THE GREAT PRETENDER (41 page)

After paying his
cab fare, Reginald slowly walked up the winding pathway to the front door. He stopped for a minute and stared at the town house. This had been a home to him for so many years, yet as he approached, he felt like a stranger. Could it be because he had spent all these years merely
pretending
Orlando was his home?

Letting himself into the house, Reggie walked toward the stairs, dropped his bag, and called out for Renee, announcing his presence. Hearing nothing, he jogged up the stairs and headed for the bedroom. Glancing into Denise’s room, he noticed that most of her stuffed animals were missing, which was odd, since every corner of her room had been filled with the colorful bears. He went into the bedroom he had shared with Renee, then checked the bathroom. It appeared she had gone out.

Returning downstairs, he decided to call the office to make sure his corporate apartment was still available. He would have to make other arrangements if the lease had already been terminated. Staying in the house might only give Renee false hope, and Reginald had no intentions of taking such a risk. The pretense was over, and going forward, he intended to be nothing but forthright with Renee and her family.

Going into the kitchen to grab a soda, he immediately spotted the envelope on the countertop. Renee had left him a note. Good. At least he would know when she’d be back. His name had been neatly written across the front in capital letters: REGINALD.

Reaching for the letter, Reginald arched an eyebrow in curiosity and broke the seal. There was only one slip of paper inside, and it was definitely Renee’s handwriting. It read:

Breathing a sigh of relief, Reginald headed for the garage. Renee wanted to scare him into thinking she was going to run off with Denise! He shook his head as he reached the garage door and turned the knob.

The minute the door opened, the smell hit him.

Charcoal.

Reggie saw the grill
sitting in front of the car.
What the hell was it doing burning in the garage?
His eyes stung as he stepped through the doorway.

“Renee?” he called out. What in the world was she doing? He squinted as he walked toward the car. “Denise?”

Reggie opened his mouth to call her name again…But that’s when they came into focus.

He froze.

The blood drained from his face.

There, in the front seat of her Eclipse, was Renee. Her eyes were closed and her head was slumped forward, bent to the right.

Sprawled in her arms, appearing to be no more than asleep on her mother’s shoulder, was Denise. Their skin was a bizarre, abnormal color that Reggie’s near paralyzed mind couldn’t even begin to identify.

He moved forward, mystified. His brain could not compute what he was seeing. As if dreaming, Reginald flung open the door and attempted to pull Denise from the car. “Holy shit…” Her arms clung to her mother, stuck.

Rigor mortis.

Managing to clumsily dislodge her, Reggie ran with the small body into the kitchen, put her on the floor, and began blowing his breath into her stiff mouth. “Jesus Christ!” he said, still unable to make sense of what was happening, or even what he was doing.

He felt for her pulse. But of course, there was no pulse.

Reggie’s eyes glazed over. He knelt there so long that the tears running down his face splashed onto Denise’s corpse.

Finally, in a state of absolute shock, Reginald raced for the telephone and dialed 911.

On December 2, 2004
, the murder-suicide
of twenty-nine-year-old Renee Holly Jameson and six-year-old Denise Rose Brooks made both local and national news.

It wasn’t everyday that a woman locked herself in a garage with her child and waited for death to claim them…

The Jameson family was devastated.

The following day
, Beatrice Jameson received a letter in the mail. There was no return address. In it she found a cashier’s check from Renee’s bank. It was in excess of seventy-eight thousand dollars.

Engulfed by what her daughter had done, Bea collapsed on her front lawn, sobbing under the rays of the insultingly bright sun.

A startled neighbor saw Bea from her front porch and ran over to help her back into the house.

Reginald stayed at
the town house until it was no longer a crime scene, having been officially cleared by police investigators. He immediately phoned his Orlando Realtor and put it on the market.

It had been nearly one week since he arrived to find Renee and Denise dead in the garage, yet he could still see them. He saw them just as they had been: a daughter with her arms around her mother…

He had allowed himself contact with no one, opting to seclude himself in that place; the place in which he had created a home for a woman and a then-unwanted child.

Who could have guessed, in their worst nightmare, that it would come to this? That sweet, innocent little girl was gone. Gone.

Denise was dead. The toxic fume had filled her small lungs, and just like that…she was gone.

And Reginald knew he was responsible.

Would he ever again close his eyes and not see her face? Would he ever again lie down to sleep without her image behind his eyelids, haunting him?

But of course he wouldn’t…Renee had given her own life to guarantee it.

Renee knew what
she had been doing.

In a calculated and vile act of vengeance, she had sacrificed her own life in order to take the life of Reginald’s child.

Revenge would be hers for eternity.

The entire Jameson
family struggled to recover from Renee’s death.

Her mother and father suffered the most through the funerals. Beatrice withdrew into an emotional cocoon, leaving Benjamin confused, desperate to comfort his wife. He did not know how to help her when he himself needed so much consoling.

As time passed, Helen and John visited their parents daily, but they both needed as much comforting as they had come to offer.

Things were made even worse when Renee’s mail began showing up in her parents’ mailbox…

When they all swallowed the extent to which she’d gone, the premeditation, the planning…It was too much to bear.

They eventually turned to their church, seeking counsel to cope with the grief. Still, it was anyone’s guess when true healing would begin. Accepting what Renee had done, the incredible pain she’d left behind…it would be a long time coming.

Reginald Brooks returned
to Miami with Renee’s legacy hovering over him—a chilling black cloud that blocked all sunlight.

Taking a condo near his sister, Thelma, he went through the motions of living within the darkness of the cloud. And for months, he could not return to the work he loved; a clear head eluded him.

His world had been dimmed, and he no longer believed he deserved to have a normal life…The kind of life he had begun to crave.

Valerie finally built
up the courage, Olivia’s insistence notwithstanding, to send a brief letter to Joseph Ellison, alerting him to his condition, while making it clear that she had no interest in communicating with him further. Joe must have shared her feelings, as he never attempted to speak to her when they saw each other in school.

Valerie focused on forgiving herself for screwing up, getting over the feelings of self-disgust and humiliation. And for as long as they needed her, she would be there for her parents…until their family was whole again.

In keeping with
family values, Olivia clung to her little sister and to her parents. Even as she kept busy with school, she made sure they knew she did care; that she did love them. She never got around to sharing her hopes with Valerie, but she nursed dreams of their parents reconciling…She identified with her father’s desire for the family when he’d come home from Orlando that last time.

Though it was
painful to see them apart, Valerie and Olivia did their best to support their parents. They worried that their mother and father were sinking deeper and deeper into depression. But they weren’t willing to just stand by, watching that happen.

Maybe at some point, they could all go back to see Dr. Berenger. They both hoped that one day they would get there.

Throughout Frank’s convalescence
, both Valerie and Olivia made it a point to visit him and stayed in touch. Though wounded in more ways than one, he was grateful that they hadn’t turned their backs as quickly as Reginald and Tracy had. He told himself that they were the reason he didn’t go the distance with Reggie in court…

Theresa Parker refused to leave the picture and get lost. Even finding out about his relationship with Tracy didn’t drive her away. As her pregnancy progressed, Franklin found himself wishing more and more that something would happen to make her miscarry; because then he would be free.

And, after all, Tracy was now free…

When she got
news of Renee Jameson’s death, Tracy tried desperately to offer Reginald comfort, even flying to Orlando to attend the funerals, but he found that he could barely stand the sight of her. He could not ignore, though, that the need to be with her overwhelmed him at times; the need to have her reassurance and her comfort…as only Tracy could provide them.

However, when he looked at Tracy, he saw Franklin, and the humiliation pricked at him like thorns. So despite her persistent visits to Thelma’s home for sympathy, despite her apologetic voice mail messages, with a broken heart he’d had Richard Love serve her with divorce papers, citing irreconcilable differences.

Tracy was devastated. He knew it—he
felt
it.

Her mother, Beverly, was staying with her at the house, and sometimes Olivia spent the night.

Reginald felt the dark clouds would suffocate him forever…and for months he struggled to keep his head above the guilt. He felt damned, carrying Renee’s legacy like a second skin.

And when people looked into his eyes, they saw it there. As if he would be forever scarred by the penalty for being the greatest pretender of them all.

Epilogue

S
ix months later, as June 2, 2005 neared, Reginald decided that he needed to return to the town house. The prior evening, Roger had arranged for him to fly out on the Hart-Roman jet.

As he was boarding the plane, someone called out, “Reggie, wait! I’m coming with you!”

He spun around at the sound of Tracy’s voice.

He had not spoken to her since the night she bailed him out of jail.

Once they were
airborne, bound for the airfield in Orlando, Tracy asked,
“How long are
we gonna go on like this?” She held her breath, waiting for his answer.