And just like that, he began walking away to that fancy sports car too. Jenay watched him leave. She watched the man she thought would be her forever man leave just like those previous forever men left too. A part of her wanted to lash out. A part of her wanted to run to him, turn his spineless ass around, and scratch his eyeballs out. She wanted to run to that fat bitch in the sports car, and scratch hers out too.
But that wasn’t going to bring him back. That wasn’t going to bring those sweet children back. That wasn’t going to make any difference whatsoever. Because at the end of the day, she still was going to be alone. By herself. With nothing but seven long years of waste and stagnation: bitterness, as her companion. She wasn’t about to make a fool out of herself too.
Not that she hadn’t played the fool already. Because Quince not only wasn’t different, he was more predictable than any man she had ever fallen for. Within weeks of the finalization of their divorce, a divorce that specified she was to have no contact with his children ever again, he was married to Miss Vernita. And driving her sports car. And well on his way to driving it all the way to that law degree and success Jenay so faithfully helped him achieve.
She was devastated. His betrayal staggered her for years on end. But then she got up, got busy, and got on with it. And vowed to herself that she wasn’t looking back, and that she wasn’t allowing Quince, or any of those other men who broke her heart, to break her spirit too.
CHAPTER ONE
Three Years Later
“We’re simple people, Big Daddy.” He kept twisting the baseball cap he held in his hands. He felt foolish, calling a man who wasn’t even forty yet Big Daddy, a man younger than he was, but that was what the people called him. “We don’t try to be anything but who we are. Simple, decent folk. All we ever had was that land my granddaddy left us.”
His wife was by his side: skinny as a reed, tight-lipped, pinched face. She knew what brought them to this lowest point of their lives, but she had to play the role.
Charles Sinatra leaned back in the chair behind his desk and looked from her, back to her husband. He was playing a role too. The role of a patient man, a man every soul in town knew he most definitely was not. He even looked at his watch. Not out of disrespect to his visitors, but out of expediency. He had a wedding to attend in Boston this afternoon: his youngest son’s wedding. He didn’t have time for this.
But his visitors, Russ and Trish Ferraway, had their own problem. And in their view, he was it.
“If your bank takes our land,” Russ went on, “we’ll have nothing left. Nothing! What will we have left?”
He was tall like his wife, Charles noted, but unlike her, he was fat as a hog at the county fair. This man hadn’t missed any meals, or any chance to squander that supposedly cherished land his granddaddy left him.
“What will we have to sustain us?” Russ asked. “We aren’t young anymore. All we have is that land my granddaddy worked day and night to maintain. And when he died, he handed it to me. I can’t lose it like this! What will my granddaddy think? He’ll turn over in his grave! You’re a man with property. I’m sure you were given possessions to look after too when your daddy died. Look at all of the varied and sundry businesses you own around town; all of these grand businesses your daddy left you.”
“My daddy was a drunkard and a thief,” Charles said unapologetically. “All he left me was a bad name, loads of bad debt, and alone.”
The husband didn’t expect that response. He swallowed hard. “What about your grandpappy? What did he leave you?”
“Absolutely nothing,” Charles responded.
The husband glanced at his wife. This wasn’t going the way they had planned. They were supposed to appeal to his better angels. They were supposed to get him to reason with them. They were in the storefront office of the most powerful man in Jericho. And they didn’t come to say hello or to talk about the weather or even to kiss his ass. It went deeper than that. They came to beg.
Trish, the wife, moved in front of her husband. Russ, it seemed to Charles, seemed relieved. “We’ve got children, Big Daddy,” Trish said. “What about them? If we lose that land, it affects them too. It will affect them something awful. What if it were you and your children in this same situation?”
“My children wouldn’t be in this situation,” Charles said firmly.
Russ couldn’t believe it. “That’s presumptuous of you, sir,” he said. “But for the grace of God your children could very well be in this same situation. What on this green earth makes you so certain they couldn’t find themselves exactly where we find ourselves today?”