Secrets On Lake Drive (36 page)

“What do you mean you changed your name to
Cornelius? You’re not Cornelius.”

Sean didn’t respond. He just took a picture out of
his wallet and placed it on the table in front of me. It was a
photo of me and Cornelius hugged up in one of those mall photo
booths. I remembered that day. In that booth was the first time
Cornelius told me that he loved me. If I recall correctly, I was so
happy I cried. Then we were rushed out by another lovey dovey
couple waiting to take snapshots.

“How did you get that?”

“We took this picture together, Monica.”

I took the picture into my hand. “That’s not
possible.” I pointed to Cornelius in the photo. “That is not
you.”

“That is me. I cut my hair short into a fade, wore
eye contacts so that my eyes were brown, and I even went so far as
to hire a make-up artist to darken my skin.”

“I don’t believe you,” I told Sean, as I wiped my
wet face. But really, I had no choice but to believe him. He
wouldn’t choose to stand up in front of us all and make up a story
like that. “How could you…how could you do this to me?”

“I was at a point in my life where I was tired of
women coming on to me because of the way I looked and dressed and
because of how much money I made,” he explained. “I wanted true
love and I couldn’t find that by being myself. Sean was superficial
to every woman. In their eyes, Sean was just a good-looking empty
shell with money. But Cornelius was able to find love in you,
something I thought I could never find as I am.”

Sean wiped his eyes, then started
up again while I sat there before him in a state of catatonia. “But
I was wrong because I found you again, as I am, and you love me.
And I love you. Even as Cornelius, I loved you. But when you told
me that you were giving my baby away, it broke my heart. I had no
choice but to leave.” Sean cried harder and was shaking nervously.
“I wanted my son and you knew that. You wanted him, too, but you
listened to your parents and gave him away. He was my son, my only
son, and you gave him away! So, I did what I had to do to get him
back. I married Shanelle. I didn’t love her. The only reason I
married her was so it would look good on paper. Some adoption
agencies tend to frown at potential single dads. I didn’t want to
risk not getting him back. So, I got married, adopted him, and
named him Roman. Monica, Roman is our son. We made him together.
You don’t have to search for Eric anymore because Roman
is
Eric.”

“So you adopted your real son?” Warren asked him. By
the look on his face, he was just as shocked as I was. So was
everyone else in the room.

“Yeah, I adopted my
real
son. I’m telling
everyone the truth once and for all,” he said with a broken voice.
Then he turned to me again. “I have no reason to make something
like this up. Roman is our child. We made him, you gave him up for
adoption, and I adopted him.”

“Sean, why didn’t you tell me this? Why did you keep
this from me?” Victoria finally got over the initial shock to
actually say something.

“I didn’t want to burden you with my problems.”

To offer more proof to confirm his
story, he looked at me and said, “And that picture you found in the
nightstand…I didn’t take it from your apartment. I took that
picture of you with
your
camera when you were four months pregnant with
Roman.”

I couldn’t stop myself from crying, so I left the
table. I’m sure Victoria and the rest of Sean’s family had plenty
of questions to ask him. And while they questioned him, I ran
upstairs to grab some clothes. It was still hard for me to dissolve
what I had heard. The man I had been loving was actually the same
man that I was in love with six years ago. The whole situation was
playing with my head. I thought I would flip out any minute if I
didn’t get out of there as soon as possible. Then Sean came barging
in like he already knew I was about to leave.

“What are you doing?” he asked in a firm voice.

“What does it look like I’m doing?” I was throwing
clothes in the bag as fast as I could.

“Monica, put the clothes down and talk to me.”

Of course, I didn’t listen. I was on a roll. There
was no stopping me from getting out of the house. Sean snatched the
clothes out of my hand.

“So you just going to leave? You don’t even want to
talk to me about this!”

“And just who am I supposed to be talking to? Sean
or Cornelius?” I was heated. My blood pressure was through the
roof. I could feel it. “I don’t even know who you are
apparently!”

Sean dabbed his eyes with the backside of his right
hand. “So your solution is to leave me? Yeah…that’s real love.”

Oh no, he didn’t.
He almost caught a slap on that one. He had the
nerve to imply my love for him wasn’t real after he had revealed
something like that.
There is no way he is
going to flip this around on me.

“What would you propose I do? You’ve been lying to
me this entire time! How am I supposed to react, Sean? I mean, here
you are supposed to be the man that loves me and protects me, and
you drop something like this on me?”

“I’m trying to deal with this, too, Monica.”

“Yeah, whatever. Just move out of my way,
please.”

“No. We need to talk.”

“I can’t talk to you right now. I can’t.”

“I want you to.”

“I told you I can’t, Sean. I cannot talk to you
right now!” I yelled at him.

Sean grabbed me. “Just look at me, Monica,” he said
desperately. His eyes were bloodshot red, full of tears. “I don’t
want to lose you.”

“Sean, let me go!” I tried pushing him away, but he
was too strong.

“No.”

“Just let me go,” I cried harder than before.

“Please, Monica. Just talk to me.”

That’s when I snapped. I told him that I didn’t want
to talk. I was trying to avoid shouting and saying things I didn’t
mean – things I would probably regret later. But Sean wouldn’t let
it go.

“Did you ever really love me, or was it just that
you wanted me again like you used to have me? Is that it? Is that
why you can’t keep your hands off of me? Is that why we make love
almost every night…so you can play this game and feed your sick
desire to be with me as two different men without my knowledge? The
joke is on me, right? You know what you are, Sean? You are a
selfish, heartless, pitiful excuse for a man, and I don’t want
anything to do with you!”

I vigorously released myself from his clutch and
made my way out of the room with bag in my hand. There was nothing
else for me to say at that point. I needed some time alone to think
this through.

Chapter 34 -
Love Conquers All

I’m not an advocator for running
away from trying situations, but I had to get out of there for my
own sanity. Sean had deceived and betrayed me in the highest forms.
On the way to Keisha’s house, I kept playing his confession over
and over again in my mind.
How could he do
this to me,
I asked myself. But I couldn’t
come up with a logical answer.
How could
he wear make-up, a new identity, and take on the alias Cornelius
Hill?
Even worse, he adopted our baby and
named him Roman. And after all this time we had spent together,
come to find out that Roman is my son, my baby I gave up for
adoption. I didn’t know whether to be angry, happy, or scared.
Things like this don’t happen in real life. This had The X-Files
stuff to me.

I told Keisha what went down, and the first thing
she said was, “I knew it! I knew it was something about him!” She
had mentioned to me a while ago that Sean had some similar
qualities to Cornelius, but I didn’t see it. On a much lighter
note, Keisha was happy to find out that Roman was my real son. So
was I. It’s weird because I always dreamed about the first thing I
would say to my son when I found him, or if he would accept me as
his mother. So, it was a relief I didn’t have to worry about that
any longer.

Everything was all starting to make sense to me. Now
I understand what Sean meant when he said I should love what’s in
front of me. All this time, my son had been right there in front of
me and I had no clue. And all this time, Sean was the man that I
fell in love with back in the day and he was right in front of
me.

I don’t know which one hurt me the most – the fact
that Sean didn’t tell me from jump that Roman was my real son, or
that he was Cornelius and he knew me this whole time while being
his true self as Sean. He knew me intimately and emotionally. He
knew everything about me and pretended he didn’t know me at
all.

That’s probably why he was coming on to me so
strongly before we got married. Just thinking about it takes me
back to last summer when I went over to his house to take that
classroom portrait. He was standing in the doorway staring at me
like he wanted to have me for dessert…then kept asking me to come
in his house. Little did I know that he already knew me.

How could he mislead me like this?
And why didn’t I connect the two?
Now that
I know they are the same person, I guess it doesn’t matter. But
what about my conversations about Cornelius with Sean? When I told
him that I loved Cornelius, I had no idea I was actually talking to
Cornelius.

FIVE WEEKS PASSED since Sean broke the news to me. I
had been living with Keisha during that time. It wasn’t my intent
on staying there for an extended period of time. I wanted to go and
talk to Sean about us. But the more I thought about the situation
the angrier I became. I felt used and betrayed. A simple
conversation with him wasn’t going to cure the hurt and lies I had
to endure.

During my stay with Keisha, I had
only seen Sean a couple of times. He would bring Roman,
my
son, by to spend time
with me, but I never met Sean at the door. Keisha would always
answer the door and let Roman in for me.

DNA testing confirmed that Sean and I were Roman’s
biological parents. And once I found out that he was indeed my son,
I felt even closer to him. For the first few weeks of knowing that
he was mine, I must have cried every time I stared into his cute
little face. I had to sit down with him to explain what happened in
the simplest terms I could use. I think he finally understands that
I am his real mother.

I wasn’t ready to face Sean. The man who was so in
love with me had actually been deceiving me from the very first day
we met. He lied to me and it was going to take time for me to get
over that. I knew in my heart he was sorry. What he did was for the
betterment of the family, but a lie is a lie. I don’t care how much
sugar you throw on it.

He called me often, but I never answered my phone. I
didn’t know what to say to him, and I knew avoiding him was not
going to solve the problem. Still, I wasn’t ready to deal with him.
I just wasn’t ready.

With all of those thoughts running through my brain,
I got out of bed to the smell of eggs and bacon, and when I walked
into the kitchen, I saw Keisha stirring some grits in a small
pot.

“Good mornin’, sleepy head,” Keisha said with a
spoon in her hand. “You’ve been sleeping an awful lot lately.”

“I know. I’m just so tired.”

“Your husband sent flowers again.”

She pointed to the bouquet of
white and blue lilies by the sink. I smiled when I saw them. Sean
had sent flowers to me every week since I’ve been gone. A couple of
weeks ago, he sent twelve long-stemmed red roses in a water crystal
vase. Last week, he sent twelve roses, four pink, four red, and the
remaining four were white. Those were in a green vase. Each bouquet
came with a note that read
Je
t’aime
. And every night exactly at nine
o’clock, Sean sent a text message to my cell that said
I love you
.

“Girl, when are you going to talk to him? My house
is turning into a floral shop,” Keisha said, as she bit into a
crispy piece of bacon.

“I don’t know. I still have issues with him.”

“Do you want to get back together with him or
not?”

“With who? Sean or Cornelius?”

Keisha laughed. I laughed a little, too. But in
light of my sarcasm was sadness. I missed Sean. I missed him so
much that I cried myself to sleep most nights because I didn’t have
him with me. I was lonely without my baby, yet, I was so angry with
him for lying to me.

“Of course I want to get back with him. He’s my
husband and I love him.”

I watched Keisha turn up a glass of orange juice to
her mouth, and before she could say anything else I said, “Keisha,
I think I’m pregnant.”

Keisha spewed out the little bit of orange juice
that was in her mouth. “What? You are!”

“I think so. I haven’t had a period in two
months.”

“Well, we have to find out for sure, girl. Grab your
purse. We’re going to Walgreens!”

“I have a pregnancy test already. I just haven’t
taken it yet.”

“Why not?”

“I’m scared.”

“I thought you wanted more children.”

“I do. I’m just trippin’ over this situation with
Sean.”

“Things won’t be so stressful if you sit down with
Sean and talk through this.”

“I know, but you don’t understand. I’m still trying
to accept the fact that Sean is Cornelius. How am I supposed to
accept that?”

“I honestly don’t have an answer
for you. But I will say this…do you know how many women would kill
to have a man that would jump through hoops like this for them?
Girl, that man loves you so much that he confessed to you what he
did. He adopted his child, Monica…
your
child. And on top of that, he
found you. He made a life with you. He married you. You’re his one
true love and he wants you. You need to talk to him. You’re never
going to find a love like that again out here in this world. It
doesn’t get any better than that, honey.”