Chapter Thirteen

 

"I wish walls could talk; they would tell us a wealth of things." Natasha was sitting in the courtyard with Deidra after her class. "Obviously, I would have to talk to the walls,” she said contemplatively, “because you have stopped talking."

"I am depressed." Deidra sighed. "I am in double denim." She indicated her denim jacket and her matching pants. "This is a big no-no as a fashion major."

Natasha chuckled. "I wear double denim all the time. I think it is comfortable."

"And frumpy." Deidra sighed again. "What do you want to talk about? I intended to vegetate today… move back to my house."

"What's the rush?" Natasha asked, "You obviously like living with the Bancrofts. You've been there for a full year."

"Marcus is going to be released from hospital at the end of the week." Deidra bit her lip. "I don't want to be there when he is there."

"But why?" Natasha looked confused.

"Because I love him." Deidra fidgeted with her denim buttons. "His dratted girlfriend Tiffany is pregnant."

Natasha stilled. "She is?"

"Yup." Deidra pushed her hand in her shirt pocket and inhaled." It's so cold out here."

"How far along is she?"

"I have no idea." Deidra started rocking. "I get extremely jealous knowing that they have sex, that they have some sort of intimacy. I mean. Six months ago I met him. There was this instant connection. I mean… I was convinced I found my soul mate. We tried to keep away from each other, but he came up here to see me before he went to Africa, then he came up here to see me after he came back from Africa… came straight from the airport."

Deidra inhaled sharply and willed the tears in her eyes not to fall. "He didn't even drive his car. I don't think he went home, but obviously he did, because Tiffany is pregnant."

Natasha frowned. "I am so sorry Deidra."

"I feel betrayed." Deidra sniffed. "I guess I'll get over it, one day. I am still young. There are plenty of fish in the sea. I mean it was just six months of my life."

"Maybe now is not the time to ask you this," Natasha said, putting back her notebook into her pocket.

"No, ask me," Deidra said, "I mean I don't know if I’ll ever be whole again. I guess I'll be depressed when Tiffany has the brat or the brat has its first tooth or goes to school or..."

"Okay," Natasha said quickly. "Tony and I had the brilliant idea of running through Hartley's phone records. It took the phone company a solid two weeks to send the information to us but we ended up calling everybody on his list and identified a few of the people who we think were of interest. You see, I had this theory that Hartley was not working alone."

Deidra opened her eyes wide. "That's what I thought too."

"Well," Natasha said, "it's just a theory. Do any of these names sound familiar, Greg Fisher, Kingsley O'Connor, Neil Kennedy, Norris Jackman?"

"Neil Kennedy," Deidra said quickly. "Neil has one of the most exclusive stores in Jamaica. I used to shop there a long time ago. He is a nice guy."

Natasha nodded. "Well, we are going to check him out first, since you know him. He spoke to Levaughn Hartley for twenty minutes a few days before you called me to say that you felt like you were being stalked."

Deidra shook her head. "It can't be Neil, why would he want to harm me? As I said, he is a nice guy."

Natasha rubbed her hands together. "Deidra, in my line of work I've found that the nicest people sometimes do unusually bad things."

She got up. "I promised you that I'd get to the bottom of this; didn't I? I feel guilty that you told me about the gray car and I handed it off to Humphrey. I'd like to think that if I had been more alert this accident would not have happened."

Deidra stretched and then clutched her jacket closer. "I am super-impressed that you are still working on this even though the case is labeled solved."

Natasha shrugged. "It's not that we don't solve cases quickly, but this one was tied up too quickly and too neatly for my liking. Talk to you soon." Natasha walked off and Deidra got up from the courtyard bench stiffly.

Deidra pushed her hand in her pocket and did the most unladylike slouch as she walked out of the Business Center in her double denim. She was going back to her home, and as far away from Marcus as she could manage. She had told Kylie that she wasn't going to talk to him again so she needed to ask him about the wedding. Hopefully, if he attended, that would be the last time she would see him. She needed to eradicate Marcus from her life for good.

 

*****

 

Marcus was feeling nervous. His father had come to visit and he was sifting through his appointment book and taking phone calls periodically. It was going to be the worst feeling in the world to break the news to his dad that Tiffany was pregnant—his father had never liked her.

He had spent most of the time last evening thinking of Deidra and obsessing about how he would tell his father that he was going to be a grandfather again. It would have been easier to do so over the phone.

Now, he was on his father's turf and he had made up his mind to stay with his parents for the next thirteen weeks until his foot was fine again. The clinic at the University was state of the art and close to his parent's place. He almost wished he didn't have to say a word about Tiffany.

"Dad, Tiffany is pregnant."

Ryan looked at him over his reading glasses and then slowly took them off. He raised his eyebrow.

"We are going to get married, or that's what she wants." Marcus said in the silence.

Ryan's brow rose even higher.

"Say something," Marcus urged his father.

Bancroft covered his face with both hands and then rubbed his nose bridge slowly. "Never ever marry a woman because she is pregnant. Marry because you want to spend the rest of your life with her. Obligation can turn marriage into a prison."

"I thought you'd want me to do the manly thing, the Christian thing, since you are so hung up on appearances," Marcus said, wonderingly. "Adrian and Cathy got married."

"Not because they had Avia," Bancroft said to his son slowly, "but because they wanted to be with each other."

Marcus mused, "I want to be with Deidra. I don't know why, I just know I do, but I can't. Tiffany is pregnant and I'm pretty sure Deidra hates me now."

Bancroft sighed. "You think I am hard on you, don't you? When I lecture you, when I suggest certain things, it's not because I think I know better or even because I am a saint." He sighed. "It's because in most cases, I have lived it already, know where the pitfalls are and don't want you to make the mistakes I made. I see a lot of me in you."

Bancroft leaned back in his chair. "Out of all my children, Marcus, you are the most like me."

He shook his head as he looked at Marcus' incredulous expression.

"Here's the pattern: My parents had two sons, me and Oliver. We were brought up in the strictest religious way. I think that's an extreme way to grow a child, by the way. Too strict and they can't wait to fly the coop, renouncing all Christian principles, even renouncing God. Oliver did that. He couldn't wait to get away from the church and anything to do with it. He was killed in a barroom fight."

"You think that way?" Marcus asked, shocked, "but you were strict with us. You made us go to church, you made us participate, and you forced us to read our Bibles."

Bancroft nodded. "Oh yes, and those were all good things. The opposite way was to let you do what you wanted. That's always a dangerous way to go about child rearing. Children need boundaries and they need firmness."

Your mother and I agreed on a middle ground. We wanted all of you to have the basics, built a firm foundation in the Lord. After that, you had to make up your minds whether you were going to go with what we taught you. You were raised as a Christian; I have no apologies for that. Oliver and I were grown the same way except stricter.

When I was a teenager in Parotee, we even had a Chastity Class. You know, where sex was a bad word and purity until marriage was the byword. The point is, the class was not a bad idea. It's just that we joined the class not because we really believed it but because we thought it would please our elders. Taj was conceived on the way to one such class."

Bancroft laughed softly. "And the truth is, I was just seventeen, and so was Annette. I did not love her. I was just curious about sex… hated myself after it."

Marcus frowned. "So, why didn't you marry Annette?"

Bancroft glanced at his son. "I would have married her if my parents had insisted, but they did something that was really weird for them. They tried to take care of the problem by hiding her. They arranged for the child to be aborted, I, on the other hand, was young, stupid, and very happy that I had somebody taking care of my problem. So I did nothing; I barely thought about it.

I left Jamaica, went to college, and moved on. I met your mother in the third year of university. I loved her; she was the one. I would have missed out on being with her if I had married Annette. I probably would have been miserable; I would have compounded a mistake by making an even bigger mistake.

Marriage is not supposed to be done to make a mistake legitimate. I don't have any statistics, but I know that those marriages never usually last. How can it? Sometimes they don't even know each other in the first place and are not compatible. You can still do right by your child without marrying his or her mother."

"But on the other hand, I have been living with Tiffany for the past three years. That shows I am committed to her, and that I must have some feelings for her," Marcus said slowly. "I might not feel it now, but I should. It's just that my mind is swamped with Deidra."

"You lost six months worth of memory," Bancroft frowned. "A lot may have happened in six months."

"And obviously a lot did," Marcus said, "I love Deidra and slept with Tiffany and now I am going to be a Dad. Why is that scenario so convoluted?"

"That brings us back to your upbringing," Bancroft said smugly. "If you had listened to my counsel, you wouldn't have flown the nest so soon and gotten involved with that Tiffany girl. I was against you living with her. She was too sexually liberated and didn't stay in a relationship for more than two minutes. I still believe she targeted you."

"She was my first girlfriend," Marcus shrugged, "I enjoyed spending time with her."

"There is some hint of the past tense in your speech. You 'enjoyed spending time with her,'" Bancroft said gleefully. "I can only hope that you will come to your senses about this girl after all."

Marcus shook his head. "It means I'm confused. I can't shake the fact that I need Deidra, but I also need to be responsible and to take care of my child."

His father patted his hand. "You have time to think about it. Don't make any rash decisions."