to be here to get Tyrian?”

Kerry looked at the time on her cell phone and peeped Millicent counting as Tyrian went under water to hold his breath. “He’s supposed to be here at five, but that’ll be six. Maybe seven. Always late.”

“Maybe I should stay. Be right here and go in on that motherfucker for you!” Marcy joked.

“Um, no! We saw that last time you all were here when he came to get Tyrian for his weekend visit. Horror!”

“I just asked him what life was like after losing the best thing that ever happened to him,” Marcy said, laughing as they remembered her wine-influenced diatribe in which she promised Jamison nothing but ruin would befall him for all the days of what was left of his meager existence—she’d actually used those words.

“I’m not going through that again,” Kerry said. “Plus, I have to get out of here as soon as they leave. I’m volunteering at Hell Hath No Fury tonight.”

“You and that divorced women’s center,” Marcy said snidely. “Isn’t it time for you to move on? You’re pretty far from your divorce now.”

“I know, but I can still help other women like me. And I enjoy it. Gets me out of the house, keeps me sane,” Kerry said.

“Hanging with me doesn’t keep you sane?” Marcy rolled her eyes.

“No. It doesn’t.”