Stand Your Ground: A Novel Read online

  Praise for

  Forever an Ex

  “Murray spices up her story line with plenty of juicy scandals . . . Readers seeking an inspirational tale with broad themes of trust, betrayal, and forgiveness will do well by choosing Murray’s latest effort.”

  —Library Journal

  Praise for

  Fortune & Fame

  “The scandalous characters unite again in Fortune & Fame, Murray and Billingsley’s third and best collaboration. This time brazen Jasmine and Rachel, who has zero shame, have been cast on First Ladies, a reality TV show that builds one’s brand and threatens to break another’s marriage. Sorry, buttered popcorn is not included.”

  —Essence

  “Priceless trash talk marks this story about betrayal, greed, and stepping on anyone in your way. A great choice for folks who spend Sunday mornings in the front pew.”

  —Library Journal

  Praise for

  Never Say Never

  “Readers, be on the lookout for Victoria Christopher Murray’s Never Say Never. You’ll definitely need to have a buddy-reader in place for the lengthy discussion that is bound to occur.”

  —USA Today

  Praise for

  The Ex Files

  “The engrossing transitions the women go through make compelling reading . . . Murray’s vivid portrait of how faith can move mountains and heal relationships should inspire.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Reminds you of things that women will do if their hearts are broken . . . Once you pick this book up, you will not put it down.”

  —UrbanReviews.com

  Praise for

  Destiny’s Divas

  “With Destiny’s Divas, author Victoria Christopher Murray triumphs again. The depth and storytelling mastery in her latest novel demonstrate why she is the grande dame of urban Christian fiction.”

  —FreshFiction.com

  Praise for

  Sinners & Saints

  “Murray and Billingsley keep things lively and fun.”

  —Juicy magazine

  “Double the fun, with a message of faith, Sinners & Saints will delight readers with two of their favorite characters from two of their favorite authors. It’s a match made in heaven!”

  —Grace Magazine

  Praise for

  The Deal, the Dance, and the Devil

  “Murray’s story has the kind of momentum that prompts you to elbow disbelief aside and flip the pages in horrified enjoyment.”

  —Washington Post

  Praise for

  Sins of the Mother

  “Sins of the Mother shows that when the going gets tough, it’s best to make an effort and rely on God’s strength. It gives the message that there is hope no matter what, and that people must have faith.”

  —FictionAddict.com

  “Final word: Christian fiction with a powerful kick.”

  —Afro.com

  Praise for

  Lady Jasmine

  “She’s back! Jasmine has wreaked havoc in three VCM novels, including last year’s Too Little, Too Late. In Lady Jasmine the schemer everyone loves to loathe breaks several commandments by the third chapter.”

  —Essence

  “Jasmine is the kind of character who doesn’t sit comfortably on a page. She’s the kind who jumps inside a reader’s head, runs around and stirs up trouble—the kind who stays with the reader long after the last page is turned.”

  —The Huntsville Times (Alabama)

  Praise for

  Too Little, Too Late

  “[In this book] there are so many hidden messages about love, life, faith, and forgiveness. Murray’s vividness of faith is inspirational.”

  —The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Mississippi)

  “An excellent entry in the Jasmine Larson Bush Christian Lit saga; perhaps the best so far . . . Fans will appreciate this fine tale . . . a well-written intense drama.”

  —Midwest Book Review

  Praise for

  A Sin and a Shame

  “Riveting, emotionally charged, and spiritually deep . . . What is admirable is the author’s ability to hold the reader in suspense until the very last paragraph of the novel! A Sin and a Shame is a must read . . .Truly a story to be enjoyed and pondered upon!”

  —RomanceInColor.com

  “A Sin and a Shame is Victoria Christopher Murray at her best . . . A page-turner that I couldn’t put down as I was too eager to see what scandalous thing Jasmine would do next. And to watch Jasmine’s spiritual growth was a testament to Victoria’s talents. An engrossing tale of how God’s grace covers us all. I absolutely loved this book!”

  —ReShonda Tate Billingsley, Essence bestselling author of I Know I’ve Been Changed

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  Why I Wrote Stand Your Ground

  Not again were words that kept reverberating through my mind on February 15, 2014. We were just about six months from George Zimmerman’s acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murder, and as I watched the verdict come down in the first trial of Michael Dunn (the man who murdered Jordan Davis) I felt like this country was taking giant leaps backward.

  It had happened again. While Michael Dunn had been found guilty of attempted murder, the jury couldn’t reach a verdict on the murder charge for Jordan Davis’s death.

  Of course my social media timelines blew up. People were upset and rightfully so . . . though, I didn’t understand the specific reactions. People were attacking the men and women of the jury, and then there were those who were once again calling for America to boycott one of its own states. “Nobody go to Florida!” became the social media mantra.

  That confused me—I didn’t understand how people could get upset with Americans who had not only stepped up to fulfill their jury duty, but who were following the law. And it was even more confusing that people wanted to boycott Florida when two dozen other states had some version of the same law. So, what . . . were people going to boycott every state? Were they going to boycott the states where they lived?

  I couldn’t make sense out of what I thought was nonsense. I couldn’t understand why people were attacking juries and attacking states, and not going after the real culprit. Why not make this a political rallying cry? Why not register thousands of people to vote? Why not go after the law?

  Yes, people are behind the law, but not the people who would suffer under a boycott. And not the people who fulfilled their civic duty by serving on the jury.

  It was that night and those reactions that started the seed of this novel growing inside of me. I so wanted to get people to understand that the law was the problem. I wanted people to understand the law better, I wanted people to know that Stand Your Ground is not a defense in itself, it is part of self-defense. And though I had never been through anything like this myself, I wanted people to really think about the families in these situations. Maybe all of that would get us to finally stand our ground . . . stand up and do something. Do something that would matter, do something that would count.

  And while this idea began to brew inside of me, one of my friends on Facebook said, “Victoria, you should write a book about this.” Others agreed, saying they believed that I could teach something. That was when I knew that I did have a platform to reach thousands of people about this—I could do it through entertainment; I could do it through a book.

  It was my ed
itor who challenged me to add layers to this story and to show both sides of this tragedy. It was my publisher who gave me the title.

  And so it was on and I was ready.

  But then I wasn’t as ready as I thought. When I sat down and thought about these women in Stand Your Ground—the mother of the victim and the wife of the shooter—it became such a difficult book to write. Of course, the emotions that I had to write for the mother were clear and obvious. What I didn’t expect was to feel for the wife of the shooter. These were two women who were suffering—in different ways, but still, both suffered. And as I lived with both of them in my head for all of those months, I suffered with them.

  Another thing that surprised me a bit about writing this book was the language. I believe in always being true to my characters, but to this point, profanity hasn’t had any place in my novels. It’s not as though there is much in Stand Your Ground, but I’m sure you can imagine that the N word—a word I abhor—comes up a time or two.

  But if I wanted to write the truth—which I always try to do—if I wanted to speak to the two opposing sides of Stand Your Ground, I had to speak their language, especially the language they would use in this particular situation.

  So, I went with my characters. And I took this journey. Never before could I say that a book I’ve written has changed me. But writing this one did. It wasn’t writing this book alone that changed me—it was that I was halfway through when Eric Garner was choked to death in New York and then Michael Brown was executed in the streets of Ferguson. I wrote this novel while those incidents and their aftermath played as background music in my mind.

  And I changed.

  I wrote and I changed. I wrote and I became an Angry Black Woman.

  My prayer, though, is that I will channel that anger in the right way. I was able to work some of that anger out in the pages of this book. Now, I hope that I’ll be able to work that anger out in a way that will help to change America—for the better.

  And that begins with repealing Stand Your Ground.

  We must know the facts. We must never forget . . .

  PART ONE

  Janice Johnson

  I WISH . . .

  I COULD

  HAVE BEEN THERE . . .

  TO SAVE HIM

  MAY 12, 2014

  Chapter 1

  There is nothing like being in love with a naked man.

  Now, I’m not saying that I didn’t love my husband when he was fully clothed. But right now, right here, all I could do was perch myself up on my elbow and enjoy as my husband strutted around our bedroom as if he were looking for something. He wasn’t looking for a doggone thing; Tyrone was just giving me a show.

  And what a show it was, ’cause there is nothing like a naked, carved, then chiseled to perfection, chocolate man.

  I sighed and my heart swelled with even more love than I ever thought possible. I didn’t know it could be like this. Didn’t know it could be like this after sixteen years of marriage. Didn’t know it could be like this after the betrayal of infidelity.

  “What are you staring at?” Tyrone’s voice broke through my thoughts. He flexed his pecs and inside, I moaned. “What? What are you looking at?” he asked again.

  Really? He was standing there, full frontal, and he was asking me what I was looking at? Did he want me to describe the human statue of excellence that he was to me?

  I answered my husband. “Nothing. I’m not looking at anything.”

  He busted out laughing, then leaned over and kissed my forehead.

  I tugged at his arm, trying to pull him down on top of me so that I could do more nasty things to him. If our life were a book, it would’ve been titled Love and Sex. It had started with the marriage counselor that my best friend, Syreeta, had referred us to after “the cheating incident.”

  “Stay in the bed,” the counselor had advised. “You have to connect again with one another sexually. Once you get the trust back in bed, because that’s where it was broken, you’ll be able to get the trust back in every other aspect of your life.”

  That had just sounded like some man talking at the time. And trust me, it had been hard on both of us. But after a couple of months, we needed therapy to get us out of bed. It was like we couldn’t stop. And the counselor had been right. We connected again, in bed first, and everything else followed.

  But even though my husband was always down for second and third sexual helpings, this time he pulled back and I frowned.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be right back.” Turning away, he grabbed his bathrobe from the chaise. “I’m going to check on Marquis. Make sure his homework is done and he’s getting ready to turn in.”

  I bounced back in the bed and sighed. “Tyrone . . .”

  “Don’t start, Janice.”

  “It’s barely nine o’clock and you’re sending him to bed? He’s seventeen! Come on, now. When are you going to let up on him?”

  The expression of pure pleasure that had been on my husband’s face just a minute before faded fast. “Let up on him?” Tyrone grumbled. “We’re raising a black boy in a white world. I will never let up. I will never go easy. We’ve got just one chance to get this right.”

  “I get that,” I said, having heard this lecture so many times. But if he was going to give me his speech, then he was going to once again listen to mine.

  “It’s been a month since he was suspended. And he’s done everything that we’ve asked him to do. All he does is go to school and then come home. He’s back on track.”

  “See, that’s my point right there,” Tyrone said, jabbing his finger in the air. “He’s back on track. He should never have been derailed in the first place and I want to make sure that he never gets derailed again.”

  “But what else do you want from him? We’ve got to let him know that there is redemption after repentance. We’ve got to teach him that he can do something wrong, but then he can make up for it by doing something right.”

  “He’s a black boy. In this country, he won’t get a makeup opportunity. In this country, he won’t be given a second chance, and our son has to learn that lesson now.”

  “That may be how it is in this country,” I said. “But we’ve got to let him know that it’s not like that in this house. At home, he has to know that we trust him again.”

  Tyrone shook his head.

  “It was one joint, Tyrone,” I said for what had to be the millionth time since our son had received that three-day school suspension a month ago. “Don’t make it out to be any bigger than that.” When Tyrone opened his mouth to lecture me more, I added, “Don’t forget you smoked when you were in high school.”

  “Yeah, but now that I know better, I’ve done better. And I wasn’t at Winchester Academy when I smoked. I wasn’t at some highfalutin school where the people there were expecting and waiting for me to fail.”

  I sighed as Tyrone went on and on about how our son’s mistake was much worse since he was at Winchester—one of the top college-prep academies in the country. It had been my idea to send Marquis there since I recognized his brilliance from when he was in my womb. Seriously, though, our son was smart and I wanted my only child to have the best opportunities, to give him a future that I could’ve never imagined for myself when I was growing up motherless, fatherless, oftentimes feeling homeless as I was shuffled from one foster home to the next.

  “You know I’m right, Janice.” Tyrone broke through my thoughts. “Those white folks don’t want him there, and he goes around acting a fool.”

  “He was acting like a seventeen-year-old . . .” I held up my hand before Tyrone could pounce on my words. “And yes, he was wrong,” I continued. “But he’s learned his lesson and all I want you to see is that Marquis is a good kid. A really good kid who’s going to do great things in life.”

  “I know he has that potential. But if he’s going to be great, he has to understand that he can’t get caught up. He has to do everything right.”

  “Everythin
g right? Really?” It took all that was inside of me not to shake my head and roll my eyes at this man. Sometimes Tyrone spoke as if he were the only parent with dreams for our son, but I wanted the same, perhaps even more, for Marquis. While Tyrone focused on his academics, accepting nothing less than straight A’s, I focused on the fullness of the life that I prayed Marquis would have. I wanted him to be well educated, but happy, with a wife and plenty of children who called me Grandma. I wanted to see him grow up doing the things he loved, playing the saxophone and piano, writing poetry, and participating in amateur golf tournaments.

  But none of that extracurricular stuff mattered to Tyrone. He was a strict disciplinarian who walked a straight military line. I understood structure and parental control; it was just that sometimes, Tyrone was so strict, even I felt stifled.

  “I am letting up a little bit,” Tyrone said as if he heard my thoughts. “I let him go out tonight, didn’t I?”

  I couldn’t help it; I laughed. “You let him go to the library!”

  Tyrone grinned with me. “I let him go to the library . . . with Heather,” he said, referring to our son’s girlfriend.

  While those words made Tyrone smile, the thought made me want to shout, and I wasn’t talking about shouting hallelujah! This discussion was going fine—why did Tyrone even have to bring up Marquis’s girlfriend? His white girlfriend. She was the only thing that made me regret busting my butt, working those extra shifts at the post office so that we could send Marquis to Winchester.

  “I guess you don’t have nothin’ to say now, huh?” Tyrone chuckled.

  My husband was torturing me and he knew it. He knew how I felt about Marquis bringing that girl home when there were all these beautiful black girls that he knew from growing up in church, and even a few at Winchester. Every day, I brought up a new name to him, but Marquis could not be moved. I have no idea where I went wrong, but sometime after Marquis became a teenager, he suddenly and only had eyes for girls who looked like Snow White.

  It sickened me, though his son’s preference for girls with blond hair and blue eyes didn’t seem to bother Tyrone. I didn’t get that. My husband was always talking about white people this and white people that and how he lived in this country, but he was not of this country. Well, why didn’t he have an issue with his son dating a white girl?