Chapter 18

“It is better to dwell in the wilderness, than with a contentious and angry woman.” Proverbs 21:19 The Bible

 

Kenneth Anniston didn’t waste time. Barreling into his garage, he threw the car into park. He had to see the extent of damage Adanya had caused. And why? Why, was she out to ruin his life? Ruin what he’d taken all these years to build?

If God had forgiven him, why did she have to wreak havoc in his life? He had made a huge mistake ever thinking he could juggle two families at the same time. But it had been hard, no downright impossible for him to choose between Carla and Annalisse. Maybe the typical man would have just played around on the side with Carla, but he wasn’t the typical male. He was in love with both Carla and Annalisse.

Now here he was, torn between two lovers and he didn’t know what he was going to do. Carla had given him two precious, beautiful daughters. He couldn’t turn his back on them or her. And as for Annalisse, she had stuck by him when he thought his whole world was about to crumble. Stuck by him when the unspeakable happened between him and Anaya. He owed her. She may not have birthed any children for him, and only God knew why because doctor after doctor told her there was no reason why she shouldn’t be able to get pregnant. And still it wasn’t too late for her to conceive, not really. She wasn’t even forty years old and women her age became pregnant every day, maybe Annalisse would too. But that wasn’t the issue right now. Right now he had to see if Adanya had permanently destroyed his marriage to Annalisse.

“Annalisse,” he yelled as he ran inside the massive house. He took off in the direction of the winding stair case. “Annalisse,” he yelled again, as he set foot on the stairs.

He hesitated when he saw a figure in the corner of his eye. He didn’t have a chance to make it pass the third step.

“Ahhh.” The back of his thigh felt like it was on fire. Everything began to move in slow motion. His lower leg was being ripped off, or did it just feel like that? Kenneth couldn’t tell. His body fell backwards, his hands flew up, his mouth opened, but he heard nothing coming out of it.

Annalisse. He saw her. Her eyes narrowed while his widened with alarm. Did she hear him? It looked like she was screaming. He saw the gun in her hand. Oh, God, she’s going to kill me. Don’t do it, Annalisse. Don’t. Kill. Me.

Blackness.

Annalisse stood over Kenneth with the gun pointing directly at him. His eyes fluttered. With shaking hands, she lowered the .357.

“Annalisse.” Kenneth gasped for breath. “Call 911.”

Annalisse was frozen. She wanted to move but couldn’t. What had happened? Why was Kenneth lying in the floor? The dark, sticky looking, purple substance oozed from underneath the lower half of his body and on to her freshly stained concrete floors.

Annalisse tilted her head from side to side, ever so slowly. She studied the purple goo that now looked like it was a deep red. How would she clean it? Get up, Kenneth. Move out the way.

Annalisse ejected a blood curdling scream. “Oh, my God. What have I done? What have I done?” She started screaming like she’d suddenly come back to life, while running around in a circle, one hand still holding the heavy, black piece of metal. She looked at it and started screaming again.

“Annalisse. Listen.” Kenneth’s mouth then his entire face contorted as he struggled to locate the place he’d been shot.

She knelt down on her knees beside him. “Oh my, God. What have I done?”

“Call, call, 9-1-1,” he stuttered just above a whisper, before he went unconscious.

Annalisse released the gun. The sound of it landing on the concrete floor gave her cause to jump. Her hand flew up to her chest.

“Kenneth,” she called over and over again as she tugged on his shirt. Next, like she’d been popped with a needle, she jumped up and ran to the nearest phone, in the kitchen. With slippery, bloody fingers she dialed 9-1-1.

 

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Annalisse huddled in fear, shock, and remorse as she shook while dialing Kaye’s number. She had been transported to Jail East and placed in an open room full of other women. It reminded Annalisse of a smaller version of the now defunct Mid-south coliseum. A huge TV was mounted high up on the wall. Several pay phones lined the walls too, and there were picnic type metal benches sporadically placed in the room. A metal door separated them from the rest of the world.

Annalisse gripped the phone in her left hand until her knuckles turned white. She punched the numbers on the oily, nasty, and smelly black jail phone quickly, like she was afraid someone might come along like they did in the movies and jack her for it.

Kaye barely had time to mouth the word, “Hello,” before Annalisse started hollering into the phone. Her spit flew everywhere.

“Kaye, I shot him,” Annalisse screamed into the phone. “I shot Kenneth. I need you to locate Adanya. Make sure she doesn’t hear about this from anybody outside of our family.”

“You did what? Girl, don’t call me with your sick sense of humor, ‘cause it isn’t funny.”

“I’m not joking. Oh, my God,” Annalisse hollered again.

“You said you were going to leave him high and dry, not kill him,” Kaye screamed into the phone. “My, Lord, what have you done?”

She kept her death like grip on the phone. “I’m at Jail East. They said they needed me to come down here to answer a few questions. But they fooled me,” she cried. “They’re talking about charging me with attempted murder.”

“What have you done?” Kaye paused like she was afraid to hear the answer to the question she was about to ask her best friend. “Is he dead, Anna?”

“No, he’s not dead. I said, attempted murder. But I didn’t mean to do it, Kaye. Please, please call my father, and tell him to come down here. I need him to post bond for me. Hurry, Kaye. Just do it, please,” Annalisse begged.

Kaye exhaled loudly into the phone just before it died.

 

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“She shot Daddy?” Adanya cried. “How is he? Where is he?” she asked without waiting for her grandma to tell her what had gone down. All she heard were the words ‘shot, hospital, your mother, daddy’, coming through her ears like missing pieces of a puzzle.

“I’m on my way.” Adanya shut down the phone, while she looked frantically around for her purse and keys. When she found them, she ran to the garage and jumped inside her automobile. She started the engine, remotely opened the garage door, and backed out of the driveway.

It was after turning on to the main intersection that she realized she didn’t stay on the phone long enough for her grandmother to tell her the hospital they’d taken her father to. She pushed the phone button on her steering wheel and vocally instructed it to “Call grandparents.” What sounded like phone keys being pushed, flowed from the car’s top-of-the-line sound system.

“Methodist University downtown,” she heard her gram say immediately when she answered.

“I’m on my way.” Adanya pushed the button and sped in the direction of I-240.

Adanya paced the hospital floor. Wringing her hands constantly, she twitched as she walked like a junkie in need of a fix. “Gram, this is all my fault.”

“Baby, don’t do this to yourself. This has nothing to do with you.”

“Yes it does. I shouldn’t have told Annalisse about his other life. I shouldn’t have.” Adanya cried into her hands.

“I know he’s wrong on so many levels, and I feel her pain because well you already know, Gram. But to want my father dead? No way. That’s taking things too far. If I had thought for a minute she would do something like this, I never ever would have said anything. Oh, God, please forgive me,” she ranted.

“Honey, come sit down.” Gram patted the empty seat next to where she sat. “Making a trail in that floor is not going to change things. And until you can feel someone else’s hurt, you can’t say how you’d react if the same thing happened to you. Annalisse was cut deep by your father. I mean, another family? That is not your fault, and my Annalisse deserved to know. What in the world was that man thinking?” Gram shook her head.

“Still, trying to kill him wasn’t the answer,” Adanya shot back without regarding her grandma’s opinion. “I’m in pain too over what he did. Shuuu, I’m in pain over what both of them did to me, but I would never,” Adanya gestured with both hands, “And I do mean never inflict bodily harm on them.”

“Well, that’s what you say, but Annalisse was pushed over the edge. She’s been drowning herself in self-pity ever since you cut her out of your life. And then to learn that for what over twenty four, no thirty something years since they first met, that your father is a liar. She doesn’t know who he is. God knows I don’t either,” her grandmother said. “I tell you, it’s a shame. But I want him to be okay. I’m praying that he’ll be just fine. God knows Annalisse wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Adanya gave pause as she thought about what her gram was saying. “I do feel bad for her. I know she’s hurt by all this. But I just wish she hadn’t shot him.”

For the first time, Adanya witnessed her grandma crying without it being related to praising God. Adanya walked over to her and sat in the chair next to her. Reaching around her gram’s shoulder, she hugged the woman who appeared to have aged by years in a matter of a couple of hours.

“God, please let him be okay.” Adanya leaned on her grandma.

Gram Kaplan held Adanya’s hands and began to pray. “Lord God, restore Kenneth’s health. Father, heal his wounds,” she cried. “I know you can. Take care of my Annalisse. Guard her mind, Father God. Help her, Lord. I know you’re able, Lord.”

Both women cried into each other’s bosoms.

Adanya lifted her head. “Did you call MaMaw and GrandPaw Anniston? They would be livid if they found out their son has been shot and no one bothered calling and telling them about it,”

Gram Kaplan wiped away her tears with a wad of tissue that was encased in her right hand. “No. I was waiting to see how he was doing first. I guess I’ll call them now.” She sighed heavily. “Lord, I hate to tell them that Kenneth’s been shot, and that it was Annalisse who shot him.”

“I don’t ever want to see her again, Gram. She’s evil. She’s a terrible person. She grew tired of me and she grew tired of him. That’s why he went to the other woman. She’s always been selfish, so wrapped up in herself. Now, she’s gone too far. And she deserves to pay, Gram.”

“You shut up talking like that,” Gram yelled at Adanya and then looked around the tiny family waiting room area like she expected someone other than herself and Adanya to be in the room. “Shut up before you say a bunch of stuff you’ll regret. Like I said, pray. That’s the only way we’re going to make it through this. It’s the only way your daddy is going to make it through this, and it’s the only way my child is going to make it through. Prayer and the grace of God.” She shook her bowed down head again.

 

◊

 

It was nearing eight-thirty p.m. when Adanya’s cell phone rang. “Bleak, my daddy’s been shot,” she rushed to tell him just as soon as she answered her phone. “We’re at the hospital now, Methodist downtown.”

“Shot? Who shot him?” Bleak’s tone didn’t reveal any hint of being upset. “Guess he must have messed over another unsuspecting, helpless, woman. I say he got what he deserved.”

“At first I thought the same thing, but then I realized he’s my father, Bleak. And no matter how angry or disappointed I am in him, he’s still my dad. I love him, Bleak.”

“Well, he’s not mine. And now I have to break my mother’s heart all over again by telling her that her husband has gone and got himself shot by some other irate female out there.”

“That irate female happens to be Annalisse…my mother.” Adanya could understand why Bleak felt the way that he did. His mother was having a hard time too. She had to also try to come to terms with her Caitlin being seriously injured and still in the hospital. Now this. Kenneth had been almost killed?

“Your mother?”

“Yes,” Adanya sobbed.

“Where is she? Is she all right?”

“She’s not hurt, physically, if that’s what you mean. Mentally and emotionally, well, I’m not sure. Anyway, my gramps was on his way to Jail East the last time we spoke. He’s going to see if they’re going to let him bail her out.”

“Oh. Man, everything is so messed up. How is he?”

“The doctor is supposed to be back to talk to us as soon as he gets out of surgery. She shot him twice.”

“Twice? Wow, that’s wild.”

“Tell me about it. The doctor did say that one of the bullets traveled through his right thigh and out the back of his leg. The second one shattered his left ankle. They’re going to try to save his leg. One of the bullets came awfully close to his jugular vein. Depending on what they find during surgery, and from x-rays and ultrasounds, and all of that, they’ll be able to tell us more. But he could lose his leg, or he could never walk again. There are so many ways it can go according to the doctor.”

“Who’s with you?”

“Gram Kaplan.”

“Nobody is up there but the two of you? No church members? No pastor? Nobody?”

“I haven’t thought of calling anybody, and I don’t think Gram has either. I guess I’ll call the emergency line at the church and leave them a message.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can, but I want you to know that I’m going to tell my mother about this. It’s her husband too, you know.”

“As much as I hate to be reminded that my father is a bigamist, I know you have to do what you have to do. Your mother deserves to know. She’s the mother of his children too.”

“Thanks, Adanya. How are you holding up?”

“Okay, I guess. Anyway, why don’t you go on and call your mother. No, on second thought, go tell her in person. She’s going to need your support.”

“I know. And thanks, I’ll probably see you out there. I’m figuring she’s going to want to come to the hospital, although after the pain he’s caused her, I don’t see why she would want to. But knowing my mother like I do, I know when I tell her what’s happened, she’s going to forget all about what he’s done. She’s going to want to be by his side.”

“She has to do what she feels she has to do. But I’m not leaving on her account. I’m telling you now.”

“Did I say anything about you leaving? No, I didn’t, so don’t go there with me. She has every right to be at the hospital with him if that’s what she wants to do. I can’t stop her, and I won’t even try to stop her. I’m just going to be there for my mother, just the same as you being at the hospital because it’s your daddy laying up in there.” Bleak sounded like his temper was rising but he was tired of Adanya’s little innuendos and smart jabs she was taking against his mother. Maybe his mother had been naïve, stupid, not so smart or just plain crazy in love, but she was his mother and she was a good person. It was John Phillips, Kenneth Anniston, whoever he called himself, that should bear the weight of what had happened. Him and him alone.

Bleak found it difficult to feel sorry for the guy. He’d caused far too much damage and pain to his mother, his two little sisters, to Adanya’s mother, and if he admitted it, to him as well. He’d come to love the man he’d known as John Phillips, like a father. The man had been nothing but good to him. He’d stepped up to the plate when his own father chose to take another path in life, one that didn’t include Bleak. His father’s life was a life lived on the run, involved in one crime after another.

Bleak drove to his mother’s house. He wasn’t surprised when he found her not there. “I forgot, you said you were going to be at the hospital with Caitlin this evening,” he said aloud. He left his mother’s house and drove to LeBonheur.

Bleak was awfully glad to see his sister sitting up in the bed with far less tubes stuck in her. Her eyes were glued on the television set when he walked in, but she managed a weak smile when she saw her big brother.

He asked his mother to step outside of Caitlin’s room with him. When he told her about what had gone down with Kenneth, he was surprised at her response.

“I don’t blame her. She had more guts than me. I could have easily been the one who shot him. Thank God I don’t believe in guns in the house. And I didn’t think John did either, but again, the man has so many secrets that you can’t tell who the real John Phillips is.” “I know, Mom, I know. But at least you know that he’s no good. No good for you, for Caitlin or Cady. He’s lucky that God spared his life.”

Carla looked at her son. Her eyes were puffy and bags had formed underneath them due to sleep deprivation. “I want to hate him, Bleak. I want to hate him so bad, but…well, I can’t. I don’t,” she said in a broken voice. “I have to see him,” she suddenly said as her voice rose. “Can you stay with your sister for a while? I want to go see him. I won’t be long.”

Bleak, as much as he hated to, waved his hands and told her, “Yeah, sure; go on. You know I don’t mind staying up here. Caitlin will be fine.”

“Thank you, son.” She went back inside Caitlin’s hospital room and came back out in the hallway with her purse. She kissed Bleak on his cheek “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Bleak nodded as he watched his mother walk away in the direction of the elevator. He recalled a passage of scripture he’d learned long ago while attending a Sunday School class. “The bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel,” he said loud enough for only him and God to hear, before he turned and walked into Caitlin’s hospital room.