Guilty of Love Read Free

You gave me free will, and I used it!” she boasted, then
recalled reading about other women’s grief on an internet site
where some said they regretted their decisions even after ten or
twenty years.
    Remaining in North Carolina would only
serve to remind her of what went wrong in her life. But for the
past five years, she had been too ashamed to go home and tell her
family the good, bad, and the extremely ugly decisions she had
made. So she did what she thought was best—shut them
out.
    Then something happened. As she sped
past a little storefront church, an overwhelming sensation came
over her that God was peeping out from the building watching her,
then plucked her out of the car and thrust her into a tarnished
Garden of Eden. Like Adam and Eve, God was letting Cheney know she
couldn’t cover the shame of her nakedness. She audibly heard a
scripture whispered into her ear, but to this day, Cheney refused
to read Revelation three, seventeen and eighteen. Besides, she
didn’t own a Bible. After that, she packed up and moved back to St.
Louis.
     

Chapter Two
     
     
    “ Well?” Imani Segall,
Cheney’s best friend since childhood, asked from her hotel room in
Amsterdam.
    “ Well what?”
    “ Did going back home bring
you the peace you expected?” Imani paused then continued without
giving Cheney time to answer. “You know, I’m probably one of the
biggest hypocrites God created, but when things aren’t going my
way, I’m the first one to ride on someone else’s coattails to get a
prayer through. It can’t hurt, girl.”
    “ It won’t help either.” As
far as Cheney was concerned, God didn’t appear on the scene until
after the baby was gone. She despised Him because of the
nightmares. What could she and God possibly have to talk about?
Absolutely nothing!
    Imani sighed. “Okay, okay. Bore me
with the details about your new place.”
    “ Technically, it’s still a
shack, but it’s coming along. I love fixing up this place. It’s
good therapy.” She eyed the kitchen’s worn tile floor. For two
months, she had labored on her house after work, sanding and
staining hardwood floors, wallpapering rooms, and stripping pink
paint from her brick fireplace. Ugh!
    Cheney’s pride and joy were the two
front bedrooms. Although she believed in using proper speech, she
would get downright ghetto and curse out the devil himself if he
tried to stop her from putting children in those rooms one day. A
husband wasn’t required. The six-windowed sun porch above the
garage would make an excellent playroom. She could imagine pastel
balloon curtains filtering in the morning sun.
    “ I can’t wait for your
housewarming to see it. So, how’s the neighborhood? Is it quiet?
Are there any kids or…” Imani paused, “handsome bachelors
nearby?”
    “ I’ve got drama living next
door by the name of Mrs. Beacon. We haven’t formally met and that’s
okay with me. From a distance, I can tell she could be
dangerous.”
    “ In what way?”
    “ From the rumors I’ve
heard, every way. Beatrice Tilly Beacon is an annoying seventy- or
eighty-something widow, known for monitoring the comings and goings
of her neighbors.” Cheney groaned.
    “ Lucky you.”
    “ Yeah. Residents call her
‘the neighborhood watch unit’, but no one will ‘fess up to
appointing her, and the police show up every time she calls. She
has a rep of taking matters into her own hands. The cops are afraid
that she’ll eventually hurt someone.”
    “ She sounds
scary.”
    “ That’s what I heard. I
figure Mrs. Beacon is a menace.” Cheney glanced out the pillow-size
window above her kitchen sink, and did a doubt take. Sure enough,
Mrs. Beacon was trying to peep through her window with a magnifying
glass. What in the world? Cheney frowned.
    Imani’s hearty laugh echoed through
the phone and drew Cheney back into their conversation. “Well, if
it isn’t drama in your life, it’s comedy.”
    “ I can do without overkill
from both.”
    “ You