Love & Lies Read online

  Love and Lies

  KIMBERLA LAWSON ROBY

  For my husband, Will. Know that

  I love you with all my heart. Know that

  I appreciate the unconditional love you

  have shown me since

  the very beginning.

  For my brothers, Willie Jr. and Michael

  Stapleton. Know that I love both of you,

  that I am proud to have you as my

  siblings, and that the bond we share

  can never be broken.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  It was all I could do not to curse my…

  Chapter 2

  I opened the door to my condo, walked inside, and…

  Chapter 3

  What a beautiful autumn day this was. It was barely…

  Chapter 4

  Why couldn’t Antonio just leave on his own? was all…

  Chapter 5

  Thank God it was Friday. It was the end of…

  Chapter 6

  “Thank you for seeing me,” I said, taking a seat…

  Chapter 7

  No matter how many times I’d come to this particular…

  Chapter 8

  “Daddy, I’m so glad you’re home,” Marissa said, squeezing her…

  Chapter 9

  It had been a while since Curtis had preached at…

  Chapter 10

  Right after service, we’d stopped at Smokehouse, a barbecue and…

  Chapter 11

  I eased farther down into the bathtub so that my…

  Chapter 12

  As I pulled into the subdivision and drove around the…

  Chapter 13

  Curtis and I both breathed deeply until our heart rates…

  Chapter 14

  I tried my best to stay focused on what Rebecca…

  Chapter 15

  Three hours later, the remaining officers had finished searching my…

  Chapter 16

  “Ms. Charlotte,” Tracy called up the stairs to me.

  Chapter 17

  “Baby, please call me as soon as possible,” I said,…

  Chapter 18

  “I’m so sorry that I had to get the police…

  Chapter 19

  I wasn’t sure why Janine was so concerned about Larry…

  Chapter 20

  As soon as I entered the house, I immediately removed…

  Chapter 21

  I wasn’t sure if it had been the right thing…

  Chapter 22

  “I don’t wanna wear that ugly outfit,” Marissa said, whining,…

  Chapter 23

  Curtis had just called to say he was about twenty…

  Chapter 24

  “Antonio showed up at your house on Sunday, today is…

  Chapter 25

  “Let me speak to Curtis,” Larry said. His tone was…

  Chapter 26

  “How are you, Dad?” I said when my father answered…

  Chapter 27

  “Oh my God, Carl, what happened?” I said, rushing into…

  Chapter 28

  I’d slept in a chair in the waiting room, waking…

  Chapter 29

  How dare that witch call our house making financial demands,…

  Chapter 30

  Marissa had been pronounced dead on arrival, but I refused…

  Chapter 31

  “Mom, she’s gone,” I said to my mother.

  Chapter 32

  The funeral had commenced yesterday afternoon and I was still…

  Epilogue

  “You look so, so beautiful,” I said to Janine while…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Kimberla Lawson Roby

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  CHARLOTTE

  It was all I could do not to curse my husband out—my husband, a man who was never home more than a few days at a time, a man who didn’t seem to care about his wife in the least, a man who was probably sleeping with only God knew whom. Which is why after five years of pleading with him to change and begging him to spend more time with me, I had finally had enough. I was finally in a place where I would no longer tolerate the world-renowned Reverend Curtis Black or the adultery I was sure he was committing.

  “So when exactly are you going to be here, Curtis?” I asked now, gripping the phone tightly.

  “I just told you. In a couple of days.”

  “I realize that, but I need to know a specific day. What I need to know is the time your flight will be arriving at O’Hare.”

  “Well, Charlotte, as much as I hate to disappoint you, I don’t know what time.”

  “You don’t know? How could you not know?”

  “Because I just don’t.”

  “Curtis, please. Do you think I’m that stupid? Do you really think you can get me to believe that you’re coming home this week but your travel reservations still haven’t been arranged? Do you really think I’m that crazy?”

  “Like I said…I’ll be there in a couple of days.”

  See, it was comments such as this that made me want to do unspeakable things to Curtis. Made me want to snatch him down from that nice little pedestal that thousands of people nationwide had placed him on. What I wanted to do was show him firsthand that being a New York Times bestselling author didn’t mean that he could do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted to.

  But I decided instead that I would calmly try to reason with him one last time.

  “Curtis, have you even thought about the amount of time you spend on the road? I mean, are you even aware of the fact that you’ve now been gone for two weeks straight, and that once you return, you’ll only be here for five short days?”

  “Charlotte, why are we doing this? Huh? Because you know just as well as I do that my speaking engagements are very necessary. You’ve known for the last five years that this is what I have to do if you want to keep living the wealthy lifestyle you so desperately wanted when we were first married.”

  “But baby, there has to be some sort of balance,” I said, remembering just how miserable I’d been before his publisher had offered him a contract with an initial advance worth seven hundred fifty thousand dollars for one book.

  “Look, either you want luxury or you want average,” he said, sounding impatient.

  “What I want is for you to be here with your family. Matthew and Marissa need you, Curtis, and I’m tired of feeling as though I’m a single parent. Twelve-year-old boys need their fathers.”

  “All three of my children, including Alicia, know that I love them and that I have a job to do. I’ve explained to them that it won’t always be this way, but for now, this is what I have to do.”

  “Curtis, all I’m asking is that you please cancel some of your commitments. I need you to spend more time at home.”

  “It’s not going to happen. Not right now, and to be honest, I’m tired of repeating the same words to you over and over again.”

  “Oh, so now you’ve got the nerve to be irritated?” I said, my last bit of tolerance evaporating second by second.

  “No, I just don’t see a reason to continue discussing a situation that isn’t going to change.”

  “Well, maybe the problem isn’t your speaking engagements, Curtis. Maybe it has more to do with the fact that you’re out there sleeping around. Because, knowing you, you’ve probably got a different woman lined up in every city.”

  “You mean like the way you slept with Aaron behind my back? How you slept with that deceitful lunatic even though he claimed to be my best friend? Or do you mean like how you lied about Matthew being my son when you knew full
well that he might not be? Or maybe you mean like how because you slept with Aaron, we had to get a paternity test just to make sure Marissa was actually mine? So tell me, Charlotte, which sin of yours are you talking about exactly?”

  At that moment, I wondered when Curtis would ever stop wallowing in the past and would eventually forgive me for the way I had betrayed him. Because whether he wanted to admit it or not, it wasn’t like any of this had happened one month ago. As a matter of fact, it had been five whole years since Marissa had been born, and to me it was high time for us to move on. Not to mention it wasn’t like he’d been this perfect little Boy Scout himself.

  “You know what, Curtis, as far as I’m concerned, you need to get over it. What you need to do is stop making all these lame excuses and get your priorities in order.”

  “No, what I need to do is the same thing I’ve been doing all along. Making a ton of money so that you can continue living like the queen you think you are, and so that I can maintain the type of freedom I’ve definitely become accustomed to. End of story.”

  His tone was razor sharp and more than anything I wanted to hurt him back. What I wanted was for him to feel more pain than he was now causing me, but for some reason I couldn’t find the words. I was speechless and the only thing I could think to do was slam the phone down on its base.

  Which is exactly what I did, and then I covered my face with both hands.

  It was so hard to believe that after all the lying and scheming I’d done over the years, making sure I obtained everything I wanted, I was still living in complete turmoil. To put it plainly, I was living a life of pure hell and I didn’t know how much more I’d be able to stand before exploding.

  I walked out of the sitting room inside our master bedroom suite and over toward the balcony. Once there, I folded my arms and gazed out, trying to settle my nerves. This just didn’t make any sense, being so unhappy. Not when we had this massive three-level mini-mansion, a Lexus 470 SUV, a Mercedes S500, and a BMW two-seater. Not when I’d hired a five-day-per-week housekeeper who also cooked our meals. Not when we had an enormous bank account and a whole slew of investments.

  Although maybe this overly aggressive attempt at gaining the whole world really was grounds for losing one’s own soul, because that’s exactly how I had been feeling for more than a year now. I’d tried my best to make things right with Curtis, but no matter what I said or did, he no longer paid much attention to me. And even on the rare occasion when he was home, he spent all of his time with the children and even visited Alicia on her college campus, which was only a couple of hours away. He did everything with everyone except me, his wife of seven years, and now I knew, just at this very moment, that this wasn’t going to change. After all, he’d slept with me when he was married to his first wife, Tanya, and his second wife, Mariah, so how in the world could I have ever thought I would be an exception? How could I have ever thought Curtis was going to be the loving, faithful husband until death do us part?

  Of course, in the beginning, when we’d first gotten married, I had to admit that Curtis was in fact the loving husband and father. I also had to admit that I was the one who’d blundered into this ridiculous world of insanity the day I’d made the decision to sleep with Aaron Malone—or Donovan Wainright, which we’d learned was his real name. Oh, how this had proven to be an absolute nightmare, and to think I’d almost lost my life because of it. The man had taken the fatal attraction theory to a whole new level, and he’d gone to major extremes to ruin everything. He’d blabbed to Curtis practically every comment that I’d been naïve enough to confide to him, and in the end he’d tried to burn our house down with me still inside it.

  Just the mere thought that I’d risked each of our lives for the likes of Aaron, a schizophrenic who’d masked himself as a stable and intelligent born-again Christian, was enough to make me cringe. It was enough to make me wonder if that mental institution he’d been dragged back to was now keeping closer watch on him. Because for the life of me I still couldn’t understand how in the beginning he’d been able to convince his psychiatrist that he’d somehow made this miraculous recovery, how he’d been able to leave the state of Michigan, set up shop in Illinois with a whole new identity, and then find a good-paying job. Although Curtis had learned from one of the detectives that this had all been possible because Aaron had been good about taking his medication.

  I stared through the window a while longer almost in a daze and then finally walked back toward our California king-size bed. And then it hit me. No matter what I’d done with Aaron five years ago, Curtis still didn’t have the right to treat me as if I didn’t matter. He had no right because his own history was full of dirt, and as far as I was concerned we were even. He’d gotten me pregnant before I’d turned eighteen, which by law was statutory rape, and I’d committed adultery with Aaron. We’d both committed sins that we would surely have to answer for, but from this day forward, I was going to handle things a lot differently. I wouldn’t give up my affluent way of living, not under any circumstances, but I was going to live my life the same as Curtis, any way I chose. At the same time, I would find out who my husband was sleeping with, because no matter what he refused to admit, I knew him better than he knew himself. I knew my husband, the Reverend Curtis Black, couldn’t go more than a day without having sex, even if it wasn’t with me.

  So, starting today, my primary focus would be my own happiness and raising my two adorable children. I would live even better than I had been and Curtis would come to realize that soon enough. He’d learn the hard way, once again, that I truly was his match. He would learn that just because he was the sole provider of our household didn’t mean that I wasn’t in a position to collect half of everything. Which is exactly what I would do if he forced me.

  Over the next hour, I phoned my friend Janine at work, called to speak to my parents, and now I was heading down the wrought iron and wood winding staircase that led to the foyer. I strolled across the black-and-white marble flooring, down the long hallway, and into the kitchen.

  I gasped when I saw Marissa playing with fire.

  She was standing her little five-year-old behind in front of the stove, switching one of the front burners from low to high, high to low, and then waving her hand through the flame, back and forth and back and forth again.

  “Marissa!” I yelled out to her. “Have you lost your mind?!”

  But she never even flinched. She seemed almost mesmerized by what she was doing and, strangely enough, fascinated by the whole scenario.

  “Marissa!” I screamed louder than before, and this time she snapped out of her trance. “What are you doing?”

  Instead of responding, however, my little girl stared at me, turned back toward the stove, politely turned off the burner, and walked right past me. She walked right out of the kitchen and headed up to her bedroom like I hadn’t said a word to her. She acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, and this worried me more than anything else. Especially since as of late, Marissa had begun acting so bizarrely, and I also wondered why at times she was so cruel toward Matthew and me but was always the perfect little angel when Curtis was around. I’d tried to ignore these signs, but I feared that something was very wrong with her. I feared that maybe Marissa wasn’t Curtis’s daughter after all and that instead she was Aaron’s and had inherited his schizophrenia. Because it wasn’t like I’d ever actually seen the results of the paternity test. It wasn’t like I’d even wanted to see them, because I’d immediately decided it was better if no one, not even I, knew the truth. It had been better that way because as long as Curtis had believed wholeheartedly that he was Marissa’s father, there hadn’t been a thing for me to worry about.

  And the more I thought about it, there still wasn’t.

  I decided that Marissa was Curtis’s daughter and that she was merely going through some weird childhood phase—one she would grow out of any day now.

  Truthfully, I refused to accept anything different.
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  Chapter 2

  JANINE

  I opened the door to my condo, walked inside, and saw Antonio laid back on my red leather sofa, consumed with some PlayStation video game. Which wouldn’t have been so bad except for the fact that Antonio was thirty-seven, had no job, wasn’t seriously looking for one, and spent most of his time doing only what he preferred—which was, for the most part, nothing. This of course had become very old, and I was now only days from telling him to pack the few rags he owned and to get out.

  As I slipped off my shoes and dropped my keys into my handbag, I realized how engrossed Antonio was in his game. It angered me to see that he was so caught up he hadn’t even noticed my presence. Either that or he simply didn’t want to break his concentration. This was also the reason I intentionally strolled very slowly in front of the flat-screen television set, blocking his view.

  “Hey, baby,” he said, smiling. “I didn’t even hear you come in.”

  “Obviously.”

  “So how was your day?” he asked, still pressing various buttons.

  But I purposely ignored his question and left the family room abruptly. As soon as I did, though, I heard him drop the video controller onto the table. Next he followed me into the bedroom.

  “Baby, what’s wrong?” he said, sounding deeply concerned and trying to embrace me. But I pushed him away.

  “What’s wrong?” I repeated. I was so livid I could barely breathe.

  “Yeah. What’s wrong? I mean you act as if you’re upset about something.”