Dear Wife(50)

A hooker, a thief and a fugitive walk into a church—except this is a joke without a punch line.

“Would you stop?” Martina hisses.

Ayana’s spine straightens, and she frowns over her shoulder. “Stop what? I’m not doing nothing.”

“The hell you’re not. Show some respect for this place. You’re not going to find any customers here.”

Ayana snorts. “Right. ’Cause church people ain’t freaks.”

Martina rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t argue, and neither do I. With the exception of the Reverend, the people I’ve met in this place might be freaks. As far as I can tell, he’s the only normal one here, the leader of the Land of Misfit Toys.

The hallway dead-ends into a spare but bright kitchen, and Martina starts doling out orders. “Every single inch in this place needs to be either dusted, wiped down or vacuumed. Give extra care to the things people touch most—the telephone, computer mouse, keyboard, drawer pulls—and don’t be stingy with the cleaning products. If one person gets the stomach flu, we all get the stomach flu.” She nudges Ayana into an open doorway. “You start in the kitchen.”

Ayana tries to strike a contrary, hands-on-hips pose, but the vacuum hose gets in the way. She settles for a scowl and a jutted hip. “What’re you gonna do?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but Beth and I are gonna start in the Reverend’s offices.”

“How come y’all get to work together and I have to do everything on my own?” Ayana says it in a way that makes me subtract a couple of years from the age I’d originally guessed. If this girl is legal, it’s barely.

“Stop bitching and get to work, will you?” Martina says. “Work your way down the hallway, and we’ll meet where we meet.”

We leave Ayana pouting in the hallway and backtrack to the Reverend’s offices at the opposite end, which is a mini complex unto itself. A private work space overlooking an English-inspired garden, a conference room with a projection screen and a table that seats fourteen, a living area with kitchenette and twin three-seater sofas arranged on either side of a low table. The flat-screen television on the wall is tuned to Fox News on mute, bronzed and powdered journalists lined up on a couch in bright ties and floral dresses, their lips moving without sound.

“I call dibs on the living room,” Martina says, plunking her bucket onto the coffee table.

“Really? You’re not even going to explain?”

“Explain what?” She leans down to pull a spray bottle from the bucket, and the gold discs swing on their chain around her neck. Bought with Ayana’s money, if I’m to believe it—and I just might. I try to make out the letters on the engraving, but the charms won’t stop dancing around.

“What’s up with you and Ayana, of course. You clearly hate each other. Why?”

Martina lurches upright, her eyes flashing with anger, with accusation. “I didn’t steal her money, okay? I didn’t know anything about it, and who tapes money to their toilet tank, anyway? Like, isn’t that the first place a thief would think to look? If anyone’s a thief here, it’s her. She just admitted to taking that other hooker’s money. You heard that part, right?”

I nod. “Right, but that’s not what—”

“And excuse me for trying to help a bitch.” She slings an arm through the air. “I mean, who wouldn’t feel sorry for a girl her age, out there all on her own? I met her when she was fourteen. I fed her, I found her a place to stay. I thought I was some kind of mentor to her, though silly, stupid me, all that time she was taking my money, and she was also taking money from all those men she was spreading her legs for. And never once did she say thanks.” She whirls around and douses a side table with cleaning solution. “Not that I needed a thank-you card, but it woulda been a hell of a lot better than accusing me of being a thief, because I’m not. I’m not a thief.”

I watch her wipe down the table with sharp, angry strokes and wonder what to say. The thing is, I’m pretty sure Martina is a thief. Ayana never said that the money was taped to the toilet tank. How else would Martina have known that little fact, unless she was the one who found it?

And what does this mean for our newly formed truce? Was I wrong to believe she wouldn’t steal my money, too?

A rapping on the door frame saves me from my thoughts, and the table from Martina’s overeager scrubbing.

The man standing in the doorway is a stranger, and yet I know exactly who he is. Same runner’s build as the Reverend, same hazel eyes that seem to be smiling even when he’s not, same clipped beard, though his is a rusty brown instead of white. He is dressed like his father, too, in jeans and a pressed shirt, but his clothes are more modern, more youthful, cut in a way that make me think they might be designer. He even has his father’s haircut, clipped closely on the sides with a longer hank on top, swept off his forehead with an identical cowlick.

“What do you want?” Martina says, emphasis on the you. She stands like a statue in the middle of the carpet, the spray bottle and rag hanging from a hand.

“Hi,” I say, smiling to soften her snub.

He takes it as an invitation, moving farther into the room, his cologne mixing with the other smells: bleach, lemon polish and spicy sandalwood. He extends a hand in my direction. “Erwin Jackson Andrews IV, otherwise known around this place as Erwin Four. The esteemed Reverend’s firstborn and only son and last living carrier of the family name. The pressure is enormous.”