The Choir Director (28 page)

Aaron replied with a lackluster, “Amen.”

I mean, what else could the poor guy say?

“Daddy, dinner was lovely, but it’s time for Aaron and me to get out of here.” I wiped my mouth with my napkin and raised my hand to signal for the waiter to hurry over with our check.

“Just one minute. I’m getting a call.” Daddy reached for his cell phone.

About fifteen seconds into his conversation, his face became flushed and I could see the vein in his forehead throbbing.

“Daddy, what’s the matter?” I asked when he hung up, although from the way he’d been staring at me during the call, I was terrified to hear his answer.

He expression only hardened further as he said, “I was just informed that First Jamaica Ministries is filing for bankruptcy.”

Uh-oh. I glanced at Aaron out of my peripheral vision. From the look he was giving me, I was about to get it from both ends.

“Did you know that?” my father asked, but didn’t wait for a
response. “Of course you knew it! You’re the chairwoman of the board of trustees. I just don’t understand how you could sit here and eat dinner with me for the past hour and not say a word about it.”

No words came to my mind. I knew my usual baby-girl routine wouldn’t work, so I just stared at him with no expression.

He turned to Aaron. “Did you know about this, young man?”

“No, sir, I can’t say I did.” He looked at me disapprovingly. I wanted to smack him. How dare he gang up on me like this with my own father!

My indignation allowed me to gather myself enough to finally speak up. “Look, Daddy, it’s no big deal. We’re just filing Chapter Eleven reorganization. I wasn’t gonna ruin dinner over it. God, don’t make a mountain out of a molehill.”

“You don’t think this is a big deal?” Aaron asked.

“No, I don’t. Businesses go through Chapter Eleven all the time and come out fine. Look at General Motors.”

“But the church doesn’t have the government backing them,” Daddy protested as I turned around to search for the waiter so he could hurry up and bring the check.

I heard Daddy let out a strange grunt behind me. I twisted around to look at him, and my heart skipped a beat. My father was slumped over, grabbing his chest.

“Oh my God! Aaron, help him, please! Help!” I yelled out. “Somebody call an ambulance. I think my father is having a heart attack.”

We’d been in the emergency room for almost an hour, waiting to find out about the condition of Simone’s father. At the restaurant, I’d jumped out of my chair to catch him. If I hadn’t been there, the poor man probably would have split his head wide open on that stone floor. Luckily that didn’t happen, though it did look like he’d had a heart attack.

“Simone, try to relax,” I coaxed as she paced the emergency room waiting area, her body trembling.

She cut her eyes in my direction. “I can’t relax. That’s my father in there. I need to know what’s going on.”

I got out of my seat and wrapped my arms around her shoulders. “I know, sweetheart, but the nurse said the doctor would be out to talk to you just as soon as he finished tending to your father. We gotta be patient, love.” I was laying it on thick with
sweetheart
and
love,
terms of endearment I usually shied away from. In this situation, I felt it was called for to comfort Simone.

“I know, but it’s been forever.” Simone scooted out of my arms. “Where is that doctor?”

As if right on cue, the doctor, a short Indian man, came into the waiting room. “Simone Wilcox? The family of Brian Wilcox?”

“That’s me! Over here.” Simone ran over to the doctor, practically knocking him down. “How’s my father? What happened to him? Is he going to be okay?” she questioned in quick succession.

“Your father is stable,” the doctor replied. “From what we can tell, he’s had an attack of angina.”

“So, he didn’t have a heart attack? But how could that be? He was grabbing his chest and left arm.”

“Yes, but those are also symptoms of angina. Do you know when he’s had his last checkup?” the doctor asked.

“Uh, not too long ago, actually. He got a clean bill of health. But didn’t he tell you that?”

The doctor gave us an uncomfortable chuckle. “Um, your father doesn’t seem to want to talk. He’s a stubborn man, isn’t he?”

She sighed. “Yes, he can be. I bet he’s insisting he’s fine and ready to go home, right?”

“Precisely. To be safe, though, we’d like to keep him overnight for observation and to run a few more tests. Angina is not terribly serious at this stage, but it can be a sign of heart disease.”

“Okay, well, I’ll go talk to him to see if I can convince him to stay,” Simone said. Then she turned to me. “On second thought, maybe you should go talk to him, Aaron. I’m probably not his favorite person right about now.”

I squeezed her hand. “How about we go together?”

She leaned in to give me an appreciative kiss.

The doctor cleared his throat when the kiss lasted longer than was probably appropriate for a hospital waiting room. “Well, that’s wonderful. Now, in the meantime, we need to know a bit about his medical history, and again, he only wants to talk about leaving at this point. Do you know of any significant medical history we should be aware of?”

“Well, he’s never really been sick before, but he does have sickle cell trait. That’s the only thing I got from him, other than my looks.”

Simone glanced over at me and winked, probably trying to assure me that her flirtatious comment to the doctor was harmless. That wasn’t the part that had me ready to flip, though.

The doctor said, “That’s good to know. Now, if you’ll wait out here for just a little bit longer, we’ll finish his exam and then you can come back and see him.”

Simone visibly relaxed when she heard those words. I wanted to be grateful for the doctor’s words, too, but it wasn’t his words that kept repeating in my mind.

“Did you hear that?” Simone said ecstatically after the doctor
walked away. “Daddy’s going to be okay!” She threw her arms around my neck and embraced me.

“Yeah, I heard all right.” I slipped from her embrace and went to sit down in the chair I’d been in for the past hour. What I actually wanted to do was walk my ass right on out of there and go home. As Simone came and sat next to me, looking all innocent, it took everything in me not to get up and do just that.

“I’m so glad you were there for Daddy. When I turned around and saw him clutching his chest after he made that god-awful noise, I panicked. But not you. You ran right over to Daddy to catch his fall. Thank you, Aaron. Thank you for being there for my father, and thank you for being there for me.”

It all sounded good, but no longer did I believe a thing that came out of that woman’s mouth. And no longer could I hold it back.

“Look, uh, I gotta go, Simone.” I dug into my pocket, pulled out my wallet, and handed her fifty dollars. “Here’s cab fare. I hope your father gets better soon.”

I stood up, and Simone quickly followed suit, blocking my path.

“A cab? What are you talking about? Why are you leaving?”

I wasn’t beating around the bush with her. “Because I’m sick of the lies. Why is there always so much drama with you?”

“What drama? Aaron, baby, what’s really going on? Is this about the bankruptcy? If so, I can explain—”

“Oh, it’s about that and a whole lot more. You know, Si-mone, I’ve never met anyone like you before. You’re a habitual liar.” I started walking out the door and she followed.

“Aaron, I have a sick father in there. He may not have had a heart attack, but he still needs me, so I don’t have the time to be kissing your ass right now.”

Obviously she needed me to spell it out for her. I guess she’d been telling so many lies she didn’t even notice that she’d slipped up in front of me.

“And that right there is the problem, Simone. That sick man back there is your
father
. Not your stepfather or your adopted father, but your real, biological father! I mean, after all, you have
the sickle cell trait that you inherited from him. Isn’t that what you just said?”

She couldn’t have looked more surprised if I’d thrown a pie in her face. I swear, if it wasn’t so ghetto, I would have taken out my camera phone, snapped a couple pictures of Simone’s face, and posted it on the church’s Facebook page. She was so busted. It looked like all the blood had drained out of her face. I thought for a minute they were going to have to check her into the hospital right next to her father, but instead, I was checking myself out—out of her life.

“Good-bye, Simone. Oh, and tell your father I hope he gets better and he was right.” I went to walk away, but she grabbed my arm.

“Right about what?”

“I am the one who ended up getting hurt in this relationship.” I tried to step past her, but she held my arm tightly.

“So, is that it? You’re going to walk right out of here without allowing me to explain?”

“Woman, do you know how many chances you’ve had to explain?” I hadn’t meant to raise my voice, but Simone had a way of sparking my anger like few other people could. “I doubt you can even keep your lies straight, can you?”

“Please, Aaron. Let me just talk to you. This time I promise to—”

I shook her hand loose from my arm. “Good-bye, Simone. It’s over. Now, go back in there and take care of your
father
.” I stepped around her and headed for my truck.

I drove to Maxwell Frye’s office on Queens Boulevard in Rego Park with a sense of trepidation. For some reason, Maxwell had insisted that we meet there at this late hour, instead of at the church. I went over our telephone conversation in my mind. He’d called me just as I was putting Daddy and my stepmother back on a plane to Florida. Lord knows I was glad to get rid of them once I was sure Daddy’s health was stable.

“Meet me and the bishop at my Rego Park office at nine o’clock sharp. Leave the choir boy home. We’ve got some important church business to discuss.”

His tone had been so short and cryptic I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t have a good feeling about this, and I didn’t like the way he called my boo a choirboy, like he was less than a man or something. I knew one thing: Aaron could whip Maxwell’s ass if it ever came down to a physical confrontation.

Speaking of being physical, I wished Aaron would answer my calls. I still couldn’t believe he’d tried to break up with me. I say
tried
because I wasn’t going to let him. He could say it all he wanted, but as far as I was concerned, he was still my man. I didn’t care what he or anybody else said; I wasn’t letting go. He just needed some time to miss me.

I slammed on my brakes, and my tires made the same sound on the pavement as fingernails going down a chalkboard. I’d almost run a red light worrying about my relationship troubles and thinking about this impromptu meeting with Maxwell. I had to get myself together and stop thinking the worst.

After narrowly avoiding an accident, I arrived at Maxwell’s
office building in one piece. That didn’t mean I felt any less nervous, though. My hands trembled and my stomach quivered as I approached his office on the fourth floor. I could not shake the feeling that had been plaguing me the last hour. Something was definitely wrong. But what was it?

As I stepped into the office, I felt like Daniel in the lion’s den. Deacon Frye sat behind this huge mahogany desk, staring at the doorway as if he’d been waiting for my arrival ever since he hung up the phone with me. There were two other men in the office, one black and one white. I only knew the black man, and I wasn’t happy to see him. Not at all. His name was D. L. Sherman. He was an accountant Frye had snooping around the church, but I hadn’t paid him much mind until now as he sat staring at me. The tall white guy wearing a dark suit and a tie was someone I was unfamiliar with.

“Hello,” I said, trying to will my heart to slow down. I took deep breaths and held my head up high as I walked over to a chair in front of Deacon Frye’s desk. I slowly eased into the armchair, trying to maintain an air of composure even though I felt like running from the room. All three men nodded, but there was a grimness in their demeanor. No one spoke to me.

“Where’s the bishop?”

Deacon Frye continued to stare me down. “He’s not able to make it.”

I tried not to squirm as I made eye contact with the men in the room. Each one maintained his laser-beam stare. I knew without them saying a word that I was on the hot seat for something.

Frye tortured me with a few moments of uncomfortable silence before he said anything. I was glad when he finally spoke, because rather than sitting there sweating in my seat, I needed him to hurry up and say whatever it was that he had to say so that we could deal with it.

“Do you have any idea why you’re here?”

Oh, Deacon Frye was playing me. He was playing me good.

“No, I don’t, but considering the people in the room, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it has something to do with the church’s bankruptcy.”

“Let me just put it to you straight.” He dropped his pen on
the desk and leaned forward dramatically. “Sherman here has found quite a few inconsistencies with the church’s financial records. Interestingly, we went back a year or so and discovered these inconsistencies began when you became the chairwoman of the board of trustees.”

It felt like my heart almost stopped beating, but I had to keep it together. I had to play this thing out until I knew exactly what they knew. You ever hear the expression “Give a person a rope long enough and they’ll hang themselves with it”? Well, today was not the day I was going to commit suicide.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” It came out as a whisper, but at least my voice didn’t crack. I was still hanging on by a thread, though barely. My confidence was deflating rapidly.

Maxwell glanced at the two men, then shook his head. The room fell silent again. It was so quiet that I swear I could hear my own heart pounding.

Finally Deacon Frye stood up and walked around his desk. He stood in front of me and looked me directly in the eye. “What it means is you’ve been stealing. You’ve been robbing the church blind.”