Her Truth, His Lies, page 4
“You need to get your shit together,” I told myself as I got up to handle my hygiene.
I just had to make it through the funeral and I would be alright.
5
Kaya
Today was the day that we were finally meeting with the lawyer, and for some reason, I was nervous. Actually, this whole process had my nerves on high alert. I just had a feeling that this day would be one for the books, I had the same feeling the day I found out about Carlos’ accident. I was dressed and ready to go just waiting for the family to get themselves together so that we could walk out of the house. This time, KJ and Karly would be with us because Carlos had something in his will for everyone, my parents included.
The lawyer made it very clear that the children needed to be present so that was what we were doing.
It seemed like ever since Carlos passed, our home had become the central hub for the entire family. There were people there when I woke up and when I went to sleep. I still hadn’t made my way to the bedroom I shared with my husband, but Karly didn’t seem to mind having me in her bed with her.
“Are you ready?”
I looked up when I heard my father’s voice. I gave him a toothless smile before nodding. I knew that me and the kids would be set because Carlos was a provider, but I wanted my best friend here to watch our kids grow, walk our daughter down the aisle, and to teach our son what a man was supposed to be. My father grabbed me by the hand and pulled me into his chest. There was such comfort in the arms of my father. Kalia and I were eleven years apart, but we could honestly say that we both were daddy’s girls.
He was a true example of how a man should be. Stern when necessary yet soft when required.
The drive to the lawyer’s office was a quiet one. I rode in the truck with Kalia, my nephew, Kevin, and my kids while my parents rode in the truck with my in-laws. I wanted to drive so that I could keep my hands occupied, but Kalia wouldn’t take no for an answer and ended up driving. When we arrived, no one got out of either of the trucks. I shook slightly at the finality of everything that was happening. I wanted to wait until after the funeral to meet with the lawyer, but it was just another thing that Carlos changed without my knowledge.
So here we were.
“Come on, Yaya, we have this appointment to get to and it looks like your mother-in-law needs you to be strong for her.”
I rolled my eyes. Who the fuck was going to be strong for me? But I couldn’t be selfish. I knew what it was like to lose a son. No matter how young or old they were, the shit still hurt. So with that on my mind, I got out of the car and walked over to the other truck, stopping when I was at the passenger side. Tonya wasn’t a bad person, so from one grieving mother to the other, I could put my feelings on hold to comfort her. I opened the door and grabbed her hand. My father-in-law undid her seatbelt and I pulled her from the car. She was a few inches taller than me, so her leaning on me was slightly uncomfortable.
If things were this way and we hadn’t even had the funeral, I didn’t even want to imagine what lie ahead for us.
In the waiting area, we waited for the receptionist to call us back to one of the available conference rooms. When the Brown name was called, we all stood and walked as one unit. I took Karly out of my mother’s arms because she had fallen asleep, and even though she was small for a four-year-old, I knew that she could get heavy. Once we were all seated, the lawyer entered the office and counted heads. His brow furrowed and he looked at the paperwork in his hands.
“It looks like we’re waiting for Selena Young.”
I had been able to hold in my tears, but this name caused them to silently slip down my face. Carlos actually left her something in his will. When my sister grabbed my hand, I pulled strength from her and wiped my face. This was about to happen.
Everyone looked around confused and I just sat there, watching the door, waiting for her to walk through the door. I wasn’t even sure why I was surprised. It had been three years. I should have known that she would be in attendance, but this would be the first time that I would see her and the nerves I had earlier were now back full force. My mother-in-law started to question who the woman was and I could tell that the lawyer was in over his head and completely uncomfortable. There was a light knock on the door.
Whew, some shit was about to hit the fan.
I was sitting in the car at the funeral home just staring at the building that housed my husband’s body. My phone was ringing off of the hook and I felt bad. I left my kids in the care of my sister, hopped in an Uber that took me home and then I found myself here after driving around for what felt like hours.
“Los, something is bothering you. How can I fix it if you won’t talk to me about what’s on your mind?”
He looked at me and it was the same look he held in his eyes right before he had to deliver bad news. My sensitivity caused him to always handle me a certain way, and right now seemed like the time where I would need to be handled delicately. My apprehension caused sweat to form on my brow and under my arms. What he had to say didn’t feel right and his ass hadn’t even really said anything yet.
“You know I love you, right?” Carlos licked his lips, getting on his knees in front of me.
“Yes, crazy, we have been best friends our whole lives. Of course, I know you love me. I love you too.”
I was wondering who had died. That was the only thing my mind could fathom and he just didn’t know how to tell me. My hands started to shake in anticipation of what he was about to unload on my heart.
I had no clue what he was about to say but I never once questioned his love. Our friendship was genuine. Our union was thrown on us but who wouldn’t want to be married to their best friend? Especially a friend I knew that would never hurt me.
“Okay, well, I do love you.” He started and then stopped and licked his lips again. “I met someone.”
Although he barely spoke the last part above a whisper, I heard him loud and clear. He met someone? What was I supposed to say to that? Ten years of marriage, three children, and he met someone. Hell, I meet people every day, but I had a feeling that the someone he was referring to wasn’t just a nobody.
“Yaya, say something.”
“What the fuck do you expect me to say, Carlos? Our daughter just turned one a month ago and you’re in here telling me that you are about to leave me for another fucking woman!”
My voice had elevated and I was no longer seated on the bed. I could admit that we only got married because we found out I was pregnant, but he was my best friend. Someone I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with. Then he started the shit, telling me he loved me.
“Yaya, calm down. Please, before you wake the kids up, just chill.” My head snapped in his direction and Carlos threw up his arms. “I’m coming to you to tell you this so that we can clear the air. We are only married because our parents told us to be. Once we lost Karson, we were never the same and KJ came from a drunken night we were too hurt to talk about our feelings. Karly will never be a mistake but she wasn’t planned either. Can you genuinely say that you’re in love with me and that this marriage is what you want forever?”
I stared at him blankly. He technically wasn’t wrong. When we got pregnant ten years ago with Karson, Carlos approached me on some let’s lose our virginity to each other shit. We just got married because our families didn’t want us to embarrass them with teenage pregnancy and babies out of wedlock. When Karson was two, he drowned, and Carlos and I were in a weird space. Until we found out that I was pregnant with KJ. During those few nights of grieving, we were doing a lot of drinking and fucking. After giving birth, we were on high alert for the first two years of his life that we barely did much of anything. He wasn’t wrong about our last baby. He and rarely had sex, but the one time we did, she was the result.
He was right, I wasn’t in love with him. But I loved Carlos, and for our children, I would have stayed in my marriage because it wasn’t an unhappy one, we just were. “No, I can’t.”
Carlos closed his eyes and released a breath. “I’m sorry to spring this on you, I promise that I am. Our separation should have happened way before now. Honestly, after Karson, we should have just done what was best for the both of us and not our parents and that is on me as the head of this household. But I am doing it now because we both deserve to be set free and happy.”
I scoffed. “You’re in love her?”
“Yeah, I am.”
Hearing the truth hurt. I knew the facts of our marriage, but I never imagined the day that it wouldn’t be.
It felt good to be able to have my thoughts to myself after that shit show of a meeting in the lawyer's office. The day that Carlos told me that he met another woman was the day that would never escape my mind. Seeing her today made me laugh; she was just his type. She was heartbroken to know that Carlos was married with children, but I would address her at a different time about it. My mother-in-law tried to call the woman a scammer and said that Selena was only there to collect money, but he had written us all letters and I was sure he would set his parents straight.
I looked at the letter in my hands as tears slipped from my eyes. For three years, Carlos and I went through the motions of trying to set up our lives for us to split up. We were legally separated but I never imagined he would die before we got the chance to go our separate ways. I felt bad for Selena because she truly made him happy and Carlos was an awesome man, so I could only imagine what she was missing.
The knock on the window startled me, bringing me out of my thoughts. I looked out the window to see Mr. Davis. I didn’t really want to address him. I was in a vulnerable space and my lady parts were in danger of falling on the heavy-looking muscle that rested on his thigh.
We stared at each other before he tried the door handle and opened the door.
“You shouldn’t be out here in your car with the doors unlocked,” he said, then licked his lips. My eyes followed the motion of his tongue. “Come inside so that you can say what you need to say to your husband. It's written all over your face. No one is here right now.”
That was the reason I was here, right? To be in Carlos’ space and get certain things off my chest? I slipped my hand into his outstretched one and climbed out of the car.
This was not the time to be lusting over this sexy ass stranger, but as I looked up at him, I knew that I was in danger.
6
Ryland
Mrs. Brown had been here for over two hours. For the first part of her visit, I stood there with her holding her up as she stared at her husband’s body. She didn’t speak, only stared and cried. The woman that was present in this moment was not the woman that I’d met a few days ago. Her husband’s funeral was the next day and I thought she was here to get out her last thoughts, but without her speaking, I wasn’t sure what the hell was on her mind.
Seeing how tore up about him she was had me feeling like a creep for lusting after her the day we met and since then. There was something in her eyes that was more than pain of losing a spouse. Then when we touched, I had never felt anything like what went through me when our hands made contact.
I decided to get some work done while giving her the privacy she probably needed but wasn’t getting with me standing there. I had put an ad out about hiring because as the business grew, I would need more people hands-on than those that were currently employed by the funeral home. My receptionist position was vacant and that was a nightmare in itself.
A scream startled me from my thoughts and had me out of my office and toward the back faster than I could process what was happening. No one was here but Mrs. Brown and I, but that didn’t mean someone hadn’t tried to come in and ended up scaring her. When I had full sight of her, she was on her knees, clutching what looked like a shirt to her chest. The wails were so loud that I was almost too afraid to go near her. But I did.
I got on my knees in front of her and pulled her into my arms. Mrs. Brown broke down even more once her face was buried in my chest. I rubbed circles against her back and her sobs turned into small hiccups. She looked up at me and her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. There were tears that looked like they would fall with the slightest movement of her head. When she blinked, there were a few that slipped down her cheeks, and before I could stop myself, I was using both hands to wipe the teary evidence away from her cheeks.
For some strange reason, seeing her so broken did something to me. I knew this was an intimate moment for Mrs. Brown, but I didn’t have it in me to walk away again. I felt a sense of responsibility.
Seconds felt like minutes as we stared at each other. No words were shared, just a look of peace. This was the second time that I was seeing Mrs. Brown and the feelings that wrapped around me seemed inappropriate, but she seemed like a safe space at the same time. I could tell that she felt the same way I did but we both needed to fight whatever this was that was building. She was newly widowed and I needed to save the funeral home. The silence stretched on for so long that when she spoke, I could be honest enough to admit that it startled me.
“She used to be a man.”
Confused as fuck was the only description that accurately described what I was at the moment. I had no clue who we were talking about, but I knew it couldn’t be Mr. Brown because he was a man. I had personally watched as the mortician worked on him and I didn’t see any scars from a surgery that turned him from a man to a woman and then back to a man. I wanted to ask her who we were talking about but the spacey look in her eyes let me know that she was talking out loud, and not necessarily to me.
She hiccupped. “At the reading, she was there. I knew he had met someone; that was the reason we separated and were on the road to divorce. But a man? Carlos was not gay!” The last part was said in a shout.
I was able to gather enough clues that the man lying on the table was not the man she thought she knew. I wanted to let her know that just because her husband was seeing a trans woman, that didn’t mean he was gay, but this was clearly a touchy subject that I was not going to get in the middle of. It might have been fucked up, but I was a little glad to hear that she and her husband were separated. Made me feel like it was a totally messed up thing that she and I seemed to connect more than a little bit. My silence must have made her uncomfortable because she suddenly pulled away and stood to her feet. I followed the same motions and we stood around her husband. A fresh round of tears fell down her cheeks and she quickly wiped them away.
I walked back over to her and pulled her in for another hug. I did believe that she was in mourning over her dead husband, but it was also the news that seemed to have fallen in her lap since the last time I saw her.
When she looked up at me, there was an energy pulling at the both of us. I wasn’t sure when my head began to move or when she stood on her tiptoes, but the moment our lips connected, it felt as if all of the air in the room had been let out. When a small moan slipped from between her lips, I immediately snapped out of my daze and stepped back. A look of embarrassment and shock seemed to be stuck on her face. Before I could speak to apologize, Mrs. Brown was out of the room and out of the building.
Honestly, it was for the best because I still had ties to Dora that hadn’t been cut and she was burying her husband the very next day. Hell, we had just kissed and his body was in the room. How messed up were we?
I tried, unsuccessfully, for the fifth time to tie the knot that would secure my tie. My nerves were getting the best of me. This would be my first time overseeing a funeral from beginning to end and I couldn’t figure out if the nerves were from me not wanting to fail or if they were from me not wanting to disappoint Mrs. Brown. I spent the night tossing and turning, thinking about our kiss that I should regret but don’t. Shaking the thoughts from my head, I finally got the knot together and put on my suit jacket. Looking in the mirror, I approved of what I saw and made my way out of the room.
Last night, I came home for the first time in days. Dora was sitting up in the living room on the phone, watching some crime show. When I walked through the door, she and I made eye contact but neither one of us spoke. I honestly didn’t have anything to say. As I walked through the house, it looked like she hadn’t touched one cleaning product the entire time that I was gone. My house looked a fucking mess. In the bedroom was the worst, so I just turned around and went into the guest room.
I was just glad that I bought the same bed for both rooms because had I not had a good night’s sleep, Dora would be getting more than the cold shoulder from me today.
I shook my head as I made my way downstairs. There was nothing appealing about what it had to offer, so I would just have to grab a coffee and breakfast from someone’s drive-thru. When my foot hit the bottom step, Dora was standing there with her hands on her hips.
“So you are going to continue to ignore me? I haven’t spoken to you or seen you, but then you walk in unannounced and walk around as if I am not here. Why didn’t you sleep in our bed last night? You fucking on some other bitch? ’Cause you damn sure don’t be fucking me!”
Did she say unannounced like this was her shit? Dora didn’t pay one bill in my house, so I was unclear why she was really mad. Yes, I hadn’t talked to her but the rest was irrelevant.
Dora had her hand clapping and neck rolling down to a science. I laughed a little to myself before moving her out of the way. She stumbled like I pushed her and laughter from deep in my stomach came bubbling out. I never answered her questions, but when I reached the front door without turning around, I let her know what was about to happen.
