Forgiven Read online

  With a raised eyebrow, JT said, “What decisions?”

  She finished drying Lily, handed her to JT and then took Aaron out of the tub and dried him off. “Let’s put them to bed and then we can talk.”

  They put the kids’ pajamas on and then laid them in their beds. Jerome had already bathed and was sound asleep. JT grabbed Cassandra’s hand and pulled her out of Jerome and Aaron’s room. “Let’s talk.”

  They walked into their bedroom. Cassandra saw her suitcase in the corner and froze. JT gently pulled her the rest of the way into the room. “What’s wrong?” JT asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong, I just thought that we might want to wait a little while before I moved back into our bedroom.”

  “Where are you going to sleep, Cassandra? We only have three bedrooms in this house and they’re all taken.”

  Wringing her hands and looking everywhere but at JT, Cassandra said, “I thought I would sleep in the room with Lily for a little while.”

  JT sighed as he let go of Cassandra’s hand and sat down. He looked at his wife as he said, “That’s not going to work for me, Sanni.”

  There had been a time when Cassandra had asked JT not to refer to her as Sanni anymore. That nickname meant a lot to Cassandra. It made her feel special and like she really mattered to JT. When he had done all his dirt, she no longer felt special, but times were different now.

  “I don’t plan to sleep in Lily’s room forever. I just want to make sure this is going to work between us,” Cassandra reasoned.

  JT shook his head as he stood up and walked toward Cassandra. He put her hand in his. “I want a real marriage, and that includes you sleeping in here with me.”

  “But… but what if something happens? What if we can’t make a go of this?” Cassandra asked with fear in her eyes.

  “I know I let you down before, Sanni, but I’m a different man now. I will never hurt you like I did before.”

  What had Cassandra said to her mother earlier? Something about forgiveness being a choice? Maybe trust was a choice also. Maybe she needed to throw caution to the wind and just lean in. She wanted to forget about the past and move forward with JT as if nothing had ever gone wrong in their relationship.

  When she didn’t answer, JT said, “Have a little faith, baby. We are going to make this work.”

  Mattie was screaming inside Cassandra’s head, telling her to look before leaping. She tried to deny the voices in her head and go with the feeling in her heart. “Okay, JT,” she said. “We will have a real marriage.” Cassandra then closed her eyes and allowed herself to be swept into JT’s arms. She loved this man and wanted to spend the rest of her life making love to him. Cassandra silently prayed, Please, God, if this is a dream, don’t let me wake up.

  Two

  JT woke up frustrated, just as he had for the last month since Cassandra moved back in with him. He looked over at his wife and smiled as he noted that she was still in bed with him. But the smile quickly dissipated as he realized that his wife had now been back in his bed for twenty nine days and they still had not consummated their reunion.

  He believed her when she said that she wanted to make love with him. But when they would get down to it, Cassandra would have a panic attack. And what man wanted to make love to his wife after she freaked out from his touch. So again this morning, JT was leaving his bed unfulfilled, but determined to hold on.

  He couldn’t blame Cassandra for the way things were between them now. Heck, if she had been the one sleeping around, and then one of her former lovers stabbed him, JT couldn’t honestly say he would have forgiven Cassandra, let alone reconcile with her. Not that he was mentioning any of that to his wife. He was just grateful that he had been the one to receive forgiveness rather than the one who had to give it. He didn’t know what he would have done and he never wanted to find out.

  JT jumped in the shower and then went into his office to read his Word and commune with God before his family woke up. He had always been an early riser, but now he used his time to seek the Lord’s guidance for his life rather than sneaking in an early morning booty call. “Thank you, Lord,” JT said as he bowed his head. “You have blessed me with a wonderful family. I just wanted You to know that I appreciate them a lot more these days.” JT continued praying and reading his Bible for almost an hour. He then went into the boys’ room to wake them up.

  Tuesday was Cassandra’s day to herself, so JT dressed the children and took them over to Cassandra’s mother’s house. Actually, he only took Jerome and Aaron to Mattie, the wicked one, because Cassandra’s mother absolutely refused to watch Lily. JT’s heart still ached over the conversation he’d had with Mattie the first time he dropped the kids off at her house.

  “Only legits can stay here,” she had said.

  “Excuse me?” A look of confusion crossed JT’s face as he attempted to carry Lily inside Mattie’s house.

  Mattie pointed at his daughter and said, “I’m not watching her.”

  “But I thought you told Cassandra you would keep the children on Tuesdays so that she could have some time to herself?”

  “I sure did say that I would watch Cassandra’s children. She deserves a break after putting up with you all week long. But I did not, under any circumstances, say that I would do a favor for the likes of you.”

  “I don’t want to take Lily back to Cassandra, Mattie. This is supposed to be her day of rest.” JT tried to reason with Mattie one more time.

  With scorn and contempt in her eyes, Mattie said, “Look here, Playa-Playa, I’m sure you have a chick on the side who can watch ol’ Illegit, so that my daughter can have a break from your nonsense.”

  JT was so tired of his mother-in-law. She had the audacity to stand there and preach about Lily not being legitimate when Cassandra’s father was a married man also. She was a hypocrite and JT would have loved nothing better than to enlighten her to that fact. But it wasn’t worth the argument he and Cassandra would have later once Mattie, the wicked one, told Cassandra what he’d said to her. He turned away from Mattie and said, “Her name is Lily, not Illegit.”

  “Whatever,” Mattie yelled at JT as he walked to his car. “Don’t bring her over here no more and you won’t have to worry about me calling her nothing.”

  JT wanted to pull his boys out of Mattie’s house. The venom escaping that woman’s mouth was toxic and he feared what Jerome and Aaron might be internalizing. But Cassandra said that the boys loved their grandmother and would be devastated if they couldn’t spend time with her. JT had his doubts, but he’d left with Lily that day and never brought her back.

  An elderly woman at JT’s new church agreed to watch Lily on Tuesdays for a hundred dollars a month. Ms. Shirley Miller had been struggling financially since her husband passed. She’d lost weight because the food stamps given to her by the government didn’t allow for a full month’s worth of food. The last couple of days of the month Ms. Shirley had nothing but soup and crackers if she had that. Even though money was now scarce, JT didn’t mind parting with a hundred dollars a month for Ms. Shirley. The woman had filled the role of a grandmother for Lily, and for that he would forever be grateful.

  JT got the children dressed and then went back into his bedroom, kissed Cassandra on the forehead and then left the house. When he got in the car, he realized that he didn’t have his cell phone, so he rushed back into the house to get it. If Cassandra couldn’t get in touch with him, she always left him messages that tore at his heart. It wasn’t so much what she said on his voice mail, it was the fear he heard in her voice. As if she was picturing him some place he didn’t belong – like with another woman, while she was leaving the message.

  He’d tried to reassure her. But no matter how she tried to hide it, JT saw the worry in her eyes. So he limited time away from home and answered the phone when she called no matter what he was doing. At times he felt like a prisoner, but he’d do whatever it took to win back Cassandra’s trust.

  He dropped Lily off to Ms. Shirley fir
st. Even though Lily was still too young to understand grown up conversation, he never wanted Lily to hear the things Mattie, the wicked one, said about her ever again.

  However, the boys were a different story. They got to watch their father get castigated on the regular. JT had had his fill of Mattie’s antics. He’d already told Cassandra that if Mattie pulled another one of her stunts, he would not leave the boys with her. “Okay boys, we’re here,” JT said with a fake smile on his face as he parked in front of his monster-in-law’s house. He unbuckled Jerome and Aaron and then walked them to the front door.

  Mattie opened the door with a broom in her hands. She looked at Jerome and Aaron and said, “Hurry up boys, run in the house so I can sweep this devil off my porch.”

  Fed up, JT held onto his sons as he turned back around and started walking toward his car.

  “Where are you going with my grandchildren?” Mattie demanded.

  JT turned back around and told her, “I’m not going to allow you to fill my children with hate. I will find someone else to watch them.”

  “You can’t take my grandchildren away from me. Not after I went through twelve hours of labor bringing their mother into this world.”

  JT put his sons in the car and buckled them back in. “This is it, Mattie. I’ve allowed this to go on for far too long as it is.” He closed the passenger side door and walked around to the driver’s door.

  “So you’re back to wearing the pants in the family, huh? You done spent a month kissing and making up to Cassandra and now you think you got the power to take my grandkids away? Well I got news for you… It will take a lifetime for you to make up for all the sleeping around you did on my daughter. Do you hear me, JT?” Mattie held the broom in the air as if it were a spear that she was aiming at JT’s heart. “You got a lifetime of mess to make up for.”

  JT got in his car without saying another word to Mattie.

  From the back seat, Jerome asked him, “Daddy, why do you act like the devil when we go to grandma’s house?”

  JT shook his head feeling powerless. “Son, I’m not sure why your grandmother said that. But I try real hard not to act like the devil.”

  “That’s not what grandma says. She told us that she treats you so mean, because you always acting like the devil.”

  JT put the key into the ignition as he watched Mattie walk her hateful self back into her house. “I don’t really think your grandmother means the things she says, Jerome.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Jerome said as he leaned back in his car seat and then continued. “Grandma says you’re a cheat too, but I’ve never seen you cheat at anything.”

  Aaron picked that moment to laugh his head off. But JT didn’t find anything funny. He wished that he could tell his sons that he had never cheated at anything in his life. But that wasn’t true. He had cheated on his wife, time and time again. He broke Cassandra’s heart and would probably never forgive himself for all the pain he inflicted on the one person he’d promised to love and cherish. But all that was in the past. As JT drove down the street he declared that he was a new man now, and with the help of God, he would never be a cheat again.

  Three

  Stepping out of her bed, Cassandra stretched and yawned. Her body ached as if she had been lying on rocks all night long. The house was quiet as it normally was on Tuesdays. She wanted to climb back in bed, stretch out and bask in the peace. But she had an appointment this morning that she couldn’t reschedule.

  She hurriedly showered and threw on a pair of no-name jeans, a purple and black striped turtle neck and black pumps. Cassandra picked clothes that she liked and that looked good on her. She never concerned herself with labels. She was one of those women who looked like a million bucks in whatever she put on. Cassandra didn’t need the help of designers to look model-fabulous.

  The phone rang as she picked up her purse. Cassandra looked at the caller ID and almost didn’t answer it. But then she reminded herself that she was trying to work this relationship out. “Hey,” was all she said after lifting the receiver to her ear.

  “Hey yourself,” he said.

  It was Bishop Turner, the man Cassandra had loved and adored because she thought he was her godfather. But last year she discovered that Bishop Turner was actually her father and their relationship hadn’t been the same since. “What’s up?” Cassandra asked, trying to hurry the conversation along.

  “Susan and I will be in town next month and I was hoping that we could take you, JT and the children out to dinner.”

  “I don’t know,” Cassandra said hesitantly as she tried to come up with an excuse. “JT’s been working real hard trying to rebuild his ministry, so we might be busy when you come into town.”

  “He told me that you all had outgrown the basement and that the community center he works for was allowing him to use their gym for Sunday services.”

  Cassandra didn’t respond.

  “Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll give JT a call and work out the details with him.”

  “Okay.” Cassandra glanced at her watch and then said, “Look, can I talk to you later? I’m running late for an appointment.”

  “All right, I’ll talk to you later, Baby Girl.”

  She hung up the phone, gritting her teeth at the audacity of Bishop Turner. To refer to her as ‘Baby Girl’ was like slapping her. As a child she wanted nothing more than to be his little girl… used to pray about it every night. Please, God, I wish Bishop was my daddy. And all the time, he was, but nobody ever let her in on the secret. Now she understood why it had been so important to Bishop that he not only marry her and JT, but that he walked her down the aisle as well. Her wedding album was full with pictures of her and the bishop. How she wished that she had known he was her father on that day. It would have been so much more special to her.

  Cassandra waved away those thoughts as she walked out of her house and got into her 2008 Mazda. She didn’t miss the mansion size home she and JT owned less than a year ago, nor did she miss her Lexus or JT’s Bentley that had been sold in order to pay off their debts. The way they used to live had never impressed her. She could take it or leave it; which ever way the wind decided to blow. Cassandra was content with what she had.

  But content didn’t mean happy. And lately, Cassandra wondered what happy looked like. She understood that she was living in a new reality. One in which her husband was no longer pastor of a prominent church in Cleveland, but was now rebuilding his church by using the gymnasium of the community center he worked at during the week as a Community Organizer and Youth Counselor. Her new reality also included a baby that JT had by another woman that she was now responsible for raising. But Lily wasn’t the reason she was unhappy… right? The fact that she was now first lady to a twenty five member church, rather than the three thousand member one they were thrown out of didn’t really bother her… did it?

  Cassandra couldn’t pinpoint the reason she was having such a hard time adjusting to her new normal, and for that reason, she was now parking her car in front of Dr. Michael Clarkson’s office. She turned off the ignition and found herself staring at the small unassuming yellow brick building. It was a one-story building that Dr. Clarkson shared with a dentist. There was only one door in the front of the building. Patients walked in and either went right to sit in the dentist chair, or left to lie on a couch and explain why life had stabbed them in the back. Cassandra opened the door and went left.

  ***

  Once a month, JT met with his boys, Pastor Max Moore and Pastor Samuel Unders. The three of them served as an accountability team for each other. Pastor Samuel Unders had been an Elder at Faith Outreach Church when JT was the pastor there. But after the scandal that JT caused at the church, he felt compelled to resign and Unders took his place. Pastor Max Moore was the founder of True Vine Church, a fellowship that strived to be in tune with the voice of God.

  Mattie’s house was right around the corner from the Marriott he was supposed to meet Max and Sam at. He wanted
to take the boys back to Cassandra before going to the Marriott for breakfast, but he was already late. So he pulled up at the restaurant side of the hotel, took his sons out of the car and made his way into the restaurant. JT asked the waitress for a highchair and a booster seat and then walked over to the table with his friends.

  Max laughed as JT sat down. “Man, I knew this would happen. Cassandra’s got you on such a short leash, you can’t even have breakfast with your boys without bringing the kids.”

  “Shut up, Max-a-million,” JT said, using the name that he’d given Max a few months back when his congregation had grown to five thousand. Funny thing was, Max took the status of having a megachurch in stride. He didn’t puff up and start demanding stuff that even Jesus wouldn’t ask for. Whether he had a million dollars or two dollars to his name, he was the same lovable guy as always, and JT admired him for that.

  “Okay now boys, don’t start acting up before I can get a little coffee in me,” Unders said.

  At sixty-seven, Sam Unders was the oldest of the group. He provided the wisdom that JT and Max sometimes needed. While at forty-two, Max was closer to JT’s age and served as JT’s friend and confidant. “I’m sorry I’m late, Mattie couldn’t keep the boys this morning,” JT said.

  Then Jerome added, “She thinks Daddy is the devil.”

  Max had been drinking some orange juice. But Jerome’s comment made him spit it out. He looked at JT. “She really said that?”

  JT playfully hit Jerome in the back of the head. “Thanks for spreading my business.” He turned back to Max and said, “Every chance she gets, that woman is always downing me. I just couldn’t take it no more. I told her that she wouldn’t be watching our children anymore.”

  “Did you talk to Cassandra about this?” Unders asked.

  “Man, the woman called him the devil… in front of his children. That’s just something Cassandra’s gon’ have to understand,” Max said.