Sherryn
wanted to close the door on the proof of her husband’s infidelity. But
there was no going back.
She avoided looking at the child, whose cupid’s bow of a mouth and tawny eyes confirmed that he shared the same genes as her children. But the similarity ended there - his ashy skin, underweight body and wash-worn clothes broadcast a lack of concern for his well-being and appearance. The woman with him smiled – a smug grimace that confirmed Sherryn’s unspoken suspicion of his parentage.
Sherryn did not hide her distaste at the sight of the snug tank top holding in a belly about to surge out of control or the denim skirt that did little to cover a pair of lumpy thighs. A lustrous, blonde weave complemented the woman’s caramel complexion and false eyelashes emphasized the spite in her gaze.
A quick scan tagged her as the stereotypical product of one of Kingston’s ghettos. For a few timeless seconds, Sherryn felt as though she was stuck in an early 1900’s silent film. The wind stirred the flowers and shrubs in the front yard, dried leaves blew over the lawn and a car passed by, but she heard nothing.
Then the dancehall queen look-alike pushed the little boy forward, dragging Sherryn back to the unthinkable scene unfolding on her doorstep. “Tell Maurice him can have him pickney.”
Sherryn suppressed a shiver by pulling her shoulders back. She stood tall, squeezing the doorknob as a shipwreck victim might cling to a life-saving piece of flotsam. After a quick glance at the boy, she whispered, “Oh no, you’re not leaving him here!”
“You ca’an decide dat. Since Maurice won’ mind him pickney, him can keep him.”
The woman dropped a knapsack and spun away with an exaggerated wiggle of the hips to saunter down the driveway to the gate, where a marked taxi waited.
Damn ghetto rat! Why she choose to leave her child on another woman’s doorstep like so much unwanted baggage?
The boy’s bottom lip trembled and he blinked hard several times. Sherryn’s chest heaved and she struggled to slow her breathing. It wouldn’t help either of them if she fell apart. Pressing her lips together to keep her focus, she picked up the threadbare knapsack and touched his shoulder. “Come with me.”
She left him sitting on the sofa inside Reece’s office. In the passage outside, she admitted the purpose for leaving him there was twofold. Firstly, he was hidden from her, as if he didn’t exist and secondly, Reece’s world would spin off its axis - just as hers had - to find his secret tucked away in his private space. She hoped the experience turned out to be as gut wrenching and devastating as hers.
In their living room, she perched on the edge of the settee and hugged herself. She skimmed the familiar paintings, family portraits and oddments, absorbing all that meant home and family. Everything she’d invested in her relationship with Reece lay in invisible pieces around her like shattered glass.
Her insides felt cold and sterile. She sighed, forced herself to get up and climb the stairs to their bedroom. Once there, she lay down and allowed her tears to fall, searing her sinuses and then her eyes. Other than anxiety over her children and surreptitious tears shed while watching sad movies, no drama had touched her life in ages.
And now this.
She was not sure how much time passed before she heard Reece’s Jeep throttling in the yard. Her heart thumped painfully at the confrontation to come. She hurried into the bathroom to wash her face, staring into her dull eyes before returning to sit on the bed, facing the doorway. After running an unsteady hand over her close-cropped hair, she glanced at her watch, surprised to find that two hours had slipped away since she had answered that fateful knock at the door. Briefly, she spared a thought for the boy. He must be hungry.
Concern fled as Reece bounded up the stairs, calling her name. The door opened, and the energetic man at the centre of her world, entered the room. He crossed the patterned tiles in a few steps. “Sher, you never hear me calling you?”
She met his eyes, sure her expression would tell him something had gone wong.
“Sherryn, what happen’?”
She stood up, willing herself not to scream or lash out at him for destroying her near perfect life. Instead, she said, “It’s not what, but who.”
He attempted to touch her, but she edged away, ignoring the hurt and puzzlement in his darkening eyes.
“Come with me,” she said, not waiting to see if he followed.
His footsteps fell heavy on the wooden stairs behind her. Sherryn blinked hard to prevent fresh tears forming. She paused outside his study and sucked in her belly to pull herself upright. Then she turned the knob on the door and it swung inward to reveal the boy curled up on the settee. He slept with a thumb in his mouth. She pushed sympathy aside, bit her lip and composed herself. Reece’s breath bathed the back of her neck and he grunted in what she supposed could only be surprise.
She faced him and spoke to his pinstripe shirt through the painful ball in her throat. “Don’ bother say anythin’, I don’ want to know.”
She brushed past him and on the way out of the house, picked up her keys from the hand-carved table in the hallway.
* * *
Reece sensed that whatever lay behind the door of his study meant the end of eighteen years of happiness.
Sherryn opened his office door, sending shockwaves pulsing across his brain. The result of one regrettable encounter lay asleep on his couch.
Now he understood her coldness. As panic forced sweat out through his pores, Reece wiped a sleeve across his forehead. He kept his mouth shut. Anything he said would make little sense and serve to tee Sherryn off further, but he swore in his mind to kill that piece of trash, Gloria. She’d done this deliberately because he’d refused to play along with her latest bit of blackmail.
Hoping he was somehow trapped in a bad dream, he swallowed hard and rubbed a hand over his mouth, while his stomach churned. Sherryn glared at him with glittering eyes, brushed past him, and left. That was no dream.
Sure he would go mad, Reece stalked around the massive desk, along the edges of the carpet, past the bookshelves and the sofa. He refused to think about the implications of the child’s presence, thereby avoiding thoughts of losing Sherryn. He couldn’t face that possibility. Death was better than forfeiting his home and family.
He sank into the executive chair, his heart beating a painful tattoo in his chest. The discomfort was so bad, he wondered whether he was having a heart attack.
Moving at the pace of an old man, he dragged himself out of the chair to pace aimlessly, his mind a blank whiteboard. The enormity of the situation left him shell-shocked; he couldn’t think. What was he going to do? The boy stirred, rubbed small hands over his eyes and pulled himself upright.
Unable to contain his resentment, Reece glowered at him. The child shrank into the settee, his knees drawn up to his chest. Reece shut his eyes in an attempt to calm himself and get rid of the frown he wore. None of this was the boy’s fault. He, Reece Allbright, was the stupid adult who had created the current mess in a moment of drunken weakness.
Intuition had warned him a hundred times since the boy’s birth that this day would come – for all his wishing that it would not. The day had arrived, taking him by storm and leaving him with a sense of powerlessness he hadn’t felt in more years than he cared to remember. He tried to root himself in the present, by running a hand over his prickly chin. His voice was loud in the silence. “You hungry?”
The boy shied away, looking ready to dart off and hide, but he nodded.
“Come.”
They walked down the passage to the kitchen-cum-dining room, where further dread settled over Reece at the sight of a red and blue truck on one of the tiled counters. He stared at his son – he had no doubt the boy was his – and tried to work out what he was going to tell his other children. His stomach clenched again for he had no solution.
“Sit down.”
Reece made a tuna sandwich and placed it in front of the child he wished had never been born.
The boy crammed the food into his mouth, too hungry to remember his fear. On the way back from the refrigerator with a glass of apple juice, an idea hit Reece. He’d take the child back to the tenement yard where Gloria lived before his kids got home and started asking questions. Justin, his eldest, would take one look at him and know he was a relative. Reece shook his head, envisioning the disappointment and hurt to come if he did nothing to derail Gloria’s plan.
Disgusted with himself, Reece flung a napkin at the boy. “Wipe yuh hand and mouth and come.”
Then he grabbed the knapsack from his office and rushed out the door with his sixth offspring.
* * *
Sherryn adjusted the mirror to get a better view of the kids in the back of the van. Sixteen-year-old Justin had Melaine, his thirteen-year-old sister, in a headlock. Their younger sister, eleven-year-old Celia, had her face in a book, while Kyle - the baby at three-years-old - chattered non-stop to himself in the car seat. Brandon, who was super-mature for his six years, played a computer game in the passenger seat beside her.
Her insides ached as though a debilitating disease had ravaged her. What had possessed her to accede to Reece’s wish to have so many children? And if she didn’t stand strong, he wanted to round out the family with a sixth Allbright. Her lip curled in disgust. He'd obviously made time to complete his family elsewhere!
Reece had no relatives worth staying in touch with, so together they had fulfilled his desire to have a complete family unit. One corner of her mouth twitched at his single-mindedness, but what was there to be amused about? The joke was clearly on her.
What am I going to do?
Kyle, catching her eye in the mirror, giggled and hid behind his fingers. In return, she made a funny face at him and he laughed - a joyous sound that pushed away her unpleasant thoughts.
No! I don’t regret giving any of them life. They’re good kids. It’s their father who’s destroyed every striking thing!
Images of Reece naked with that woman flooded her mind, filling her vision. How many times had he been in her bed over the years? Did he love her?
She forced herself to focus on the road when Brandon shouted, along with his brothers and sisters. “Mom!”
She’d missed hitting another van by inches.
“Oh, God!” she whispered. “Sorry kids!” she threw over her shoulder and tried to ignore the string of bad words the wronged motorist threw at her.
She whispered a prayer of thanks, only to find two police officers riding up behind them. One pulled alongside the van and pointed toward the sidewalk. Sherryn parked and reached for her documents, hoping to avoid a ticket. The blazing heat of the afternoon sun intensified with the van at a standstill. She swiped at her forehead as sweat, brought on by overworked nerves, popped out on her skin.
The officer got off his bike and crowded the window, peering inside the vehicle. “Good afternoon, ma’am. You’re aware you just ran a red light?”
Sherryn marshalled her thoughts and hoped the children wouldn’t take her to task for the humdinger of a lie she was about to tell. “Yes, officer. Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying enough attention. I thought something was wrong with the baby.” She pointed to Kyle. “That’s how I ran through the light.”
She put on her best penitent expression. “Officer, please. Don’t ticket me. You understand how it is when you have so many children in one vehicle…”
The policeman removed his dark glasses and slipped one of the arms into his mouth, eyeing her from her hair to the jeans covering her legs. In a low voice, he said, “We can sort this out easy, easy. Leave a t’ing wid me and mi partner, nuh?”
Reece would have a fit at what she was about to do, if he knew. Sherryn reached down into the space between the two seats and rifled around in her handbag for her purse. She pulled out a crisp, blue thousand-dollar note bearing the portrait of one of the island’s past Prime Ministers and deftly folded it into the policeman’s hand resting on the window.
“Respec’, ma’am.” He stepped away. “And remember to keep yuh eyes on the road.”
She eased into the traffic and only a few seconds passed before Justin exploded. “You shouldn’ give him nutten! Damn thiefin’ police!”
She looked at him in the mirror. “Excuse me?”
He sat back, grumbling. “Daddy woulda handle him differently, fi real!”
“That’s how they’re teaching you to talk in school these days?”
Refusing to give up, he continued, “Mummy, you know that’s why they continue to harass people on di road? You shouldn’t give him a dollar!”
She sighed. Why did this have to happen today of all days? “Justin, you’re right and I’m wrong. I shouldn’t have done it, okay? Now, relax.”
Their eyes met in the mirror. “Just don’t say anything to your father.”
He avoided her by squinting at his watch and she smiled. Justin was unwilling to be in cahoots with her when he could score points with his father. He sprawled on the seat in his khakis, arms folded in defiance. Sherryn stopped watching him, disturbed by how much he favoured Reece, but then all their children did. Somehow, they’d all inherited his amber eyes and the distinctive shape of his mouth. Justin and Brandon also shared the deep bronze undertone of his skin. The others had her dark-honey complexion.
Sherryn gripped the wheel tight to keep her mind on the road, but something occurred to her. If their home was destined to go topsy-turvy, she had some groundwork to do.
“Um, guys.” She glanced behind her. “Your father may have a visitor.”
Brandon raised his head, frowning. “So?”
“Well, he’s a-a relative.”
Justin leaned forward. “You mean like a cousin or something?”
She nodded and her gaze flicked up to the mirror. Justin resumed his position, but the taut way he held his body said he was not satisfied with that explanation.
She cursed on the inside, wishing she knew how to brace them for the coming upheaval.
She avoided looking at the child, whose cupid’s bow of a mouth and tawny eyes confirmed that he shared the same genes as her children. But the similarity ended there - his ashy skin, underweight body and wash-worn clothes broadcast a lack of concern for his well-being and appearance. The woman with him smiled – a smug grimace that confirmed Sherryn’s unspoken suspicion of his parentage.
Sherryn did not hide her distaste at the sight of the snug tank top holding in a belly about to surge out of control or the denim skirt that did little to cover a pair of lumpy thighs. A lustrous, blonde weave complemented the woman’s caramel complexion and false eyelashes emphasized the spite in her gaze.
A quick scan tagged her as the stereotypical product of one of Kingston’s ghettos. For a few timeless seconds, Sherryn felt as though she was stuck in an early 1900’s silent film. The wind stirred the flowers and shrubs in the front yard, dried leaves blew over the lawn and a car passed by, but she heard nothing.
Then the dancehall queen look-alike pushed the little boy forward, dragging Sherryn back to the unthinkable scene unfolding on her doorstep. “Tell Maurice him can have him pickney.”
Sherryn suppressed a shiver by pulling her shoulders back. She stood tall, squeezing the doorknob as a shipwreck victim might cling to a life-saving piece of flotsam. After a quick glance at the boy, she whispered, “Oh no, you’re not leaving him here!”
“You ca’an decide dat. Since Maurice won’ mind him pickney, him can keep him.”
The woman dropped a knapsack and spun away with an exaggerated wiggle of the hips to saunter down the driveway to the gate, where a marked taxi waited.
Damn ghetto rat! Why she choose to leave her child on another woman’s doorstep like so much unwanted baggage?
The boy’s bottom lip trembled and he blinked hard several times. Sherryn’s chest heaved and she struggled to slow her breathing. It wouldn’t help either of them if she fell apart. Pressing her lips together to keep her focus, she picked up the threadbare knapsack and touched his shoulder. “Come with me.”
She left him sitting on the sofa inside Reece’s office. In the passage outside, she admitted the purpose for leaving him there was twofold. Firstly, he was hidden from her, as if he didn’t exist and secondly, Reece’s world would spin off its axis - just as hers had - to find his secret tucked away in his private space. She hoped the experience turned out to be as gut wrenching and devastating as hers.
In their living room, she perched on the edge of the settee and hugged herself. She skimmed the familiar paintings, family portraits and oddments, absorbing all that meant home and family. Everything she’d invested in her relationship with Reece lay in invisible pieces around her like shattered glass.
Her insides felt cold and sterile. She sighed, forced herself to get up and climb the stairs to their bedroom. Once there, she lay down and allowed her tears to fall, searing her sinuses and then her eyes. Other than anxiety over her children and surreptitious tears shed while watching sad movies, no drama had touched her life in ages.
And now this.
She was not sure how much time passed before she heard Reece’s Jeep throttling in the yard. Her heart thumped painfully at the confrontation to come. She hurried into the bathroom to wash her face, staring into her dull eyes before returning to sit on the bed, facing the doorway. After running an unsteady hand over her close-cropped hair, she glanced at her watch, surprised to find that two hours had slipped away since she had answered that fateful knock at the door. Briefly, she spared a thought for the boy. He must be hungry.
Concern fled as Reece bounded up the stairs, calling her name. The door opened, and the energetic man at the centre of her world, entered the room. He crossed the patterned tiles in a few steps. “Sher, you never hear me calling you?”
She met his eyes, sure her expression would tell him something had gone wong.
“Sherryn, what happen’?”
She stood up, willing herself not to scream or lash out at him for destroying her near perfect life. Instead, she said, “It’s not what, but who.”
He attempted to touch her, but she edged away, ignoring the hurt and puzzlement in his darkening eyes.
“Come with me,” she said, not waiting to see if he followed.
His footsteps fell heavy on the wooden stairs behind her. Sherryn blinked hard to prevent fresh tears forming. She paused outside his study and sucked in her belly to pull herself upright. Then she turned the knob on the door and it swung inward to reveal the boy curled up on the settee. He slept with a thumb in his mouth. She pushed sympathy aside, bit her lip and composed herself. Reece’s breath bathed the back of her neck and he grunted in what she supposed could only be surprise.
She faced him and spoke to his pinstripe shirt through the painful ball in her throat. “Don’ bother say anythin’, I don’ want to know.”
She brushed past him and on the way out of the house, picked up her keys from the hand-carved table in the hallway.
* * *
Reece sensed that whatever lay behind the door of his study meant the end of eighteen years of happiness.
Sherryn opened his office door, sending shockwaves pulsing across his brain. The result of one regrettable encounter lay asleep on his couch.
Now he understood her coldness. As panic forced sweat out through his pores, Reece wiped a sleeve across his forehead. He kept his mouth shut. Anything he said would make little sense and serve to tee Sherryn off further, but he swore in his mind to kill that piece of trash, Gloria. She’d done this deliberately because he’d refused to play along with her latest bit of blackmail.
Hoping he was somehow trapped in a bad dream, he swallowed hard and rubbed a hand over his mouth, while his stomach churned. Sherryn glared at him with glittering eyes, brushed past him, and left. That was no dream.
Sure he would go mad, Reece stalked around the massive desk, along the edges of the carpet, past the bookshelves and the sofa. He refused to think about the implications of the child’s presence, thereby avoiding thoughts of losing Sherryn. He couldn’t face that possibility. Death was better than forfeiting his home and family.
He sank into the executive chair, his heart beating a painful tattoo in his chest. The discomfort was so bad, he wondered whether he was having a heart attack.
Moving at the pace of an old man, he dragged himself out of the chair to pace aimlessly, his mind a blank whiteboard. The enormity of the situation left him shell-shocked; he couldn’t think. What was he going to do? The boy stirred, rubbed small hands over his eyes and pulled himself upright.
Unable to contain his resentment, Reece glowered at him. The child shrank into the settee, his knees drawn up to his chest. Reece shut his eyes in an attempt to calm himself and get rid of the frown he wore. None of this was the boy’s fault. He, Reece Allbright, was the stupid adult who had created the current mess in a moment of drunken weakness.
Intuition had warned him a hundred times since the boy’s birth that this day would come – for all his wishing that it would not. The day had arrived, taking him by storm and leaving him with a sense of powerlessness he hadn’t felt in more years than he cared to remember. He tried to root himself in the present, by running a hand over his prickly chin. His voice was loud in the silence. “You hungry?”
The boy shied away, looking ready to dart off and hide, but he nodded.
“Come.”
They walked down the passage to the kitchen-cum-dining room, where further dread settled over Reece at the sight of a red and blue truck on one of the tiled counters. He stared at his son – he had no doubt the boy was his – and tried to work out what he was going to tell his other children. His stomach clenched again for he had no solution.
“Sit down.”
Reece made a tuna sandwich and placed it in front of the child he wished had never been born.
The boy crammed the food into his mouth, too hungry to remember his fear. On the way back from the refrigerator with a glass of apple juice, an idea hit Reece. He’d take the child back to the tenement yard where Gloria lived before his kids got home and started asking questions. Justin, his eldest, would take one look at him and know he was a relative. Reece shook his head, envisioning the disappointment and hurt to come if he did nothing to derail Gloria’s plan.
Disgusted with himself, Reece flung a napkin at the boy. “Wipe yuh hand and mouth and come.”
Then he grabbed the knapsack from his office and rushed out the door with his sixth offspring.
* * *
Sherryn adjusted the mirror to get a better view of the kids in the back of the van. Sixteen-year-old Justin had Melaine, his thirteen-year-old sister, in a headlock. Their younger sister, eleven-year-old Celia, had her face in a book, while Kyle - the baby at three-years-old - chattered non-stop to himself in the car seat. Brandon, who was super-mature for his six years, played a computer game in the passenger seat beside her.
Her insides ached as though a debilitating disease had ravaged her. What had possessed her to accede to Reece’s wish to have so many children? And if she didn’t stand strong, he wanted to round out the family with a sixth Allbright. Her lip curled in disgust. He'd obviously made time to complete his family elsewhere!
Reece had no relatives worth staying in touch with, so together they had fulfilled his desire to have a complete family unit. One corner of her mouth twitched at his single-mindedness, but what was there to be amused about? The joke was clearly on her.
What am I going to do?
Kyle, catching her eye in the mirror, giggled and hid behind his fingers. In return, she made a funny face at him and he laughed - a joyous sound that pushed away her unpleasant thoughts.
No! I don’t regret giving any of them life. They’re good kids. It’s their father who’s destroyed every striking thing!
Images of Reece naked with that woman flooded her mind, filling her vision. How many times had he been in her bed over the years? Did he love her?
She forced herself to focus on the road when Brandon shouted, along with his brothers and sisters. “Mom!”
She’d missed hitting another van by inches.
“Oh, God!” she whispered. “Sorry kids!” she threw over her shoulder and tried to ignore the string of bad words the wronged motorist threw at her.
She whispered a prayer of thanks, only to find two police officers riding up behind them. One pulled alongside the van and pointed toward the sidewalk. Sherryn parked and reached for her documents, hoping to avoid a ticket. The blazing heat of the afternoon sun intensified with the van at a standstill. She swiped at her forehead as sweat, brought on by overworked nerves, popped out on her skin.
The officer got off his bike and crowded the window, peering inside the vehicle. “Good afternoon, ma’am. You’re aware you just ran a red light?”
Sherryn marshalled her thoughts and hoped the children wouldn’t take her to task for the humdinger of a lie she was about to tell. “Yes, officer. Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying enough attention. I thought something was wrong with the baby.” She pointed to Kyle. “That’s how I ran through the light.”
She put on her best penitent expression. “Officer, please. Don’t ticket me. You understand how it is when you have so many children in one vehicle…”
The policeman removed his dark glasses and slipped one of the arms into his mouth, eyeing her from her hair to the jeans covering her legs. In a low voice, he said, “We can sort this out easy, easy. Leave a t’ing wid me and mi partner, nuh?”
Reece would have a fit at what she was about to do, if he knew. Sherryn reached down into the space between the two seats and rifled around in her handbag for her purse. She pulled out a crisp, blue thousand-dollar note bearing the portrait of one of the island’s past Prime Ministers and deftly folded it into the policeman’s hand resting on the window.
“Respec’, ma’am.” He stepped away. “And remember to keep yuh eyes on the road.”
She eased into the traffic and only a few seconds passed before Justin exploded. “You shouldn’ give him nutten! Damn thiefin’ police!”
She looked at him in the mirror. “Excuse me?”
He sat back, grumbling. “Daddy woulda handle him differently, fi real!”
“That’s how they’re teaching you to talk in school these days?”
Refusing to give up, he continued, “Mummy, you know that’s why they continue to harass people on di road? You shouldn’t give him a dollar!”
She sighed. Why did this have to happen today of all days? “Justin, you’re right and I’m wrong. I shouldn’t have done it, okay? Now, relax.”
Their eyes met in the mirror. “Just don’t say anything to your father.”
He avoided her by squinting at his watch and she smiled. Justin was unwilling to be in cahoots with her when he could score points with his father. He sprawled on the seat in his khakis, arms folded in defiance. Sherryn stopped watching him, disturbed by how much he favoured Reece, but then all their children did. Somehow, they’d all inherited his amber eyes and the distinctive shape of his mouth. Justin and Brandon also shared the deep bronze undertone of his skin. The others had her dark-honey complexion.
Sherryn gripped the wheel tight to keep her mind on the road, but something occurred to her. If their home was destined to go topsy-turvy, she had some groundwork to do.
“Um, guys.” She glanced behind her. “Your father may have a visitor.”
Brandon raised his head, frowning. “So?”
“Well, he’s a-a relative.”
Justin leaned forward. “You mean like a cousin or something?”
She nodded and her gaze flicked up to the mirror. Justin resumed his position, but the taut way he held his body said he was not satisfied with that explanation.
She cursed on the inside, wishing she knew how to brace them for the coming upheaval.
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Dissolution - Chapter 1