CHARLY’S PROLOGUE
The bell rang and students poured out of their classrooms and filled the hallways with hundreds of happy bodies. Charlene “Charly” Johnson, attempting to lock her office door, was as happy as they were. As the dean of girls at the school, and a P.E. teacher to boot, she was thanking God it was Friday too.
“Not so fast, Shaun!” she yelled at one student when he tore past her, bumping into her just as she locked her office door.
“Sorry, Mrs. Johnson!” the student yelled back, but did not slowdown in his mad dash to get away.
Charly smiled and shook her head. The wildness of youth, she thought as she picked up the thick briefcase that sat at her side. She maneuvered her way around hundreds of loud, lingering teenagers to make her way to her beloved Saab convertible in the back side of the parking lot. She was off until Monday, hallelujah! She couldn’t help but be happy too.
She got in, put on her sunglasses, and sped off, shifting gears along the winding L.A. roads and back streets and made her way to her home on the lake. She couldn’t wait to get home and take a soaking bath before her husband arrived and distracted her with his usual work drama. Friday evenings, before he made it home, were always her me time, and she was relishing it this time.
But when she drove onto the driveway of their home, her hope was quickly dashed. Her husband’s truck was parked on the steep incline, barely leaving room for her as usual. He was home already.
For several minutes Charly sat behind the wheel of her car staring at his big truck, and then at their big, contemporary home. He admitted to cheating again. This time with one of his paralegals, which was so unoriginal to Charly she could hardly believe it. She should have left him then. Or the time before then. Or the time before that! But she didn’t. Like all those other times, he put on that drop-dead charm, reminding her of why she married him in the first place, and she, like the fool she’d been, forgave him once again.
But now, as she sat in her car, she couldn’t figure out the why anymore. Why did she keep forgiving a man like Darryl? Why did she keep putting up with his mess? It wasn’t love. She wasn’t sure if she ever really loved Darryl at all. He was more like a safe, stable landing for her rather than a love affair.
They met five years ago, when they both were in their upper-twenties and were already enjoying great success. He as a corporate lawyer. She as an assistant high school dean, one of the youngest African-American deans in the entire district. She knew he liked the ladies when she first met him, but he declared his love for her and devotion to their relationship and insisted his playboy days were over. A little less than six months into their courtship, she accepted his proposal and married him.
But now, five years later, she was thirty-two, he was thirty-four, and it felt as if time had stood still. Because he never really changed. His same old bad behavior from their dating days spilled into their marriage like a rude intruder and she knew, early on, that she had made a big mistake. But for some reason that she knew was her problem alone, she allowed him to treat her the way everybody in her life had always treated her: bad. And she could never push herself to divorce him.
Her parents left her.
Her siblings left her.
She wasn’t letting her husband leave her too.
In her mind, he was all she had.
She grabbed her briefcase off of the passenger seat and made her way up the steps and into their home. She expected to find him lounging on the sofa with a glass of wine in his hand, complaining about this client or that partner the way he usually did whenever he beat her home, but he wasn’t in the living room at all.
“I’m home!” she yelled out, expecting him to at least acknowledge her presence. But there was no response.
She sat her briefcase on the foyer table and tossed her keys in the key dish. Then she made her way further into their home. “Dare? Where are you?”
It was only then, when she asked where he was, did she hear what was some kind of noise and movement coming from upstairs. She couldn’t tell what the noise was exactly, but she knew it was coming from their bedroom.
Their bedroom!
Her mind immediately flew to the gutter, and she focused on the last woman he had cheated with: the cute paralegal. He said it was over and she had been reassigned to work with a different law partner, but Charly didn’t know that to be a fact. That was only what he told her. But the idea that he would bring his whore to their home just seemed like too low a blow to Charly, even for a man like him.
She made her way up those stairs with a quickness. Her heart was pounding because she really didn’t want to have to deal with his nonsense. But she knew she had to. She had swept his lying and cheating under rugs too many times already. No more, she thought angrily.
She had been hoping for a drama-free weekend for a change. But the closer she got to that bedroom, and the louder that noise became, she knew peace and calm were out the window. She hurried to that room.
Their bedroom door wasn’t closed, as she expected it to be, and when she made it to the doorway, as if to catch his cheating butt in the act once and for all, she caught him alright. Darryl Johnson, her husband, was in their bedroom. But there was no woman in the room. Which shocked her.
He wasn’t even in bed. But he had a suitcase on top of the bed and was grabbing what looked like black plastic bags out of his dresser drawers and throwing them into that suitcase.
Although Charly was relieved that he hadn’t stooped as low as she thought he had, she was perplexed too. What in the world, she wondered. “What are you doing?” she asked him.
“We have to get out of here,” Darryl said quickly, without looking at his wife. He was a tall, handsome black man with a body to match his beauty. But he was in a super-hurry.
“What are you talking about?” she asked him.
“We have to get out of here,” he said again. “We have to leave now!”
“But why, Darryl?” Charly had a fixed frown on her face. “Why do we have to leave? What are you talking about?”
But he didn’t respond to any of her questions. His singular focus appeared to be getting those numerous plastic bags out of that dresser and into that suitcase.
“Dare, what’s wrong?” she asked.
“We’ve got to go!” he yelled. “Didn’t you hear me the first time, woman? We’ve got to get out of here!”
“But why? Tell me why?”
A sad look appeared in his eyes, and he stopped what he was doing for a second and actually looked at her. “I took some money,” he admitted with what sounded like regret in his voice. But then his movements sped right back up again, and he continued tossing bags into the case.
But Charly’s heart was pounding now. He took money? What did that mean? Did he mean he stole money? “What money?” she nervously asked him.
“This money!” he yelled as he opened one of those plastic bags.
Charly could see that it was filled to the brim with what looked like hundred-dollar bills. She could not believe her eyes. “Darryl!” she yelled. “Where on earth did you get all of that from?”
“I told you I took it,” he said angrily as he continued to throw more bags into his suitcase. “Don’t you ever listen to me ever?”
Charly wasn’t about to argue with his nasty behind. Not at a time like this! “But where did you get it from?” she asked him again.