Page 12 of Happy Is On Hiatus
And now he had another woman pregnant, so he’d likely been with her with no condom. Fury mixed with pain, and she gripped the steering wheel while closing her eyes tightly. She wanted to kill him. Not only had he cheated on her and humiliated her, but he could’ve possibly infected her with any number of sexually transmitted diseases with his irresponsibility. She groaned and lurched back in the seat, this time slamming her fists onto her thighs.
With jerky movements, she pulled her phone from her purse and dialed her GYN’s number. It was just after four, so she’d be cutting it close to the time the office would close for the day. After scheduling an appointment for next week, she tossed the phone onto the passenger seat and took out her keys to press the button that opened the garage door. She started the car, backed out of the garage, and heard the tires squeal over the asphalt as she drove as fast as she could out of Willow Grove and away from all the memories of what her life had been there.
Chapter 6
NEVER LET THEM SEE YOU SWEAT.
Thankful for the well-known roads that she could travel along without much thought beyond safe driving, Rita let her hands rest on the steering wheel while sitting at a red light. “It’s Not Over,” a familiar gospel song, played on the radio, and she hummed along with the verse, feeling the power of the inspiring words wash over her. Help was on the way, that was what the lyrics said, and she let them resonate. Her fingers clenched the wheel when she wondered about the form that help would take.
She’d been created to be a wife, a mother, a woman of faith. What happened when she failed at one? That would surely be her mother’s topic of conversation when Rita told her about the divorce. Had she done everything she could to save the marriage, to be all that Nate needed so he’d never have a reason to stray?
With disappointment and irritation still bubbling in the pit of her stomach, the words to the song blurred, and she stared down at her hands. At the left ring finger to be exact, where the light spot from her rings basically shouted out to her. There’d never been a day in her twenty-three years of marriage that she’d even considered being unfaithful to Nate. And there’d been plenty of times during those years that he’d beenless than what she needed from a husband. She wouldn’t shoulder the blame for his infidelity; it just wasn’t going to happen that way.
With a shake of her head, she eased a hand from the steering wheel and changed the station on the radio. R & B singer Monica’s soulful voice blared through the speakers now as she declared she was still standing after trials and tribulations. Rita turned up the volume before easing her foot off the brake and proceeding through the light.
This wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t going to allow anyone to tell her any differently. She made a left turn at the next light and continued down a long narrow road. Mature trees and miles of fresh grass lined the path, and Rita took in a deep breath, releasing it slowly. Rolling her neck on her shoulders, she tried to refocus her thoughts, to look toward the future, telling herself it would be as bright as the sun shining through her windshield.
Jolting at the sound of her phone ringing through the music playing on the radio, she used one hand to insert her earbud into her ear and answered the call.
“Hey, Rita, it’s Phyllis. I had a few additions to the menu for next week.”
Rita rolled her eyes, grateful that this wasn’t a FaceTime call, which Phyllis was known for. Phyllis Wyatt’s daughter was pregnant with twins, but the baby shower Phyllis was planning was fit for five or six babies. If Rita had a dime for every addition Phyllis had made since hiring Rita to cater this shower two months ago, she’d be well on her way to purchasing a new diamond ring to fill in the empty space she couldn’t stop staring at on her left hand.
“We’ve already finalized the menu, Phyllis.” She spoke in her best professional tone because it would never do to let anyone know what she was really going through.
Something else her mother had taught her:Never let them see you sweat, Rita. People don’t need to know what’s going on in your personal life for you to fulfill your purpose.Vi lived by the words, as nobody at NVBever knew what was going on in the pastor and first lady’s household. All they saw was the unity of the couple in church and their unwavering faith. Anything less would’ve been worse than a scandal, as far as Vi was concerned.
“I know, but, see, I’ve got family comin’ in from Atlanta, and my uncle Carl loves fried green tomatoes and vegetable soup. So I figured we can have that on the buffet as well. And then red velvet cake, my grandmother loves that. She’ll be so tickled to see we remembered,” Phyllis continued.
To Rita’s way of thinking, this last-minute adjustment wasn’t really based on Phyllis wanting to do something nice for her family. It was Phyllis’s way of showing said family she could throw the biggest, most elaborate baby shower any of them had ever seen. She’d seen it before, this endless need to impress people that didn’t have much more than Phyllis did just to feel superior. It was annoying, especially on a day when the last thing Rita wanted to think about was fried green tomatoes and vegetable soup.
Rita used her finger and thumb to pinch the bridge of her nose and released a slow breath before replying, “You already have three meat selections, four salads, green beans, collards, and spinach on the buffet. I really don’t think there’s room to add anything else.” Unless they were having a soul-food-dinner feast instead of the early-afternoon baby shower, which was the original plan.
How had she gotten roped into taking this job? Oh, she knew how, because for the past ten years she’d been catering for the church and all of Nate’s business functions. Word of mouth could be the best form of publicity or the devil wrapped in foil in a lightning storm. Outside of those two places and her family functions, Rita had begun getting calls to do private events at least a few times a year, and because she hadn’t been doing anything other than taking care of her family, tending to her church duties, and keeping an eye on the management of the car dealerships she and Nate owned, she’d accepted the jobs. The money sheearned from them had gone into a bank account with only her name on it, something she’d felt guilty about for a while but now, with her uncertain future ahead, she was thankful for.
“Nobody counts how many food dishes are on a buffet, Rita.” Phyllis’s tone was filled with a bit of haughtiness and a splash of annoyance. “Everybody will talk badly about an event if there isn’t enough food.”
Rita had been doing this for a while, so she knew how to prepare for the 148-person baby shower without a problem. Adding more dishes to the menu wasn’t the answer. But the customer was always right. Not really, but she was in no mood to argue with Phyllis over some tomatoes and red velvet cake when she needed to figure out how she was going to navigate being a single woman after all this time.
“I’ll see what I can do, Phyllis. I like to use a specific type of tomato when I fry them. If I can get to the farmer’s market and find some, I’ll add it to the menu.”
“And the soup and the cake, ’cause Granny’ll love having a big slice of red velvet after dinner,” Phyllis added.
There was already a three-tier Thing One and Thing Two lemon yogurt cake and a parade of vanilla cupcakes continuing the Dr.Seuss story theme, not to mention the full candy bar that three weeks ago had been a must-have. Granny wasn’t going to lack for anything sweet to eat at this shindig.
“I can contact the same baker who’s doing the cake and cupcakes to see if they have time to add a red velvet cake. Just a ten-inch round cake should suffice because we have all the other dessert items and the goody bags everyone will go home with,” Rita said. Goody bags on top of the candy bar was way more than she thought was necessary, but again, she aimed to please her clients. “The soup shouldn’t be a problem at all.” Just another thing she’d have to prep the night before, but that was fine. The shower was next Friday evening. On that Thursday, she wassupposed to go with Nate and a few of his business associates to dinner in Annapolis. She mentally scratched that off her calendar.
“Great! I knew I could count on you!” Phyllis sounded happy and, in the end, that was all that mattered. A happy client paid on time and referred her to others.
Was that what she wanted? To continue being referred for catering jobs where clients asked for way more than was needed at over-the-top events? Shaking her head, Rita admitted she had no clue what she wanted right now.
“Yes, you can,” she told Phyllis and said her goodbyes before disconnecting the call. Phyllis loved to talk, and the more she talked the more things she was likely to add to this shower.
Rita frowned as she pulled the earbud from her ear and glanced down at the time on her phone screen. She’d been out driving around for much longer than she’d anticipated. Now she had about a half hour to get back to Willow Grove and the HOA meeting she definitely didn’t feel like attending.
Twenty minutes later, Rita walked into the Clubhouse—a redbrick building located at the farthest end of the Willow Grove development. The space, which on the inside resembled the VFW hall her uncle Jimmy’s crab feasts were held at every August, could fit up to sixty people in its main room. There were three other smaller rooms that they sometimes rented out to members of the community, and a kitchen. This main area could also be rented by residents, but the HOA board had voted that no liquor could be consumed on the premises, which was why Rita had never rented it for her large family gatherings. If there was something the Johnson family liked just as much as they enjoyed good food, it was good liquor. It was a wonder Vi’s holy lifestyle withstood that family trait.
A few residents had already shown up for the meeting, and Rita made her way to the front of the room, where two six-foot-long tables were pushed together. Six chairs, one for each member of the board,were positioned behind the table. Ethel, the president of the HOA board, was already settled in the center seat, her infamous black binder and pen on the table in front of her. The woman’s reproachful gaze found Rita as she made her way behind the table to take her seat to the right of her.
