The big, bald, white guy wrapped his fingers around my upper arm. “Hey!” I protested. “You can’t touch me! That’s assault!”
“Then move out of the way,” the man said.
Rayna began to cry. Tears filled my own eyes.
“But this is our home. Don’t you have a heart? How—how can you be so cold?” I cradled Rayna’s head to my shoulder to comfort her as she cried. Neither man batted an eye. I wondered if Tassie had hired them from Rent-A-Thug.
“I have a baby,” I went on. “You can actually kick me out of my home with no concern at all for my child?”
“We have our orders,” the men said in unison.
“Please,” I begged, as Rayna cried louder. “Please, have a heart.” One man took hold of my left arm, the other my right arm, which was secured around Rayna. “No,” I said defiantly. “Nooo!”
I backed up until my body was against the door. I wriggled around, fighting to free myself. And then my eyes popped open. It took me a good couple of seconds to realize that I was in my bed, and that a pair of over-steroided thugs weren’t in the room with me. I was sitting up, my body tangled in my sheets.
I’d been dreaming. Thank God.
I let out a relieved chuckle.
But my relief was short-lived. Because reality came crashing down on my shoulders, knocking me backward onto the pillow. Tassie Johnson, my late fiancé’s estranged wife, wanted me out of the home I’d shared with her husband. Yes, it’s a crazy and convoluted story, but I didn’t know that Eli Johnson, my fiancé, was still legally married at the time I was involved with him. He’d romanced me, seduced me, then proposed. We’d moved in together and had been planning a life together. How was I to know that he had an estranged wife and a couple kids somewhere? But Tassie didn’t believe me—or maybe she did, and she just didn’t care. All I knew was that as his official widow, she was making my life hell regarding the property I’d shared with Eli.
Tassie had insisted that I buy out her husband’s share of the condo, an all but impossible feat for a single mother like me. But despite the unlikelihood of me coming up with that kind of cash, I had. Only now that I’d come up with a way to buy her out and get her off my back, she up and changed her mind…and changed the game.
The sound of my door opening drew my gaze in that direction. The moment Rayna saw me, her face erupted in a smile.
Mine did, too.
“Mommy!” she cried, and sprinted toward me on the bed.
“Morning, sweetheart.” I reached for my daughter and pulled her onto the bed with me. I hugged her against my chest tightly.
“It’s morning,” Rayna went on, her way of telling me that it was time for me to get out of bed.
“Yes, it’s morning,” I agreed, then glanced at the clock—7:12 a.m.
It was the perfect time to get up—if I was heading to work. But it was a Sunday morning, the perfect time to sleep in.
My nightmare had gotten me up, and now that Rayna was awake, I was up for the day.
I lay down with Rayna, tucking her against my side. Maybe we’d both drift off.
“Mommy?” Rayna said, her little voice sounding serious.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Want Daddy.”
“Oh, baby.” I hugged her small frame. “I know you do.”
Eli hadn’t just been my fiancé, he’d been a father figure to my daughter, whose own father had abandoned her while I’d been pregnant. Since Eli’s death a few months earlier, Rayna hadn’t really asked for him much. I knew she missed his presence, and I’d tried to explain to her about heaven, but I also knew that she was too young to really understand that he’d never be coming back.
“Want Daddy come home,” she said.
“I know, baby. We miss him a lot. And I’m sure he misses us, too. But we can’t feel sad about that, remember? Because he’s in heaven, a very beautiful place, and he’s happy there.”
“Want to go heaven,” Rayna said, pouting.
“You will, one day. One day, we all will go to heaven. And you’ll see daddy again.”
Given the adulterous circumstances of Eli’s passing and the numerous lies he’d told me, I doubted we’d be reunited beyond the pearly gates. But Rayna didn’t need to know that. She never needed to know the ugly truth about what had happened. Some things, children deserved to be protected from.
I pressed my lips to Rayna’s forehead, feeling a moment of sadness for her sake. Eli’s public and scandalous death had thrown my life into upheaval and I guess, because of that, I’d had to quickly put the pain of his betrayal—being killed while in the arms of another woman—behind me. Certainly for my daughter’s sake, because she’d needed me to be strong.
But I felt for her, worried for how she was dealing with Eli’s sudden loss in her tiny heart.
“You want to go to the zoo today?” I suggested. “See all the animals? Maybe Amani can come with us.” Amani was my babysitter Carla’s daughter, and she and Rayna were only a year apart. They were playmates each day when I was at work.
Rayna clapped her hands together. “Party, party!”
The last time we’d been to the zoo, five months earlier, we’d gone for Amani’s birthday party. Which is why Rayna was associating another visit to the zoo with another party.
“It won’t be a birthday party,” I told her. “But it will be fun. We can take that train around the zoo. And you can play at the park.”
Rayna nodded enthusiastically. “Zebras!”
“Yes, you’ll see lots of zebras.” Rayna was a huge horse-and-pony fanatic, and hadn’t wanted to leave the zebra exhibit the last time we’d been to the zoo. She literally could have stayed there for hours and been content. “And maybe after we can go to the lake and feed the ducks.”
“Feed ducks, feed ducks,” Rayna chanted.
There were countless small lakes in South Florida, most with ducks and herons and cranes. The ducks, of course, were the only animals that cared to get close to humans. Bring food, and you were their best friend. I enjoyed seeing Rayna’s face light up when she tossed bread to them, getting a thrill out of the ducks surrounding her feet for a feast.
Yes, Rayna and I would spend a fun day together.
Put all the men we’d loved and lost out of our minds.
I decided I’d wait until ten to call Carla about going to the zoo, it being a Sunday morning and all. On the weekends, I didn’t like to phone people too early. It was sort of an unwritten rule with friends and family: I didn’t call them before ten in the morning, and they didn’t call me. In fact, I liked to laze around in my pajamas most of the morning, sometimes later.
When Eli had been alive, Sunday mornings had often become family bed time, with me, him and Rayna in our bed, watching the Disney Channel, snuggling and giggling—not having to worry about interruptions from the outside world.
So I was a little surprised, when, at 8:40 a.m., my phone rang.
I snatched the receiver off of the wall base in the kitchen, where I was mixing batter for pancakes. Seeing my sister’s number on the caller ID and given the time, I couldn’t help wondering if everything was okay.
“Hello?”