His Third Wife

“Why?”

“Yes—why? Why would major stakeholders, big names with deep pockets in my home state want to put this man in jail?”

“I don’t know, Mayor. Why? Are you going to tell us?”

“I intend to do just that,” Jamison said, turning from Alina to the camera. “Expose who’s behind all of this. But that’s all I have for right now.”

Jamison stood and started removing the wired microphone from beneath his jacket.

“That’s all?” Alina looked nervously at Jamison and then to the camera that was still recording and then back again. “That’s all you have to say?”

Leaf saw his boss in a struggle and rushed on set to help him get untangled from the wire. When he freed Jamison, the mayor walked off set and left Leaf in front of the camera holding the wire. “That’s all,” Leaf said. “That’s all.”

The cameraman turned his lens back to Alina.

“A Fox Five News exclusive. I’m Alina Blue. Thank you,” she said, realizing that the mayor’s impromptu visit would be the rope that catapulted her to a height she’d actually secretly thought she’d never see. Months later, when she was being interviewed for a job at the desk at MSNBC, she’d mention that she saw in Jamison Taylor’s eyes truth and honesty. It had broken her heart, and renewed her faith in the power of journalism. She hoped her viewers had seen the same thing. She had no way of measuring that. But they had.

Val returned home from a follow-up appointment with her doctor to hear harsh voices that sounded like arguing coming from inside her closed bedroom door. Stepping up, she was sure the source of the battle was the television she’d left on, or maybe the radio on her alarm clock had gone off. Jamison had hardly been in the bedroom since the long night in the hospital. Even after the maid cleaned the mess, he said he couldn’t take the memories. But Val felt another way. She didn’t want the memories from the bed and the bathroom, but being in the space where her baby had died made her feel in some way close to the lost soul. Feel that maybe the soul would find her.

She put her hand on the doorknob and was about to push in, but stopped when she heard that the angry sounds were familiar and coming from just one voice. She pressed her ear against the door and through the wood heard ricochets of anger from Jamison’s tongue: “I know who he is . . . matters . . . mine . . . matters . . . my son . . . my son! You can try . . . won’t win. . . . I’m tired too! You won’t win. I’ll get him . . . to Georgia . . . me. . . . Go ahead!”

Val kept her ear to the wood until there was silence and then she turned the knob.

The bedroom was dark, but Val could see Jamison sitting in a chair that he’d turned towards the window, so his back was to her. He turned his head a little to acknowledge her entrance and let out a deep breath.

Events had made of Val a woman who was short on pleasantries. She went right in with, “Who was that on the phone?”

Jamison exhaled again. “I tried to tell you,” he said. “That night at Paschal’s, I tried to tell you.”

“And don’t say it was Kerry. You wouldn’t e

ven talk to her like that.”

“I’m not going to lie to you. I can’t lie anymore. I can’t lie to anyone else.” Jamison got up from the seat in the dark and turned to Val. “It was Coreen.”

“Coreen? Coreen? That woman in California?”

“We have a son.”

“What? A son? But I—” The weight of the news made Val stagger for a seat on the edge of the bed. “I thought you—I thought she had an abortion. That’s what you told me. What you said. Remember?”

“That’s what she told me. But she never did. She had the baby on her own—I guess she was trying to get back at me for leaving. I don’t know.”

“All that money Leaf sends to L.A. every month—?” Val looked at Jamison for a response before she’d finish.

“Yes. It’s supposed to be for my son; that’s what we agreed. For him and for her to just keep quiet until I got things figured out here.”

“This is crazy.”

“But it’s more than that to Coreen. Once she saw that we got married and then that you were pregnant on the news, she started asking for more money and her demands have only gotten worse. She threatened to kill herself. To kill me.”

“What?”

“I don’t think she’s capable of that, but really, right about now, I don’t know what she might do.”

“I can’t believe this. I can’t believe you would keep something like this from me.” The room fell in and out of focus around Val. It was long and then wide and then closing all in. She realized it was the tears in her eyes blurring her vision.

“I tried to tell you. It has nothing to do with you,” Jamison said.