Chapter 8
Paulette
“That’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back,” Paulette muttered as she pulled into her driveway. “What a waste!”
Not only had she gone to the bridal shop against her better judgment, and been made to wait for almost an hour for Terrence’s fiancée to finally show up, the ungrateful woman also had the nerve to insult her!
“This will be the first and last time I ever do a favor for that bitch,” she snapped as she threw her Mercedes into park, removed her car keys from the ignition, and shoved open her car door. Less than a minute later, Paulette stomped up her walkway, still fuming. Her high heels clomped on the brick path.
She just wanted to kick off her shoes, relax, and spend some time with her son, whom she had left in the care of her mother-in-law, Reina. But Paulette stilled near the front door when she heard Little Nate’s muffled, shrill screams. Being his mother, she had heard his cries before, but he had never sounded like this. He sounded like he was being strangled to death, like he was being tortured.
“What the hell is she doing to my child?” Paulette questioned aloud.
All thoughts of C. J. Aston and the disastrous bridal shop visit were shoved out her head. Her hands shook as she shoved her key into the door and unlocked it. When she opened her front door, she saw Reina and Little Nate framed by the archway leading to the living room. Reina was holding a milk bottle to Little Nate’s mouth, even as the infant wailed and tried to turn his head away.
“What on earth . . .” Paulette murmured as she tossed her purse aside. It landed with a thud on the hardwood floor. She slammed the door behind her and ran across the foyer toward Reina, who was sitting on their sofa, holding the wriggling baby in her arms. In her haste, Paulette almost tripped over one of Nate’s discarded toys. She caught herself before she did.
“What’s wrong with him?” Paulette cried, tugging him out of his grandmother’s grasp. She held Little Nate close, kissing his forehead and cheeks, tasting his salty tears on her lips. “It’s okay, honey. Mommy’s here! It’s okay!” she cooed.
Reina flapped her hands in the air in capitulation. “Oh, just go ahead and take him! He’s been crying his head off for the past hour. I’ve got no idea what’s wrong with that boy! I laid him down for a nap and he woke up yellin’.”
“Why didn’t you call me to tell me?” Paulette asked, patting his back and bouncing him gently even as he continued to scream bloody murder. “I could’ve come home if he was this bad off!”
“I’ve raised a child to a full-grown man, thank you very much,” Reina said, raising her dimpled double chin defiantly. “I know how to take care of babies—even yours.”
“Well, you weren’t doing a very good job of it, if Nate’s like this!” Paulette shouted angrily, gesturing to her son. “Did you do anything different today? Did you—”
“No, I didn’t do a damn thing different! I changed him. I fed him,” Reina said, counting off the tasks on her fingers. “I took him for a walk in the park! Before his second nap, I gave him a big bowl of my egg and potato salad and then I—”
“What? You gave him . . . potato salad?” Paulette squinted in disbelief.
“Yeah, it was homemade! Not that cheap store-bought stuff you try to pass off as yours.”
When Paulette continued to stare at her aghast, Reina raised her brows.
“That boy is way too skinny for his age with you giving him all that mashed up, puréed nonsense!” She flicked her wrist. “He needed something to put some meat on his bones.”
Ignoring her mother-in-law, Paulette felt the baby’s stomach beneath his rubber duckie and umbrella cotton onesie instead. It was as hard as a rock—as expected. His stomach was so swollen that she bet if she stripped him down to his diapers, he’d look like one of those poor African refugees in the Save the Children ads on television. She knew now why he was screaming so much; he was constipated and filled with gas. He was probably in horrific pain.
As Reina continued to talk about fattening up Nate and giving him “decent, real food” and Nate continued to wail, Paulette seethed. She felt like flames were about to sprout out of her ears.
“I told you,” she began through clenched teeth, “not to feed him that . . . that shit!” she yelled, making Reina fall silent. “Every day I label the jars for what he should eat—and you ignore them! Now I come home to this?”
Reina blinked rapidly, as if she couldn’t see straight. She shoved herself to her feet, though it took a few tries to do it successfully. “How . . . how dare you talk to me like that!” she sputtered. “There isn’t a damn thing wrong with what I feed that boy! If you would just—”
“There is something wrong with what you feed him! Every time you give him your recipes to ‘fatten up him,’ he can’t poop! You think that’s normal?”
Reina pushed back her shoulders and stood at her full height. She glared at the younger woman, and Paulette glared right back at her. They looked like two prizefighters in the boxing ring, each preparing to land the first punch.
“I gave that food to Antonio every day since he was four months old!” Reina charged, pointing her finger into Paulette’s face. “He never had any problem doing number two! He was regular as—”
“I don’t care what you fed Tony when he was a baby! Tony was your son, but this one is mine!” She shoved Reina’s finger away, making the older woman bluster all over again. “I let you babysit Nate because Tony begged me to, not because I wanted to let you do it. Frankly, I wouldn’t trust you with a pet goldfish, but I did it to please my husband. But if you want to keep babysitting Nate, you better damn well do what I tell you to do! Understand? Stop feeding him that crap!”
“Well, he probably would’ve been able to take what I gave him if he had Tony’s genes,” Reina sneered. “But maybe that boy doesn’t. Maybe he isn’t Tony’s baby!”
Paulette stilled again, feeling the blood drain from her head. “What . . . what did you say?”
“You heard me! I said maybe that baby of yours,” Reina said, gesturing to Little Nate, “isn’t my son’s child. The older he gets, the less he looks like him.”
Paulette stood mutely, too stunned and too furious to form words.
“Didn’t think I knew the truth, huh? But I do! I know how you were when you two first got married. Uh-huh, couldn’t keep your legs closed, could you? You had no problem jumping from one bed to the next! That’s right . . . I’d get a DNA test if I was my son! No point in him raising some other man’s baby!”
If it wasn’t for the fact that she was holding Little Nate, Paulette swore she would’ve punched her mother-in-law in the face at that moment. This was despite her refined upbringing and her mother Angela’s constant admonishments to carry herself like a lady. Years of judgment and condescension by Reina had finally pushed Paulette to her breaking point, and she was ready to beat the hell out of this fat old woman. But instead, she turned on her heel, marched out of the living room and across her foyer. She then swung open her front door and pointed to the view of her lawn, brick walkway, and driveway.
“Get the hell out of my house! Get out and don’t you ever think of coming back!”
Reina’s entire body went rigid.
“You heard me! Get out!” Paulette screamed.
She prepared herself for another yelling match, for another onslaught of insults and allegations. Instead Reina reached down and yanked her tote bag from the couch. She slowly walked toward Paulette, taking her sweet time as she made her way toward the front door. When she stood next to Paulette in the doorway, she paused to stare at her. Bold challenge was in her eyes.
“Tony’s gonna hear about this. He’s gonna hear about how you treated his mama, and you’re gonna have to suffer the consequences.”
“Tell him whatever the hell you want. I don’t care if Tony sends you a golden engraved invitation to come back to this house, you better not ever darken my doorstep again!”
Reina chuckled, infuriating Paulette even more. “We’ll see about that, Miss High and Mighty. Tony would never choose you over me! Be ready to eat some crow, heffa,” she spat before strutting out the front door.
“Bitch,” Paulette muttered as she slammed the door behind Reina. Its thud was drowned out by Little Nate’s wails.
* * *
Hours later, Antonio arrived home from work. Paulette had finally gotten Little Nate asleep after plying him with milk infused with prune juice and literally unplugging him with Vaseline and a baby thermometer, testing her fortitude as a new mother and her queasiness. She had just closed the door to the nursery, leaving the infant slumbering to the sound of the nursery rhyme music that played on his mobile, when Antonio opened the front door. Paulette winced as she walked stiffly down the staircase, sore and exhausted from the tension and activity of the day. Antonio lowered his briefcase to the tiled floor. Paulette knew from the look on his face that he had already spoken with his mother and he was about to unleash a lecture that she was in no mood to hear.
“Before you start,” she said, holding up her hands as she descended the last riser to their foyer’s Afghan rug, “you first need to hear what she said to me.”
Antonio released a loud grumble and tugged at the knot in his tie. He leveled her with tired eyes and a withering gaze. “You told my mama never to touch our child again and that she had to leave your house and never come back.” He began to remove his suit jacket. “What the hell could she possibly say to—”
“She said Nate probably wasn’t your baby because I couldn’t keep my legs closed when we got married.” Paulette raised her brows. “Is that a good enough reason to kick her out?”
He paused mid-motion with one arm still in his suit sleeve. He gaped. “She didn’t . . . she didn’t really say that, did she?”
“Yes, she did, Tony!” Paulette crossed her arms over her chest. “Which made me wonder just what exactly have you told her about our marriage? Did you tell your mother that I cheated on you?”
He sighed and closed his eyes.
“Well, did you?”
“I didn’t . . . I didn’t tell her outright what happened, but she kind of . . . well, she figured it out, I guess,” he said, opening his eyes again.
“You guess?”
“I told her we were having problems, okay? I may have let it slip that I was sleeping in the guest room. Then you just . . . just popped up with Little Nate. Mom asked me why I didn’t tell her you were pregnant. I tried to make up an excuse, but I guess I . . . that I wasn’t very convincing.” He shrugged. “I tried, baby. Really, I did.”
Paulette didn’t believe that for one second. If Antonio wanted to hide a secret, he was more than capable of doing it.
He’s done it before, she thought with an inward shudder, remembering how he had lied about what had happened the night of Marques Whitney’s murder. He’d made up an elaborate story about staying up late at night in his old childhood bed at his mother’s house while agonizing over the state of their marriage, when he was really secretly tracking down Marques all night. He had waited for a chance to sneak into Marques’s apartment, then beat and strangle him to death. And Antonio had not only lied to her about that night—but also to the investigating detective. He’d done it so convincingly that she’d been appalled that she had ever doubted Antonio’s innocence. The only reason Paulette had discovered the truth about the murder was that Antonio had slipped and revealed himself to her brother Evan. If it hadn’t been for that, she’d still believe that her husband was incapable of committing murder—let alone covering up the horrendous act. But of course now she knew better.
“Your mother was totally disrespectful, Tony.”
“I know that, baby, but—”
“Instead of apologizing for what she did, she basically accused me of being a whore! Who does that? Who does that to their own daughter-in-law? She said I don’t even know if Nate is your son!”
“But you don’t know!” he blurted out with irritation, making her flinch and take a step back from him.
She watched as he gritted his teeth and took another deep breath. He ran his hand over his head. “Baby, I didn’t . . . I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes, you did,” she whispered, now hurt. “You meant every word.”
Antonio said he’d accepted Little Nate as his son regardless of whether that was true, but she worried if some part of him would always wonder if it was true. Would the question eat him up inside? Would it add yet another wound to a marriage they were fighting so hard to heal?
“Look, baby,” he said, reaching out for her, but she took another step back, out of his reach. He dropped his hands to his sides. “Look, I love Nate. You know that! And I love you, too.”
“So show me, Tony.”
“What do you mean ‘show you’? I do it every damn day! I provide for my family. I take care of—”
“I mean show me that we come first! I refuse to come second place to Reina Williams. I’m not doing it anymore!”
The foyer fell silent. Antonio shook his head again. “I hate being put in the middle like this. Can’t you just . . . just hear her out?”
Paulette firmly shook her head. “No.”
“Be the bigger person and try again! She’s my mother, for Christ’s sake!”
“No. I’m done with her, Tony!”
“So what are we going to do when we need a babysitter? We can’t leave Nate with just anybody!”
“I’d trust Nate with a dog walker before I let your mother take care of him again,” she snapped, before walking toward the kitchen.
“Oh, come on, Paulette! Really?”
“I’m going to heat up some leftover fettuccine because I’m hungry and too exhausted to cook,” she called over her shoulder, not looking back. “You can either join me or go eat dinner with your mama. It’s up to you,” she said, leaving her husband to stew alone in their foyer.