Big Girls Do Cry (28 page)

My house phone rang, and I picked it up without looking at the caller ID. I’d changed my number, along with all the house locks and alarm codes the day after I kicked Leon out. It was a good thing, too, because he had been blowing up my cell phone and even came by a few times, professing his love. The last time, I had to call the cops because he wouldn’t leave. Now, I don’t
want to give you the wrong impression, because it wasn’t like he was trying to knock my door down or break into the house. No, this fool was staging a sit-in. That’s right, a sit-in. He was sitting on the front lawn with one sign that read I LOVE LORAINE AND ONLY LORAINE! and another one that read I’M NOT LEAVING UNTIL YOU TAKE ME BACK.

Under any other circumstances, it might have worked, but I was done. I doubt he thought I’d call the cops, but I sure as hell did. Anyway, I knew it wasn’t him on the phone, because I had given out the new number to only a few select people, and he definitely wasn’t on the list.

“Hello.”

“Merry Christmas!” It was Jerome and his cheerful ass. I loved him, but I could sure as hell do without his Mr. Happy attitude today. Not now, not when I wanted to be miserable.

“Merry Christmas, Jerome,” I replied in a flat tone.

“Loraine, girl, you are the bomb!” God, what was he so damn cheery about?

“Why am I the bomb, Jerome?” I only asked because I knew he wanted me to.

“Because of your Christmas present, why else? They just delivered it, and, girl, I love it! I absolutely love it. And I love you for it. It must have cost you a small fortune to have them deliver it on Christmas Day.”

“I love you too, Jerome.” I couldn’t help it; a smile crept up on my face. Now I understood why he was so happy. I’d completely forgotten about the home-theater system I’d gotten him for Christmas, since I purchased it so long ago. “That is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“Hell to the yes!” He sounded so happy. “Did you open mine yet?”

“No, not yet.”

“Girl, you better open my presents.” He sounded even more excited about my gifts than he did his. “I gave you two. Open the blue one first.”

I shuffled through what was left of the unopened presents until I found Jerome’s. One was a two-by-two-inch box that I was sure was some type of jewelry. The other was a thin rectangular
box about the size of my hand. I had no idea what was inside that one.

“You open it yet?”

“No, I haven’t opened it yet. Give me a minute, okay?” I took my time and unwrapped the first box. “Oh, Jerome, they’re beautiful.” As I suspected, it was jewelry, a pair of beautiful dangling diamond and white gold earrings. Unlike most of the presents I’d received, this was something I would wear for many years. As always, Jerome knew my taste. “Thank you so much.” I was starting to feel a little Christmas cheer.

“Merry Christmas, Raine, but that’s not it yet. That was just the warm-up. Your big gift is in the other box. Go ‘head and take the paper off, but don’t open it until I tell you.”

“Big gift?” I looked down at the present. What in the world could possibly be better than the earrings he’d already given me? Okay, I was starting to get excited. I ripped the paper off the gift, exposing a blue Tiffany’s box. It had to be the diamond bangle I’d been looking at online. “My goodness, Jerome, you’ve gone all out. You know I love stuff from Tiffany’s.”

“Yes, I do. Now, open it.”

I opened the box, but there was no bangle or jewelry of any kind in it. It contained a small envelope, about the size of a credit card. I lifted it up to see if there was anything underneath, but there was nothing. “An envelope?”

“Yup. Confused?”

“Very,” I replied. “What is it, a gift card?”

“Nope. It’s not even from Tiffany’s.”

“Okay, so what exactly is it?”

“Loraine, I spent the better part of a month trying to find this present for you.” As he was talking, I opened the envelope. “You know I usually don’t play matchmaker, but I want you to be happy. In that envelope is a business card from that guy Michael Richards,” he explained at the same time I was pulling out the card and reading it in confused silence.

“It’s time to move on, Loraine. You’re a beautiful woman inside and out, and nobody sees that more than Michael. He wrote his cell number on the back of the card. He went down to Norfolk
for the holidays, but he said you can call him anytime. He’s expecting your call.”

“Jerome, I…” Wow. I didn’t know what to say. Jerome had taken friendship to an entirely new level. No one had ever done anything like this for me before. Sure, I’d had people hook me up before I was married. I’d also been on my share of blind dates. But what Jerome had done and the way he presented it showed me just how much he loved me. He knew I was hurting inside; I was lonely, and he was trying to do something about it. I was touched.

“Thank you,” I whispered. “I love you, Jerome.”

“I love you too. Merry Christmas.”

I turned the card over, and like he said, there was a number written on the back. Now it was up to me to decide what I would do with it. I can’t say I hadn’t thought about Michael, because that would be a bold-faced lie. He’d been the subject of many conversations between Jerome and me, before and after Leon left. I was more of a skeptic than Jerome. To me, Michael almost seemed too good to be true. I mean, after everything I had been through with Leon, what were the chances of me finding a sweet, honest man who had supposedly loved me since we were kids? There’s no way he could be so perfect.

Jerome, on the other hand, didn’t think so. He saw this as God’s way of giving me a break after all the crap I’d put up with. He encouraged me to find Michael, saying I deserved to be happy. I thought about it for a while, even going so far as to check Facebook to see if he had a page, but I gave up before I’d even typed in his name, because it just made me feel desperate. If it was really meant to be, I wouldn’t have to search him out.

And so, apparently, Jerome had completed the search for me.

“So, you gonna call him?”

“I don’t know. I want to, but I don’t know if I can.”

“What are you talking about? You better call that man. Do you know how much trouble it was tracking him down?”

“I can only imagine, and I appreciate it, but he doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know the real me. What he sees is a girl who was nice to him when we were kids. I’m forty-four years old. I’m not
the little girl he knew as a child. The girl he’s infatuated with is long gone.”

“Oh, I see what’s going on now. You’re scared to take a chance, aren’t you? Scared you just might fall in love again.”

“Scared would be an understatement. I’m absolutely terrified.”

“It’s okay to be scared. Just don’t let life pass you by because of it. Just give him a call, okay?”

Knowing Jerome as well as I did, I was sure he wouldn’t let up until I agreed to make the call.

“Okay, I’ll call him. But I’m not getting my hopes up.”

“Good. Let me know how it goes,” he said before we ended the call.

Placing the phone on the coffee table in front of me, I studied the business card while I gathered my nerve. This was not easy for me. It had been a long time since I’d had to think about finding a man, and even back when I was single, I’d never been the most confident woman. It’s funny, because people at work saw me as so strong. They weren’t wrong; in my professional life, I rarely suffered with doubt. But for some reason, I’d never felt completely comfortable when it came to dating.

It wasn’t that I had low self-esteem or anything. I wasn’t some stereotypical big girl who hated her body. On the contrary, I was proud of my curves. I don’t know, maybe it was that I was so used to succeeding at everything I did, and with dating, there’s always that chance you’ll be shot down. I wasn’t used to failure, so I avoided anything that opened up the possibility—hence my aversion to the whole singles scene. But the sad reality was that I would soon be entering that scene once again, so I guess there was no time like the present to make that leap.

With a sigh, I picked up the phone and dialed the number on the back of the card.

“Hello.”

“Hi, Michael. It’s … it’s Loraine. I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

“Loraine, Merry Christmas!” To my relief, he sounded happy to hear from me. “When Jerome asked for my number, I didn’t think you’d actually call.”

“I almost didn’t.”

“Well, I don’t know what changed your mind, but I’m glad you did.”

Did he really mean that? Was he really that glad to hear from me? If Jerome were here, he would be kicking me for doubting myself, but I couldn’t help it. I wasn’t going to change instantly.

“My sister just said to tell you Merry Christmas and asked when you are coming down to see her.”

“Tell her I said as soon as I get an invitation.”

“Be careful what you ask for.” He laughed. “Listen, Loraine, can I call you back? We’re right in the middle of Christmas dinner.”

“Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry. Sure, you can call me back.”

“Before I let you go, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Sure. What?”

“Jerome told me about you and your husband’s split. I’m gonna be down here for a couple of days doing some stuff for the family, but would you like to do something on New Year’s Eve when I get back?”

I didn’t allow doubt to interfere this time. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

“All right, then, it’s a date. I’ll give you a call a little later tonight, and we can finalize our plans.”

“I’ll be waiting.” I hung up the phone feeling a whole lot better than I had when I woke up.

The tension in the room was so thick I felt like I could suffocate. Rashad was an utter wreck, and I wasn’t much better. We’d gotten up to open Christmas presents about an hour ago, and my sister was nowhere to be found. I watched as Rashad checked his wristwatch for the third time in five minutes. He kept glancing up at me with the same annoyed expression, as if this entire thing were my fault. The looks he was giving me were so evil, you would have thought he caught me in bed with another man. But it wasn’t me he should be mad at; it was Isis. She was the one who went MIA, on Christmas of all days.

“What I don’t understand is why the hell she would go anywhere without telling you.”

No, he didn’t just try to throw this at my feet! It was one thing for him to think it, but it was another for him to verbalize those thoughts. I was not about to let him make this about me, when everything I’d ever done was for the benefit of our unborn child and our marriage.

“Telling me?” I pointed at myself for emphasis. “Honey, contrary to popular belief, I’m not my sister’s keeper. And besides, when I was keeping tabs on her in order to keep up with the health of our unborn child, you told me I was being overbearing and that I should leave her be, remember?”

“What I remember was you always being on her back, stressing her out about what she was eating and drinking. That shit you pulled at your parents’ house, yelling and screaming at her Thanksgiving weekend because she went out for a few hours—you could have made her lose the baby.”

Oh, brother. Whose side was he on anyway? We were supposed to be a team.

“You got this all wrong,” I retaliated. “I wasn’t stressing her out. I was laying down the law.” He wasn’t the only one who could get snippy. “She’s the one who thinks I’m her maid and you’re her butler. If anyone’s being stressed out, it’s us! Waiting on her ass hand and foot like we’re slaves. And as far as Thanksgiving weekend’s concerned, what I said to her was for us. Don’t act like you don’t know where she went when she took off with Daddy’s car. She was with Tony and you know it.”

He shook like a chill passed through him, but he still tried to defend her. “She said she wanted to get away from you for a few hours so she could breathe. I don’t have any reason to believe she went to see him. Why would she do that?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Of course I’m serious! Why would—”

Thank the Lord, the doorbell rang, because I could feel a huge argument brewing, and if he had said the wrong thing, there would have been two people missing in action.

Rashad jumped up to answer the door. When he opened it, I saw two Chesterfield County police officers standing on the porch. Rashad had called the police about twenty minutes after we realized Isis was not home. When we first checked her room and saw that her bedroom hadn’t been slept in, I didn’t think much of it. My thought was that she’d hopped a bus to New York and was probably at Momma and Daddy’s by now. But when I called there and they hadn’t heard from her, I started to get a bad feeling that she might be with Tony. I ruled that out when I realized it was Christmas Day. He had a wife and kids. No way his wife would let him out of her sight long enough to make an overnight trip to Virginia on Christmas Eve.

Seeing the officers just made the whole situation a bit scarier and a whole lot more serious in my mind. Now I was deathly afraid that something really might have happened to my sister.

“Afternoon. We received a call about a missing person?” the taller of the two cops asked as they entered the house. I could tell they were impressed with our house as they tried to inconspicuously peer around.

I walked over and stood next to Rashad, who spoke up first. “Yes, my sister-in-law’s missing, and she’s five-and-a-half months pregnant.”

“When was the last time you saw her?” the shorter of the two asked, writing on a small pad.

“She was here when I went to work,” Rashad replied, turning toward me. “But my wife was with her up until around …”

“Around five yesterday afternoon,” I said, completing his sentence. “I went out to do some last-minute shopping.”

“Does she have a car?”

“No. She doesn’t have a car. And she left her cell phone upstairs in her room,” Rashad explained.

“I see. Does she do this type of thing often?” the taller officer asked. “Has she ever left for long periods of time without telling anyone?”

“Never,” Rashad answered quickly as he paced across the room. He was so wound up he couldn’t even keep still. “She may go out for a few hours, but she always comes back home. She would never do this to us without calling. Something had to have happened to her.”