Vibe(excerpt)

Love and loss put a widow and an attorney on a collision course. #RandomFicThursdays

Hello to the new eyeballs, and welcome back to the older ones. 🤓

For this installment of #RandomFicThursdays , I’m posting an excerpt from a novel about two people of Haitian 🇭🇹 extraction who find their lives entwined by love, loss, and vengeance. Vodoun (voodoo) and the loa are featured in this novel.

As always, this and anything else I write is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidences are the products of my imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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VIBE (excerpt)

Tiffany M. Davis

© 2017 Tiffany M. Davis

PROLOGUE

Pascale Malveaux Toussaint stood in front of a large bay window in her home in Jessup, Maryland, looking out across the vast acreage that was behind her home. As usual, when the night fell, her thoughts turned to her late husband, Jacques Toussaint. His untimely death during Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier’s regime in Haiti had left an indelible scar on her soul, one that kept the rage from purging itself from her body.

If only. That simple phrase had become an unrelenting chant throughout every waking moment. If only the Immigration and Naturalization Service—now called the Immigration and Customs Enforcement—of the United States had granted both of them political asylum. If only she had stayed behind, with him, instead of emigrating to the US when she was granted asylum. If only he had not stopped to make sure that all of the people of his village had evacuated. If only his village had not housed a traitor, one who had been responsible for Duvalier’s barbarians to come raging through in the still hours of the early morning, raping, pillaging, and indiscriminately killing men, women and children. A village that had taken over one hundred years to grow and flourish was wiped off the face of the earth in a matter of minutes.

“Soon, my love,” Pascale murmured, her face upturned to the stars. She hoped that her husband could see her and would place his blessings upon the plan she had hatched, like a mother hen over a precious egg, ever since his death. A plan that would allow her revenge on those who had wronged her husband and cut short their life together. Pascale made a mental note to place extra offerings at the altar to Ogun, god of battle and to Shango, the god of war, thunder, lightning, and justice.

She turned away from the window and walked into an adjoining room that housed her office. It contained standard office accoutrements such as a desk; chair; computer; printer; and bookshelves filled with books. It also contained, in a small alcove she had specially built, a large altar to her spirits. When she had been initiated as a vodun priestess in Haiti she had been dedicated to Erzulie, the spirit of love. Thus the altar was covered with a white cloth upon which were pink decorations and pretty perfume bottles. A large picture of her and Jacques on their wedding day sat with reverence in the middle. A bowl of spirit water stood in front of the picture. The altar was also decorated with various stones, shells, and five beautifully glazed ceramic bowls. In each bowl held her offerings to the gods: Erzulie always received rice, sweet cakes and perfume. For her current purposes, Shango received apples and bananas, and Ogun received Barbancourt rum and a cigar. White candles burned continuously on the altar, although she had recently added red ones for Shango and green and black ones for Ogun.

Pascale walked over to the altar and knelt. She burned a sweet-smelling stick of incense and inhaled its heady scent as she began to pray out loud in her childhood Creole tongue. First, she asked Papa Legba, god of the crossroads, to open the gate to the spirit world. Then she called upon Erzulie for love and guidance; Shango for quickness and blinding, scorching action; and Ogun for strength, cunning, and precise execution of her plans. As her prayers drew to a close, she said a special prayer for Jacques, that the spirits would watch over him and that they would be reunited in the spirit world.

Soon.

JONATHAN

Jonathan Breaux finished unpacking a box in his bedroom and stood unsteadily. He kneaded his lower back as he surveyed the contents of his bedroom in his new home in Ellicott City, Maryland. The room was much bigger than the one in his old co-op in New York. His king-sized bed was positioned along the far wall, with the armoire directly opposite it. The bay windows allowed plenty of sunlight that picked up the blond highlights in the light oak chest-of-drawers. That’ll help me to get up in the morning, he thought wryly. Jonathan’s ability to sleep soundly was a family joke. He had historically purchased the loudest and most cacophonous alarm clocks he could find in order to get to class and to work on time.

Lisa used to wake me in the mornings. A wave of grief washed over him. His eyes unconsciously went to his nightstand, which now only contained his newest alarm clock and a small lamp. He fought the urge to go into his closet and dig out the 8” x 10” color photograph of Lisa that usually graced his nightstand. He used to like seeing her face the first thing when he woke up and the last thing before he went to sleep. He had finally gotten to the point where he was able to take down Lisa’s pictures and put them away in a box for safekeeping. Even without the pictures, he still saw her face. Saw her smiling widely at him, dimples gleaming. Saw her short hairdo perfectly accentuating her round face and big, brown eyes. Lisa.

Jonathan looked blankly around the room with a tightness in his chest. He had done his share of grieving but looking around, it was difficult to think that Lisa Knowles would not be walking through the door, teasing him about his orderly habits. It was hard to believe that it had been four years since she died.

It wasn’t a coincidence that his rise in the legal profession had occurred during those four years, as work had been the only thing that kept him from going insane with misery. Even now, guilt-tinged sadness weighed heavily on his soul as he recalled the argument that had compelled Lisa to leave his house at two o’clock in the morning.

“Baby, why are you leaving now? It’s 2 a.m.!” Jonathan looked on in sleepy confusion as Lisa paraded around the room, naked, looking for her clothes.

“I have to finish the pre-trial arguments on this case, Jon. We’ve already been through this.”

“Yeah, but it can’t wait until the sun is up? You shouldn’t be on the road so late. It’s not safe.”

Lisa rolled her eyes as she pulled on sweatpants and socks. Her skin gleamed in the moonlight that streamed through the window. She sat at the foot of the bed and tied her sneakers. “Jonathan, I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” She stood and walked to the dresser, where she clipped on her watch and earrings. “I don’t need you lecturing me as if I were a child.”

The steel tone in her voice said that the conversation was closed, but Jonathan wasn’t having it. Wide awake now, he tried to rein in his temper as he replied in an even tone. “I’m not lecturing you, Lisa. I’m just concerned for your welfare.” He ran his fingers through his closely cropped curly hair. “I don’t think that gallivanting off in the middle of the night is a good idea. Now why don’t you come back to bed, and you can work on the case in the morning after we’ve had a nice breakfast.”

Lisa jerked on a sweatshirt as she strode into the bathroom. Jonathan sat up in bed, hearing the sounds of Lisa brushing her teeth. When the water stopped running, she emerged from the bathroom. She glanced at the floor while pulling a comb through her hair before looking Jonathan in the eye. “Jonathan,” she sighed deeply, “I’m getting tired of you always trying to run things your way. I am an attorney, just like you, and a damn good one. I take my job seriously, as do you. We have discussed this many times and I, for one, am getting tired of it. When will you get it through your head? I had a father, and he’s dead. I don’t need another one. So stop smothering me!”

She grabbed her keys and purse and sped down the stairs with Jonathan in hot pursuit. He had tried to talk her out of leaving, to get her to stay and explain her last outburst, but Lisa ignored him and jumped into her car. Jonathan could only look on helplessly as her tail lights faded into the night.

Minutes later she was wrapped around the railing of a nearby interstate, the victim of a drunk driver. Lisa had to be cut out of her car while the other driver only escaped with cuts and bruises. There was some justice, as the driver had been tried and convicted. His previous arrests for DUIs had opened the door for him to receive the maximum sentence allowed. For Jonathan, it hadn’t been enough. It still didn’t bring Lisa back.

Jonathan shut his eyes tightly against the onslaught of memories. A tear rolled unbidden down his cheek. He took a slow, shaky breath before wiping the tear away and turning his attention back to unpacking. Boxes were strewn across the thickly carpeted floor. It would take him a while to unpack everything, but the least he could do was to find his towels and bedsheets.

A queue of voices drifted into the room and made him smile. He could make out two of the voices arguing, as usual. Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Jonathan didn’t need to figure out to whom they belonged.

*****