Someone to Watch Over Me Read online

  Also by Michelle Stimpson

  Last Temptation

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  Someone to Watch Over Me

  MICHELLE STIMPSON

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  Redeeming Waters

  Copyright Page

  For my hubby.

  Thanks for guiding and holding the kite string.

  You make me fly high!

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, Father, for book number seven. Years ago, I told You I wanted everything I do to have meaning. You have been faithful to my prayer, faithful to arrange my whole life around our relationship, around Your love for me. I look back over what You have done in my life these past two decades and I can on weep in awe of You. Isaiah 55:8, Romans 8:28, and Ephesians 3:20—for real, Father, for real!

  Thank you to my family. Mom (Wilma Jean Music), Dad (Michael West Music)—they INSIST that their full names be listed. To aunties, uncles, cousins, and Grandma. Keep the legacy going! When I step back and look at God’s faithfulness to our family, I know this is nothing but God.

  Steven and Kalen—you’ve grown up with Mommy’s writing. Now the writing has rubbed off—well, kinda. I love seeing this heart for the things of God taking form in you both.You two make me better.

  For my longtime friends who encourage me regularly—Kim, Shannon, Jeanne—thanks for the love! To my critique group (i.e., friends, too) who gave me their thoughts on the first few chapters—thanks for your expert eyes—Janice, Lynne, Kellie, Jane, Patricia. Looking forward to many more published manuscripts between us!

  Thanks to the people of Mabank ISD who gave me lots of small-town, countrified information; to my sister-in-law, Rebecca, and my mother (again) for medical expertise. Thanks Shewanda and Lynne for helping me through the outline. Shaundale, for sharing your insight about family courts and your child advocate experiences (and just being a great homegirl anyway—miss you much). To my FB friends who share their experience when I’m too lazy to look stuff up, and who cheer me along the way.

  Thanks to all the book clubs who continue to discuss/argue/ debate my previous works. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I hope this one will give you much to discuss as well!

  Thanks to my agent, Sara Camilli, Selena James, and the good folks at Kensington Publishing.Thanks for believing in me enough to contract these books during such a turbulent time for many. I appreciate the opportunity to write on through!

  Thanks to my Anointed Authors on Tour sisters—Vanessa Miller, Kendra Norman-Bellamy, Norma Jarrett, Dr. Vivi Monroe Congress, Tia McCollors, and Shewanda Riley. I am inspired by your daily word counts.

  Out of respect for my father, who always made me acutely aware of the fact that air-conditioning is not free, I suppose I should thank all those free Wi-Fi restaurants for letting me use their air-conditioning, Internet connection, and electricity while writing the majority of this book.

  God Bless!

  Michelle Stimpson

  Prologue

  1996

  “Well, she can’t stay here. Not while I’m running for city council,” my stepfather, Mr. James, whispered to my mother as though I weren’t in the same room. They paced back and forth, his Stacy Adams hitting the ground heel first, toe timbering down seconds later. Mother’s pumps shuffled right behind him, like a duckling following a quack.

  I sat on the couch, my hands under my chin, wringing my fingers so hard I expected to see blood flowing down my arms. I thought, at that moment, about what the people at church say—that Jesus had prayed so hard that He sweated blood. They also said that Jesus had been through everything I’d been through and paid the price on the cross.

  I wondered what Jesus would have done if He were fifteen and pregnant. Fat chance, because in the first place, Jesus wouldn’t have given Bootsie Evans His phone number. Secondly, He wouldn’t have listened to Dee-Dee Willis, who confirmed that Bootsie couldn’t get anybody pregnant because he hurt himself real bad on a ten-speed bike when they were in the fifth grade. And last but not least, He would never have invited Bootsie over to watch the American Music Awards while God was gone to a $200-a-plate fund-raiser. No, I was nothing like Jesus—and Jesus probably didn’t understand me seeing as He’d never sinned.

  “I guess we could just send her to my aunt Dottie’s house,” Mr. James considered out loud, tracing his lips with a stiff forefinger.

  “James, we’re not in the sixties. We don’t have to send her away.”

  He puffed up. “Maybe if people treated pregnant girls like we did in the sixties, more girls would keep their legs closed. We’re sending her. There won’t be anybody in that little town for her to scr—”

  “Ja-aames!” My mother gave his name two syllables, shot her eyes toward me and then back to my stepfather.

  “She already knows all about sex now,” he said, almost laughing. “No use in trying to protect her anymore. For God’s sake, she’s pregnant, Margie.”

  Couldn’t they have this conversation without me, like they did everything else? Just go somewhere and deliberate and call me back for sentencing. I was already guilty. I sighed a little too loudly, and my stepfather did a James Brown over to the couch. “You tired of this? Are we borrrring you?” He pushed hot words down onto my face.

  “I’m just . . . tired, Mr. James,” I said truthfully as I looked away. In that split second, he could have hugged me. Broken down and cried with me, but he didn’t. Instead, he asked, “Did you even think about what this could do to my political career? How can I be elected to run a city when you’ve got people thinking I can’t even run my own house?”

  “James, just leave her alone for now. She’s tired.” I could see my mother’s light brown fingers, perfect cylinders, and the shiny red extensions as she pulled him away from me.

  Mr. James jerked his arm away and went to their bedroom, leaving my mother and myself to sort things out. “Well, Tori Danielle Henderson”—my punishment name—“you’ve really done it this time.”

  It’s a funny thing when the bottom drops out, when you’ve done something horrible and irreversible, something that draws a before-and-after line in your life. No matter how much people try to express their disappointment, nothing can compare to the fact that you let yourself down. After all, it is your own life that you just ruined.

  “I’m sorry,” was all I could muster up.

  She gave a single laugh. “Sorry. Is that all you can say?”

  What else could I say? Despite the nonchalant attitude, I was scared to de
ath. And ashamed. Not so much for my parents, but for myself. They had their own agenda, which I was sure included a run for the presidency of the United States of America at some point.

  Over the lonesome only-child years, I had come to understand my place in the family. To be seen and not heard. And while I played along with their game, I read voraciously and learned the ways of the world. I found out what made people tick, how jealousy and hate and love and passion and insecurity drove people to do things that they wouldn’t normally do. It was fascinating, this world of fiction.

  That’s how I figured out what was going on with my father and our next-door neighbor’s wife. The late days at work, the calling and hanging up, the expensive gifts that followed my parents’ weeks of counseling. All of that preceding our abrupt move to our new house.

  That was their life—politics, scandal, and pretense.

  I had wanted better for myself. True love, just like in the romance books, and a family where people came closer in crises rather than falling apart. I wanted to go to college and do something with my life—maybe become a teacher or a doctor. Instead, I’d gone and made myself another statistic: an unwed black teenage mother. How stupid could I be?

  I was beginning to feel even more dim-witted for telling my parents about the pregnancy so soon. I should have just waited like Felecia Moore did—wore baggy clothes, wrapped up pads every month and put them in the trash can, and had my momma take me all the way to the emergency room while I complained of severe cramps right up until the very second I pushed the baby out. I heard that Felecia’s momma fainted when the nurse came to the waiting room and announced, “It’s a boy” instead of, “It’s a virus.”

  There must have been a hundred other girls who’d done it and hadn’t gotten pregnant. Why me? I buried my face in my hands, almost wishing I could bury my whole body with this baby inside me, too. Maybe I could just die in my sleep tonight. Then Mr. James could win the election on the sympathy vote and my mother could establish another social coffee group, this one for mothers whose daughters contracted fatal cases of shame.

  Momma stood in front of me, warring with her thoughts. She almost came and sat down. I saw it in the way her left foot tapped ever so slightly and I heard it as she whispered my name. But when my stepfather angrily called her to their bedroom, she latched on to his fury and said, “You weren’t crying then, so don’t start crying now.”

  I stayed at home until I started to show, around five months. At five foot four and barely a hundred pounds prior to conceiving, my body camouflaged the extra weight well. So far as the people in the community knew, I was simply “filling out.” I sang in the choir every Sunday at church, which meant that I had the luxury of putting on a choir robe and blending in right up until the service dismissed, at which point Momma whisked me out the back doors of the church. At school, I had always been the quiet type. Since we’d only lived in Houston for the minimum number of years Mr. James had to be a resident before running for city council, I didn’t have any close friends. Nobody believed Bootsie when he said that he “did it” with me—except my unlicensed unplanned parenthood counselor, Dee Dee, who lied so much that when she tried to go back and tell that I’d sought her advice, nobody believed her either. It helped that I was in a big school where girls popped up pregnant and dropped on and off roll sheets so often, it wasn’t a big deal socially.

  Everybody had their suspicions, but under penalty of Mr. James, I never confirmed them. Not even to Bootsie. I didn’t talk about it at school, at home, at church—I didn’t even talk about it to myself when I sat on the toilet. When the baby got big enough where I could feel his kick, I could only blink my eyes.

  Right about then they decided it was time for me to go live with Aunt Dottie for the duration of my pregnancy.

  Chapter 1

  Today

  Icrossed my fingers in hopes of being named Top Quarterly Producer for my department. I mean, every single one of my clients had experienced Web site traffic and sales above the projected estimates, and I had even received two letters from pleased customers. “Tori’s expertise made all the difference in our product launch,” one had commented. “We’ll be using NetMarketing Results for a long time to come!” Planning and implementing online advertising and marketing campaigns came with its own sense of fulfillment. After all, depending on who you asked, the Web pushes America’s economy even more than a good old-fashioned mall.

  But even as we stood around the conference room waiting for the announcement, I felt queasy. What if they didn’t name me? One look around the room sparked another dose of apprehension.

  Lexa Fielder was recently hired, yet she’d already managed to land a pretty impressive list of new customers for the company, though it was rumored she did quite a bit of work on her back.

  Brian Wallace was one of the older marketing representatives, but he still had a few tricks up his sleeve. Every once in a while, he pulled off a last-minute record-breaking month for one of his clients and caught management’s eyes.

  There were only four eyes I wanted to catch, and all of them belonged to Preston Haverty. Okay, he really only had two eyes, but he did wear a set of insistently thick glasses that took on a life of their own at the center of his slight facial features. Every time I saw him, I felt like I was in a scene from The Emperor’s New Clothes. Like, why won’t somebody tell Preston those glasses are ridiculous, that we do have technology to free us from such spectacles? Probably the same reason no one talks to Donald Trump about that comb-over.

  Anyway, Preston was good people, glasses and all. I appreciated his “hands off ” management style. He didn’t really care where or how we worked, so long as we got the job done. I only hoped that I’d done a good enough job to add to my collection of blue and green plaques given to outstanding employees. Lexa and Brian aside, I appreciated being appreciated. And God knows I’d put in enough woman-hours to earn this recognition.

  “And the top producer for this quarter is . . .”—Preston announced as everyone in the room beat a drum roll on either the sixteen-foot table or some spot on the surrounding walls that wasn’t covered with a motivational poster—“Tori Henderson!”

  My cheekbones rose so high I could barely see in front of me. Is this what it’s like to be Miss America? Everybody applauding, confetti flying, the runners-up on the sideline clapping wildly to distract themselves from their jealousy and impending mental meltdowns following the show?

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t that serious, but I sure felt like a pageant queen. My fellow coworkers, probably twenty-five people or so, cheered me on as I walked toward the head of the table to receive my plaque. “Good job, Tori!” “You go, girl!” Their affirmations swelled inside me, feeding my self-esteem. If only my mother could see me now. Maybe then she’d forget about 1996.

  I shook Mr. Haverty’s hand and posed for the obligatory picture. In that moment, I wished I’d worn a lighter colored suit. Black always made me look like a beanpole. Gave no testament to all my hours at the gym and the doughnuts I’d turned down to keep the red line on my scale below one hundred and twenty-five.

  I wasn’t going to pass on the sweets today, though. Jacquelyn, the lead secretary, retrieved a towering pink and white buttercream frosting cake from somewhere and brought it forward now to celebrate my achievement.

  Preston offered, “Tori, you get the first piece.”

  “Get some meat on those bones, girl,” from Clara, the Webmaster.

  But the mention of meat and the sight of the cake suddenly made me nauseous. To appease the group, I took the first piece. Then Jacquelyn got busy cutting and distributing pieces as everyone stood around milking the moment before having to return to work.

  I sat in one of the comfy leather chairs and took a bite of my celebratory sweetness. Almost instantly, my stomach disagreed with my actions. My hand flew to my abdomen, lightly stroking the panel of my suit. People were so busy devouring the cake they didn’t notice me catching my breath. Whew!


  I pushed the plate away from me, as though the pink mass possessed the power to jump onto my fork and into my mouth. This was clearly not the cake for me. I thought for a moment about how long it had been since I ate something so densely packed with sugar. Maybe this was like red meat—once you stop consuming it, one backslidden bite tears you up inside.

  No, that’s not it. I’d eaten a candy bar the previous week, before my monthly visitor arrived. Renegade cramps? I rubbed my palm against the aggravated area again. No. The pain was too high in my torso for female problems. This had to be some kind of bug. Whatever it was, it didn’t like strawberry cake, so I quietly tossed my piece in the trash on the way back to my desk.

  An hour later, I felt like I could throw up so I sat perfectly still at my desk because . . . well . . . any movement of my torso sparked a pain in my side that might trigger this upchuck. I just didn’t feel like I wanted to go through the process of throwing up. I would never tell anyone this, but I find vomiting an altogether traumatic experience. Such a nasty feeling in one’s throat. And the aftertaste, and the gagging sounds. Not to mention getting a close-up look at the toilet seat. It’s just not humanlike and should be avoided at all costs, in my opinion.

  Thank God I made it all the way to my apartment before I finally had to look at the inside of a porcelain throne, only this time I hadn’t even eaten anything. Bile spewed out of me, splattering in the toilet water. The pain in my side shot up to 7 on a scale of 1 to 10.

  Now that I’d done the unthinkable and temporarily lost all self-respect, perhaps my body would relent. I could only hope the worst of whatever this was had passed (albeit out of the wrong end).

  I managed to thoroughly brush my teeth and gargle a great number of times, assuring myself it was safe to swallow my own spit again. The image staring back at me in the mirror was normally me after a good workout—kinky twists dampened slightly at the base by my sweat, light brown face glowing in the accomplishment of burning hundreds of calories. Today, however, my sagging eyelids told the story of a woman who’d . . . vomited. I tried smiling, elevating my cheekbones even higher. No use. Maybe my mother was right when she’d told me, “You’re not that pretty, Tori, but you can keep yourself skinny and, when you turn fifteen, I’ll let you wear makeup. Fourteen if you’re really ugly by then.”