Secrets of a Sinner Read online

  “Whatcha in for?” she asked, her front teeth missing.

  Natalie groaned, closed her eyes, and laid her head back against the wall. It was going to be a long night.

  * * *

  “Coleman...” the guard called out about an hour after Natalie had come back from her arraignment hearing the next morning. Bond had been set and paid, and a pre-trial hearing was scheduled for six weeks from now. “You’re free to go,” the guard announced.

  Richard must have finally gotten her message. If only she could’ve reached him at the restaurant. Spending the night in this place was horrible, and unfortunately there was no VIP section. As if being humiliated at the restaurant hadn’t been enough, she’d been locked up with women who, in her opinion, were inferior to her. They had real issues like drugs and prostitution, unlike Natalie, who merely didn’t have enough money to pay for dinner.

  I could just kill Kevin, Natalie thought to herself as she changed out of the jail uniform back into her black dress. Unhumbled by the experience, Natalie had a speech decorated with profanity ready to deliver to Kevin later. In all of her life, she had never been rejected to such an extent by any man. She honestly didn’t know what upset her more: the fact that she’d spent the night in jail or that she’d been dumped in such a public and mortifying manner.

  “You need to sign here, indicating that you are receiving all of your belongings,” a lady instructed, shoving a paper and Natalie’s personal things toward her.

  She leafed through her confiscated items. Everything seemed to be intact. She scribbled her signature on the paper. Moments later she anxiously waited as the woman in the control room buzzed her out.

  “Nat...” Richard smiled and greeted her with open arms. He had on a dark-gray pinstriped suit and a black leather trench coat. His attire seemed to complement his dark-brown complexion. His leather beret covered up his slightly graying hair. Richard and Natalie’s mother had been dating on and off for several years. For a middle-aged district attorney, he didn’t look too shabby, although he could stand to lose a few inches around his waist.

  “Hello, Richard,” she said dryly, ignoring the invitation for a hug.

  “Do you need to get your car from the restaurant?”

  “No, I just need you to take me home.” She whizzed past him.

  The February air was cold and crisp. Natalie could see the sun peeking through the clouds, but it wasn’t warm enough to diminish the chill she felt in such a revealing outfit. Last night, it had seemed the perfect thing to wear. It didn’t matter that it was cold then. Her temperature had been rising in anticipation of what she’d thought she would be doing with Kevin after dinner.

  Richard deactivated the alarm on his silver Lexus with his key chain and opened the door so Natalie could get in. The lingering smell of cigarettes choked her and she began coughing. He was a classic chain smoker, yet her mother was the one in the hospital with cancer—talk about irony! Her mother developing cancer seemed not to have affected Richard at all in terms of swaying him to quit smoking, at least not that Natalie had been aware of. The open pack lying in his cup holder combined with the suffocating smell of his car made it obvious that, if Richard had made any type of vow to stop smoking, his pledge had expired.

  Natalie had lost track of the number of times that Richard had quit over the years. During Natalie’s last year of college, Richard’s father had unexpectedly died of a heart attack. Like Richard, his father had been a chain smoker, but was otherwise considered healthy. Natalie recalled how, during the months immediately following his father’s death, Richard had gotten on a serious health-conscious kick. He’d given up cigarettes, stopped eating red meat and pork, and had bought himself and Natalie’s mother memberships to one of the local gyms. His father’s death seemed to have scared him straight; that is until Richard started prosecuting several high-profile cases. Soon, the gym memberships went unused, pork and red meat became regular items in his diet, and cigarettes were once again his friends. Since then, Natalie had witnessed or heard from her mother about other attempts Richard had made to—once and for all—“kick the habit,” but apparently he had never been successful.

  Shortly after leaving the jail parking lot, Richard was headed east on I-70, going toward Reynoldsburg, the Columbus suburb where Natalie and her mother lived. He reached into the cup holder and pulled out one of his cigarettes, quickly lighting it up.

  “I know this is your car, but can you please refrain from smoking? I happen to like ingesting clean air into my lungs and it’s too cold to ride with the windows down.”

  Richard took one good puff before extinguishing his cigarette in the ashtray and leaving it to rest for later. “What’s up with the attitude?” he asked.

  “If you had to spend the night in jail, you would have an attitude also.”

  “Yeah, well I’m not the one who put you there, so you can quit acting like it.”

  “Sorry...I’m just anxious to get home, take a shower and get some sleep.”

  “So, do you want to tell me what happened last night?”

  This was why she didn’t want to call him in the first place. She knew he would press her for information because he interrogated people for a living. “I told you in the messages I left. I didn’t have enough money to pay for the bill at Skyler’s,” Natalie answered in a less-than-tolerant tone.

  Richard seemed to ignore her cynicism. “Why did your date leave you at the restaurant?”

  Knowing he would not stop grilling her, Natalie decided to give him a very abridged version of what had happened. “To make a long story short, there were some complicated issues with his wife.” There, that was short and simple. No need to go into detail about things.

  “Did you know he was married beforehand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Natalie!” he exclaimed. “How could you purposely date a married man? Don’t you realize the sacredness of a marital relationship?”

  She quickly regretted telling him anything. His ex-wife had committed adultery and Richard was very judgmental of people who engaged in extramarital affairs. God only knew what he’d say to Natalie if he knew the whole story and how she had added to the complications of Kevin and Wendy’s marriage. “Look, Richard, think whatever you want. I’m really too tired to care right now. He and his wife were separated when we first met. The fact is, I am no longer involved in that relationship, and don’t ever intend to be again. I’ve never told my mother about him, and I hope you won’t either.”

  Richard shook his head in disbelief. “I am really disappointed in you, but I won’t tell Sharon. In light of her health problems, she doesn’t need anything else to worry about. You need to be careful, though. It’s never a good idea to become involved with a married man. If he’s willing to violate his marriage vows, then he certainly wouldn’t be true to you. I never imagined you as the type who would—”

  “Yeah, well, there’s a lot about me that you don’t know...”

  “Apparently...” Richard said sarcastically, then softened his tone. “Look, sweetheart, I’m sorry if I sound judgmental. Natalie, you are such a beautiful and bright young lady. I don’t want to see you sell yourself short. I’m just telling you what I would tell my own daughter.”

  Blah, blah, blah... “I am not your daughter, and you are not my father. Let’s remember that, okay?” Before he could have a chance to fully digest her words and respond, Natalie reached down and turned the radio up loud enough that his voice would be drowned out if he dared to speak again. She laid her head back on the headrest and listened to the smooth sounds of jazz infiltrate the air.

  Maybe you were a little harsh, she scolded herself. She had to admit, Richard had been there for both her and her mother over the years. He had only been divorced a few years when he and her mother had first met. Richard’s marriage was dissolved after he’d found out that his wif
e was having a longtime affair. The daughter that he’d supported and raised was, in fact, someone else’s. Amazingly, he seemed to have overcome his trust issues because several years ago, he’d proposed to Natalie’s mother who had turned him down—hence the off-and-on relationship. Still, Richard was always there whenever Natalie or her mother needed him most. Natalie knew Richard meant well with the advice he had given her, but she felt she was no longer in need of a father figure. At the tender age of five, she’d seen fate step in and take her daddy away.

  Natalie vividly remembered sitting on the living-room sofa with her mother watching television as the two of them waited for her father to come home from work. Back then, Natalie and her parents lived in Jackson, Mississippi. Her father worked full-time at the railroad while her mother, who had been disowned by her parents for marrying a Black man, worked part-time as a waitress. Sharon had just finished preparing dinner, which was being kept warm in the oven because they were waiting for Natalie’s father to come home. Whenever James Coleman walked through the door, Natalie would always run and jump into his arms. He would swing her around and smother her with kisses before changing out of his work clothes, and then the three of them would sit at the table and share their meal, just like the families on TV did at that time.

  Natalie remembered how, after several hours, her mother began making phone calls to relatives, but apparently no one had seen or heard from him. Natalie could still hear the horrifying scream her mother had belted out when a police officer showed up at the door. Peering in and seeing Natalie, he took Sharon aside and whispered something to her. Not knowing what the man said, Natalie began crying just because her mother was crying and it scared her. Soon, their home was swarming with teary-eyed relatives.

  Still scared and confused, Natalie asked her mother, “When is Daddy coming home?” No matter what was happening, she knew her father’s presence would make her feel safe. It always did—in the middle of the night during thunderstorms or when she heard noises under her bed, there was something about being in her father’s arms that gave Natalie a sense of security. To Natalie’s dismay, her mother tearfully replied, “I’m sorry, sweetie, Daddy’s not coming home.” It was then that Natalie had learned the cause of all the sad faces around her—her father had been killed in an automobile accident. That had been over twenty-five years ago, but if Natalie pondered the memory of that night too long, it seemed like it had just happened yesterday.

  After her father was killed, things seemed to change drastically. She and her mother moved in with her paternal grandparents for a while. By the time Natalie was nine, the well-to-do Jesse Baxendale had charmed his way into her mother’s life. Nearly five years later, that marriage was dissolved and she and her mother fled from Jackson and began growing roots in Ohio.

  The circumstances under which they’d left were not the greatest, and Natalie sometimes wondered how her life would have been had they stayed. Her father’s death wasn’t the only hole that had been left in her heart. One issue continued to remain a mystery. People wondered why, at age thirty, Natalie seemed so self-centered and callous. True, her heart had become hardened, but her life experiences had trained her to be that way. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to care about other people; she was just too afraid to let herself do so.

  Natalie must’ve dozed off during the ride because when she opened her eyes, Richard was pulling into the driveway behind her red Camry, with its personalized Q T PIE license plate. Richard turned the radio down and pushed the gear to Park. “I thought you’d like to know that I talked to the owner of Skyler’s. He’s agreed to drop the charges if you pay the bill, but you are no longer welcome there. You need to call him to work out the restitution arrangements. His name is José Romano.”

  “Yeah, well, I can’t say that I’m anxious to return there, so that’s fine with me,” Natalie said as she mustered up the energy to open the car door.

  Richard grabbed her by the arm. “It wouldn’t hurt for you to show a little gratitude and say thank you. I’m scheduled to be in court in less than an hour. I dropped everything to come and bail you out of jail, you know.”

  Natalie jerked away. “My bad...thanks.”

  Chapter 3

  A Godsend

  As Richard peeled out of the driveway, Natalie walked up to the house, stepping over the newspaper lying at the bottom of the short flight of stairs to the front porch. She’d get it later. Home at last! she thought when she walked into the spacious living room. After a night in the slammer, she had a new appreciation for the beige sectional, oak coffee and end tables, and the matching entertainment center holding a twenty-seven-inch TV along the back wall. Natalie’s mother had single-handedly chosen the decor of the house. Natalie’s decorating style was more contemporary. Other than her bedroom set, she had sold all of her furniture before moving back from New York, figuring there wouldn’t be enough room in her mother’s house to store it.

  Usually at this time of the morning, Natalie was at the hospital by her mother’s bedside. Sharon’s prognosis, even after a double mastectomy and several other treatment combinations, didn’t look very good. The illness weighed heavily on Natalie, taking a toll on her in many ways. Because her involuntary sleepover had thrown a curve in her normal routine, Natalie planned to get a few hours of sleep before going to the hospital later that afternoon.

  She longed for a hot shower to wash away the grubby feeling she had from still having on last night’s clothes. Plus she was sure that the smoke smell from Richard’s car had clung to her hair, but both the shower and hair wash would have to wait. She stumbled down the hall and turned into her white-wallpapered, light-gray-carpeted bedroom, toppled on her queen-size bed, and immediately fell asleep.

  * * *

  “Natalie, please forgive me for the way I acted last night.” Kevin had showed up at the door unexpectedly with a box of red long-stemmed roses. He looked as though he’d had a restless night as well, and was still dressed in the same suit that he’d worn to Skyler’s yesterday evening, except it was now dirty and wrinkled. Though he looked pathetic, Natalie was too angry to feel sorry for him.

  “Do you realize the position you left me in last night?” She stood in the doorway with her arms tightly folded while piercing him with her eyes.

  “I know...I’m sorry. I just needed time to process everything,” he explained.

  “So now what?”

  “Now...I’m hoping you’ll forgive me so we can start our relationship over...from scratch.”

  “What about Wendy?”

  “What about her? I don’t care about Wendy. I cancelled all of my appointments today just so I could come over here and tell you that I love you. I don’t want to spend another day of my life without you.”

  Natalie grinned slightly, knowing she now had Kevin right where she wanted him. He looked like a lovesick puppy and she was once again in control of how their relationship would play out. “You know, Kevin,” she began, speaking softly, finally accepting the roses from him. “I appreciate you coming over here and all, but I’m afraid it’s too late. You see, I’m no longer interested in you after the way you treated me last night. Your behavior was totally unacceptable.”

  “No, please don’t say that.” Kevin shook his head in despair. “I’m sorry. I’ll do anything to make it up to you...anything!”

  “Oh, you fool! The only thing you can do for me is go somewhere and die. It’s over, Kevin!” She slammed the door in his face, feeling justified.

  “No, I love you, Natalie!” Kevin pounded from the other side. “Please don’t say it’s over. I love you!”

  Natalie leaned her back against the door, and began to pluck petals from the roses one by one. “He loves me, he loves me not. He loves me, he loves me not,” she continually repeated, laughing wickedly.

  “Natalie, open up!” The frantic combination of door-pounding and bell-ri
nging snatched Natalie from a deep sleep. Though her dream still clung to her, she knew it wasn’t Kevin at the door and rose like a zombie to answer the plea.

  “Sylvia?” She was startled to see her mother’s best friend. “I thought you were at some conference or something in Cleveland.”

  “I was...I, um...”

  Sylvia was also a Mississippi native. She and Natalie’s mother had met in Jackson during their sophomore year of college and had become friends, despite the severe racial tensions in the south at that time. Sylvia had grown up with Natalie’s father and his siblings, and so took credit for being the matchmaker between Natalie’s parents. Unfortunately, Natalie’s mother had never finished college because her parents had ceased funding her when she began socializing with the “Negroes,” but Sylvia did earn her degree and was now the communications department chair at a local college. It was very uncharacteristic of her to be at a loss for words, so seeing Sylvia at the door struggling to speak alarmed Natalie. “What’s wrong?” she prodded apprehensively.

  “Um...” Sylvia’s voice was low and shaky. Her eyes were watery and she bore a gut-wrenching expression. “The hospital called me.... They couldn’t get hold of you or Richard.... Sharon—”

  “No, please don’t say it....” Natalie trembled with fear. “Don’t tell me she’s dead. Please don’t—” The thick wall of protection she’d built around her feelings crumbled, and her vulnerability was exposed as tears flooded from her eyes. She found herself gasping for air and collapsed onto Sylvia’s petite frame.

  * * *

  The days leading up to her mother’s memorial service were extremely difficult. Tears raced down Natalie’s cheeks every time she relived the moment she had received that dreaded message. She’d known death was a possibility, but she’d had no idea it would come so quickly. She’d thought her consultations with the doctor had mentally prepared her for the worst, but dealing with the reality of death was way different than talking about it. She couldn’t stop the loneliness that burned in her chest, and she was tortured by the guilt of knowing she had missed her final opportunity to say good-bye.