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Authors: Kendra Norman-Bellamy

When Solomon Sings (26 page)

BOOK: When Solomon Sings
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TWENTY-SIX
“How's Theresa?”
CJ was glad to hear Neil's voice on the other end of the line. He was just about to call him when he looked at the screen on his ringing cell phone and saw Neil's name. “She's good, bruh. She's sleeping right now, and the temperatures aren't so frigid today, so I thought I'd come outside and get a little fresh air. She ate her breakfast and lunch really well today and guess what?”
“What?”
“She's talking.”
“She's talking?” Neil's tone said he was surprised. “Is she saying words or entire sentences?”
CJ could barely contain himself. “God is so good, bruh. The first thing that came out of her mouth was, ‘Where's my baby?' She wasn't talking to me. I wasn't even in the room. She just blurted it out to Dr. Hale when he stopped by to check on her. I was in the bathroom at the time, and I almost hurt myself zipping up when that man knocked on the door and told me that my wife was talking.”
“Oh, man, that's awesome! I guess that means she's about ready to see Li'l Miss.”
“Keola.”
“What?”
“We named Li'l Miss this morning. Her name is Keola. K-e-o-l-a.” He pronounced it again, slower this time, and enunciating each syllable. “Keh-o-la.”
“Okay. That's ... different. What happened to naming her after you, or giving her a strong, timeless name?”
CJ chuckled and headed toward his car to get out of the wind. That was the same question he'd asked when Theresa immediately latched on to the name when it was presented to her. “Dr. Hale suggested that name,” he revealed. “Actually, both you and Dr. Hale named her.”
“Me?”
CJ was thoroughly confusing Neil, and it was intentional. He knew that would throw his friend for a loop. “Technically, yes. It's a Hawaiian name, and in Hawaii, Keola means
breath, life, health, and well-being.
Dr. Hale casually mentioned that as we were getting Resa moved out of ICU and into her regular room. We were talking about her finally getting the chance to meet her own baby, and when Dr. Hale found out that we still hadn't given Li'l Miss a name, that's when he said it. And Resa jumped right on it.”
“So you told her about the song?”
“Didn't have to. She said she could hear you singing it. She doesn't remember anything between trying to push out the baby and when Dr. Hale was disconnecting her from the machines, but she says she could hear you singing. And to prove it, she hummed the tune. The only words she could remember were ‘Breathe, Jesus,' but she had the tune committed to memory.” CJ leaned his head back against the headrest in his car. “That song brought her out, bruh. I'll never be able to repay you for letting God use you like that.”
“We can call it all even if you can tell me how to get out of the mess I'm in right now. I wish God would give me a song that would bring myself out.”
Neil's words reminded CJ of the monumental move his friend had planned to make last night, and the strain in his voice led CJ to draw his own conclusion. “Shay turned you down?”
“No. She accepted.”
CJ gasped. “So you're engaged?”
“For the moment, yes.”
CJ didn't know what to make of Neil's demeanor. He expected him to be swinging from pillar to post with excitement. “Why don't you sound happy? You're not having second thoughts, are you?”
“I'm pulling into DeKalb Medical's parking lot right now,” Neil told him. “Are you still outside?”
“I'm parked in the lot right outside the emergency room entrance doors. I'm sitting inside my car.”
“Okay, give me a minute to find you. We'll talk more when I get there.”
CJ ended the call and shook his head. He didn't know what he was going to do with Neil. If that boy told him that he was getting cold feet already, CJ didn't know what he was going to say or do. He sat impatiently in his car with the engine running and the heat adjusted just right. CJ was glad that Theresa was sleeping, because this conversation with Neil could take awhile. CJ had some things that he needed to talk to Neil about anyway, but he'd let his friend go first. A tap at his passenger side window meant Neil had found him quicker than he'd expected. CJ unlocked the doors.
“I thought you said it wasn't cold out there,” Neil said as he climbed in. “Man, it's freezing.”
“It's not as cold as it has been,” CJ pointed out.
“If you say so.”
CJ waited for Neil to say more, but he sat in silence, staring out the front window. CJ looked at him. “Well, I want to congratulate you, but you're not giving me much to work with here. You were so keyed up about your Valentine's Day proposal, and you said she accepted.” CJ reached over and pulled down the sun visor in front of Neil and flipped up the mirror cover so that he could see himself. “This doesn't look like the portrait of a happily engaged man.”
Neil closed the mirror and pushed the sun visor back into place. “I found out something, and I'm trying to figure out how to tell Shay.”
If this was what CJ thought it was, he was prepared to lay into Neil without showing a drop of mercy. “Why are you trying to sabotage yourself, Neil?”
“What?” Neil turned to face him. “I'm not trying to sabotage anything.”
“That's what it looks like to me. You got the girl. She's agreed to marry you, and you're still not satisfied. You're determined to dredge up the past, and I'm telling you right now that if you do that, it's gonna backfire. You're going to lose her if you do this, Neil.”
Neil removed his sunglasses and scowled at CJ. “How do you know about this?”
“I have my resources. And first of all, let me make it clear that I'm ticked off that you would be that sneaky and would actually take something that you had no right to
touch,
let alone take. And secondly, for me to find out about it any other way than directly from you makes me even angrier.”
“Man, what do you think I came here for?” Neil spat. “I just found out about Sean myself. And you're the first person I'm telling, so I didn't think you'd find out any other way. He told me that he hadn't told anyone and wasn't going to tell anyone. I know I had no authorization to touch or take, but I did, and I can't change that. I usually think you give good, sound advice, but for you to tell me that I shouldn't tell Shay about my son is just wrong. Even if it ruins everything, I have to tell her. Sean's not going away.”
CJ blinked hard. “Wait a minute. What?”
Neil stared back. “What?”
“What are you talking about?” CJ felt like they were on two separate planets right now. “You have a son? What son? Who's Sean?”
Neil looked just as lost. “I found out last night I have a son. Isn't that what you were talking about?”
“No, but forget what I was talking about for now. What do you mean you have a baby? Where is he? When did this happen?” There had to be a story behind the story. CJ couldn't imagine Neil sneaking around behind Shaylynn's back.
“I didn't say I had a baby. I said I have a son. He's twenty-one years old, and he's the product of an affair that I had when Audrey and I were separated. He'd been searching for me for two years, and he found me early this morning, just a few hours after Shaylynn accepted my marriage proposal. I never saw it coming.”
CJ sat quietly while Neil unburdened himself. He'd known Neil a long time; even at the time all of this had taken place. They weren't as close then though. CJ and Neil hadn't become best friends until after Dwayne passed away. CJ knew that he couldn't possibly take Dwayne's place, but he had definitely filled a slot that Dwayne left vacant.
“I'm a dead man,” Neil said as a conclusion to his story. “This is a no-win situation. I can't deny my son, even though he's given me the permission to. I couldn't live with myself if I did that. But knowing that Shaylynn is going to break off the engagement is killing me too. I'm a dead man.”
“No, you're not.” CJ searched for words to make Neil feel better, but they temporarily escaped him.
“You're right. I'm not dead. Dead men only get buried six feet under. I'm gonna be so far down under that I'm going to be able to see Australia.”
“Listen, bruh. All of this happened light years before you ever met Shaylynn. Do you really think she'll hold this against you?”
“You don't understand, CJ. Shaylynn has always been guarded. She has a good life already. She's got a home, a job that she loves, money in the bank from Emmett's life insurance policy that she doesn't even have to touch, a son who adores her ... everything. She doesn't need me, and she certainly doesn't need my baggage. Sean represents two things: I now have a child, and she's already made it clear that my not having any kids was a big plus for her; and secondly, he means that I have the capability of being unfaithful in a marriage.”
“Neil, everybody has the capability for infidelity.”
“But I acted on it, and as hard as it was for me to win Shaylynn's trust ...” He shook his head. “Man, this is gonna blow me out of the water. I'll be back to square one where she'll be comparing me to her perfect Emmett, and I'm gonna be out the door. I can't let that happen; I just don't know what to do to stop it.” A soft gasp released from Neil's mouth as soon as he finished the sentence.
CJ saw the light bulb when it popped on in Neil's head, and he knew he had to intercept fast. “You're not showing her that paper, so don't even think about it.”
Neil's face snapped toward him. “What?”
“When I was talking about you touching and taking stuff earlier,
that's
what I was talking about.” CJ looked into Neil's shocked eyes. “You do know that I have surveillance equipment in my home, right?” The frozen astonishment on Neil's face said he didn't. “I have hidden cameras in certain rooms of my house, and my office is one of them. I saw the footage Monday when I dropped by the house to pick up some fresh clothing.”
The revelation clearly embarrassed Neil. He wiped his hands over his face and slumped back in his chair. A lengthy silence lapsed before he finally said, “I'm sorry, man. At the time I was desperate. I wasn't thinking straight. I knew it was wrong; I just needed something. . .
anything
that would show her that Emmett wasn't perfect after all.” He sighed. “I'm sorry.”
“So you didn't show it to her at all, right?”
“No. I wanted to, but I couldn't figure out how to do it without breaking her heart. I didn't want to hurt Shay; I just wanted to kill Emmett for good. And when I saw those notes, I knew I'd struck gold. But at the end of the day, I couldn't do it, and eventually, I found out that I didn't even need it. But now, here I am again.”
“And you still don't need it.”
“I don't know about that, CJ.”
“Well, I do. Just listen to yourself, Neil. You're sitting here wanting to break back into my office again and steal some of my private papers so that you can prove to Shaylynn what a great guy you are. So you want to do something rotten to show that you're good. What kind of sense does that make? And why do you want to do all of this foolishness? To pull the covers off of a dead man's past. Yeah. Okay. So Emmett was so crooked that he couldn't even walk a straight line. He dealt in drugs, theft, money laundering, prostitution ... all that. But you know what, Neil? You think Emmett's sins were worse, and by showing them to Shay, it'll make your sin look better. But in God's eyes, there are no degrees of sin. What Emmett did was in his past. All the markings on that paper you saw represented the old him. That man died a Christian. God had forgiven him for all those horrible transgressions, and you have no right to bring them back up to tarnish his former wife's memories for your own gain.
“And at the end of the day, bringing that up ain't gonna make you look no better, because at least when Emmett carried out all of his sins, he was doing the work of his father. He was a member of the devil's team, wearing the devil's uniform, and his life reflected that. Emmett was a sinner who did what sinners do. He sinned. You, on the other hand, were saved. Twenty-one years ago, you already knew God, but you allowed the devil to take control of your mind and your body. In essence, you were a member of Jesus' team who somehow found himself pinch hitting for the devil. You were the one who was out of place, not Emmett. And now you want to use that against him? How dare you!”
Neil closed his eyes and blew out a lungful of air. CJ saw the pain on his face. He had taken his tongue-lashing like a man, but CJ could tell that his harsh words had cut deeply. Seeing Neil's pain softened CJ. Maybe he'd come off too strong. This was the man who, three days ago, had sung life back into Theresa. He owed Neil more sympathy than he had given.
“Listen, man; I'm sorry.”
BOOK: When Solomon Sings
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