His First Wife

TIME: 12:17 AM

I know this e-mail might be a little late, but I figured I’d wait until the right time to respond to your heartfelt message. And now, as I begin my new life, in a new year, I think it’s good to let you know that I am fine. I was going through so much last year that I needed to pull back and really get myself together before I could reach out to anyone. I hope I didn’t scare you, but I had to do this for myself. I’ve been running from my feelings for so long and I finally realized that I had to face myself and the pain I felt after losing Duane in such a violent way. I do miss him, but I didn’t allow myself to feel that. I hid it with a bunch of other drama and I’m tired. I sold the house and moved to Oakland with a cousin and I am now seeing a therapist who specializes in helping victims of 9/11.

I am not sad about this. I am excited and ready for a change and prepared to let go of the pain. I am sorry for hurting people and I can only pray that God forgives me for what I did.

This will be the last e-mail you receive from me. I don’t feel a need to carry on any relationships from the past. I am seeking to build new, healthy ones that match my new attitude. I hope you understand and know that this is not about you; it’s about my recovery.

I wish you all the best in the New Year and pray for you and your family.

Coreen

My Dearest Reader,

Wow! It’s been five years since I wrote His First Wife, and let me tell you, not a month has gone by when I didn’t receive an e-mail, letter, or phone call from readers from Weed, California, to Jacksonville, Florida wanting to know what happened to my most chic, blue-blood Atlanta couple, Jamison and Kerry. As I did as I wrote their emotional tale of love found, lost and reclaimed, readers fell in love with this pair. And not because of their endless drama or the insider’s peek at elite black Atlanta, but because of their intense vulnerability, rawness, and sincere dedication to love. Perhaps that’s what made me tell Jamison and Kerry’s story in the first place. Like all of you, I wanted to see reflections of the loves I’ve known. What it feels like to be lied to. How it feels to be the liar. What it’s like to move on. And, yes, why so many times we return to our lovers with open arms. Maybe we want to believe it will last forever. Maybe we know it just won’t. But . . . maybe . . . it will . . .

Of course, before I’m a writer, I’m an enthusiastic reader of these stories. So, like many of you, after reading His First Wife, I too wondered, “What happened to them?” And my need to fill this desire (and answer your requests) led to me giving loyal readers random “Jamison and Kerry” updates in my other Southern novels like Should Have Known Better. Even then, I still got more letters, and even when I responded, I still received more questions asking, “What’s next for Jamison?”

That’s what leads us, dearest reader, to this novel, the sequel to His First Wife. It’s my answer to those e-mails and my needs. It’s not just an update; it’s a visitation with old friends, a resolution, a final chapter (hum . . . maybe not). What you’ll find in the nex

t installment in Jamison and Kerry’s tale is scandal, secrets, sincerity, and faith. These characters demanded much from my imagination. And through the writing, as I discovered and rediscovered what made them tick, I kept thinking, “Well, wouldn’t it take this kind of imagination to even dream up what actually happens in our real love lives? How it happens? How it feels? How it never lets us go?”

I really hope you enjoy this next step in the journey with Jamison and Kerry. I look forward to reading those letters and taking those calls. :)

Yours, of course

Grace Octavia

Two messy divorces and a string of affairs haven’t

stopped self-made millionaire Jamison Jackson from

becoming mayor of Atlanta. But while he may have a

gorgeous new wife and new alliances, he can’t quite

escape his past and those who want to see him fail in

Grace Octavia’s latest…

His Third Wife

On sale in November 2013 from Dafina Books

1

“Murder in a New South”

After a predictable rising sun had rolled through hopscotch maps of plantations, crawled along the tips of decaying steeples in suburban enclaves, and made its way to the ambitious stacking skyline that marked Atlanta’s city center, a body was found all akimbo in the middle of Peachtree Street. People who’d come from pollen-fecund cars, which had been stopped to a crawl in both directions along the venous strip that connected all of what was being called the official “capital of the New South,” looked to the sky like maybe the bloody brown mess had fallen from the sun’s fiery rays. One person pointed. Then two pointed. Three. Then four. A reporter arrived. And then a police officer. All pointed to the top of the Downtown Westin. The body in the street in the bloody gray suit had come from there. Had to. One pointing son asked his mother, “Was that a woman up there looking down at us?” Further along in the crowd, a coworker asked a driver, “Was that a man dressed as a woman standing at the top of the Westin?” A wife, who’d thought the same thing, said to her husband and then later to a reporter, “You could tell by the jaw. It wasn’t a woman. It was a man dressed as a woman. The shoulders were too broad.” Her husband disagreed: “She was too small to be a man.” But some hadn’t seen anything. Just a shadow. Maybe a bird sitting on the edge looking down at the body like prey.

Soon it was a scene. And someone in a white cloth jumpsuit lifted the head that had nearly been crushed by the weight of the fall. Looked into the eyes. Open and dead. And knew. This was no angel that had fallen from the sun to halt rush hour traffic. It was the new mayor.

That was when the talk started. When it would never stop. Because that man, the mayor who’d fallen from the top of the Westin to the black tar, was Jamison Jackson. Everything the chocolate side of the city could be proud of and the white side could use as an example of Southern progress. Born poor in the SWATS. A Morehouse man. Fraternity guy. Self-made millionaire. A heart that won the old guard. A voice that had vowed to repave the very street that would become his deathbed. A soul that wanted everything he could imagine. And he was dead. The city dressed in black for the funeral. And from the boardrooms in Buckhead to the lunch counters at the Busy Bee and Chantrelles in the West End, chatter was king. There was a first wife. A new wife. A mother. A son. A fat pig’s belly worth of secrets. A mess of shadows that everyone thought they could see clearly. Politics at its finest.

But that was just the tipping point of it all. Stories like that never begin with a body falling from a midlevel hotel.

2

“His Next Wife”