God Don't Make No Mistakes by Mary Monroe

Author:Mary Monroe [Monroe, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Kensington Publishing Corp.
Published: 2012-04-18T14:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 34

THE NEXT MORNING, I CALLED RHODA’S HOUSE SEVERAL TIMES every fifteen or twenty minutes. Each time the call went directly to voice mail. When I had not been able to reach her by Monday morning, I drove to her house on my lunch hour, after I’d gulped down half of a Big Mac.

When I arrived, Rhoda seemed surprised but happy to see me.

“I haven’t been takin’ any calls,” she began as she waved me to the wing chair on the side of her living room couch. There were pillows and a blanket on the couch where I assumed she had been sleeping. There was also an empty wine bottle and a wineglass on the coffee table. “Uh, Otis doesn’t know everything. He just thinks that Jade got on a rant and moved out on her own. That’s all he needs to know.”

“I won’t tell him anything,” I promised.

“He’d been after her to get her own place for a long time now anyway. He didn’t want her to get married last year and have us support her and a husband. Then she ups and marries Vernie, and we ended up supportin’ her and a husband any damn way! Well, at least until Otis gave Vernie a job at the mill. But Otis feels—and I agree with him—that it’s high time for Jade to be on her own. I had already removed her name from our credit card accounts. But did I tell you that her daddy took her name off our bank accounts too? She was our primary beneficiary.”

“No, you didn’t tell me about that. That was a smart thing to do.” Smart was an understatement. As far as I was concerned, Jade was the last person in the world who deserved to be on any account as a primary beneficiary.

I gave Rhoda a pitiful look. She looked so sad and weak. I could certainly understand her being sad. But one thing that I could say about Rhoda was that I had never known her to be as weak as she appeared to be now. She had faced a lot even before she had to deal with breast cancer and a stroke. She’d been present when an out-of-control cop shot and killed her beloved brother when she was still a child. Her second-born child had died in her arms, and she’d given birth to a demonic child like Jade. Her list of unpleasant things was just as long as mine, if not longer. I was once weak, but I’d grown stronger over the years. But Rhoda had rarely shown any signs of weakness.

Until now.

“Don’t keep givin’ me those pitiful looks, Annette. I don’t want any pity,” Rhoda advised. “As much as you and I have been through over the years, you should know me well enough by now to know I don’t like people feelin’ sorry for me.”

“Rhoda, I don’t pity you any more than you pity me. I am just concerned. I know you are hurting. And for the record, so am I.

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