Divine Intervention Read online

  “Oh, and she’s yours?” Tense seconds passed as the two men glared at each other. “She’ll never love you, dog,” Kelvin continued. “She can’t give you her heart. I’ve got that.” He turned to look at Princess … which is why he didn’t see the fist that connected with his jaw.

  Kelvin stumbled back, but quickly recovered. He pushed Rafael with enough force to send the slighter man stumbling into King, who’d moved from behind the podium with the thought to step between them. King had been a second too late, and was now on the bottom of a wrestling pile as Kelvin, who’d jumped on top of Rafael, who was still halfway on top of King, was now pummeling Rafael with his fists. Rafael was pummeling back. Words that shouldn’t be used in church were flying between them.

  “Stop! Both of you!” Princess cried, kneeling down into the fray. But it was as though she hadn’t spoken, almost like she wasn’t there. They kept swinging and swinging, each punch landing harder than the one before. King finally wrestled himself from beneath the two fighting men, but this move caused Princess to fall over.

  “She’s mine!” she heard Rafael cry before hearing the sound of knuckles hitting flesh.

  A similar sound preceded Kelvin’s response: “In your dreams, you punk-ass mutha—!”

  Pow! Another moment of fist and flesh connecting.

  Where are the ushers? Where’s security? Why doesn’t someone stop this fight? Princess tried to right herself, but her dress was twisted around her legs, effectively imprisoning them better than a mummy wrap ever could. She kicked and she kicked, but to no avail. She couldn’t get up and she felt that unless she did the man she was in love with and the one she was about to marry would kill each other. God, please help me. And as had always been the case, God came through. He helped her. How, you may be wondering? The answer is simple.

  Princess woke up.

  2

  Mr. Wrong

  “It was awful, Sarah, just awful.” Mere hours had passed since Princess Brook’s dream wedding had turned into a nightmare, one that had caused her to fight the sheets wrapped around her legs and break out in a sweat. She was now wide awake, sitting in the middle of the scene of the crime—otherwise known as her bed—and talking to Sarah Kirtz. She’d thought about calling her best friend, Joni, but considering how her heart still pounded, she figured she needed prayer more than camaraderie, hence the phone call to her prayer partner. “They just kept fighting and fighting, and I couldn’t stop them!”

  “Thank God what you experienced was a dream and not real life,” Sarah said, with a sigh for punctuation.

  “It might as well have been, as crazy as I feel right now.”

  “What do you think this means?”

  Princess heaved an audible sigh herself. “I don’t know.”

  “Are you having second thoughts?”

  Her answer was interrupted by a knock on the door. “Princess, you awake?”

  “Yes,” Princess answered loudly, before talking back into the phone. “Sarah, it’s my mom. Let’s pray later.”

  Tai Brook entered her daughter’s room, filled with a mama’s wit and a mother’s love. She’d been worried about Princess for months, a year actually … ever since Princess had said yes to Rafael’s proposal. Having lived more than half her life with the man of her dreams, yet experiencing some marital nightmares in the process, Tai felt she had viable cause for concern. “Getting your beauty sleep, I see,” she said upon entering.

  “No, I’ve been awake for a while.”

  Tai walked to where her daughter lounged in her canopied bed, the one they’d purchased together when Princess was thirteen years old. It never failed to warm Tai’s heart every time Princess returned to the bedroom that remained largely unchanged from how it had looked five years ago, when Princess left home for UCLA. Tai and King had discussed various uses for the unoccupied space: an exercise, theater or storage room, or an office for Tai. But these ideas somehow never went beyond the thinking phase. In everyone’s mind, this was still Princess’s room. But not for long, Tai thought as she sat down on the bed. Her baby was getting ready to take a pivotal step. She was getting ready to become someone’s wife, and this was the last night Princess would spend in this room as a single woman. A Stylistics classic song popped into her mind. Yes, she was a big girl now, and after looking into her daughter’s strained expression and tired eyes it appeared as if grown folks pleasure was equaling grown folks pain. “How are you doing, baby?”

  “Fine.”

  Tai gave Princess a look. “Girl, have you forgotten who you’re talking to? You’re two days away from taking the biggest step of your life. There’s no way you’re fine.”

  Princess laughed, hoping that the sound covered the pit of fear that had gripped her stomach ever since she’d had the dream. “You’re right, but I’m trying to stay calm and not freak out. I was just on the phone with Sarah, giving her the details about the rehearsal dinner and … everything.”

  And those details included something being awful, followed by an exasperated sounding “I don’t know.” Of course Tai didn’t voice these thoughts. It wouldn’t help for her daughter to know that she’d been standing at the door a few seconds before knocking, and had heard snippets of a conversation that confirmed the discomforting feelings concerning the upcoming marriage that she too had felt. “Did you feel better after talking to Sarah?”

  “I always feel good after talking to her.” An unlikely pair, the years older Princess had befriended Sarah Kirtz during Sarah’s first year of college at UCLA. Like King, Sarah’s father, Jack Kirtz, was also a well-known minister, and her stepmother, Millicent Sims Kirtz, who’d once been an integral part of her Uncle Derrick’s church, was now very active in her husband’s ministry. The two women had instantly related on what it meant to be a preacher’s daughter.

  Tai nodded her understanding, but decided it was time to get to the point of her visit. “Princess, I know we’ve talked about this but our last conversation about your upcoming nuptials left me feeling uncomfortable. I know you love Rafael. But I want to make sure you’re totally at peace with this decision to marry him.”

  “Dang, Mama. I wish I’d never even asked about you and Daddy.”

  “I know, but I’m glad you did. And I don’t mean to be a nagging mother or a broken record, but if you have any reservations, Princess, any doubts at all about your being able to stay in this marriage for the long term … then you’d be doing Rafael a disservice by saying ‘I do.’”

  “Don’t worry, Mama. I don’t want to back out.” She tried to lighten the mood. “And even if I did, it’s too late now. I’m not even trying to return five hundred gifts and refund people for money spent on plane tickets and hotel rooms!” Tai didn’t get the joke. “Really, Mama, you need to chill.”

  “And you need to listen. At the end of the day, the gifts, flowers, dress, guests … none of that matters as much as this vow you’re getting ready to take for the rest of your life. I know that nowadays divorce is as common as the cold, but I’ve tried to live my life as an example that marriage is an institution to be honored, and that those vows are not to be said or taken lightly.” Tai paused, remembering the words that her own mother had told a then nineteen-year-old, six-months pregnant Tai, who was getting ready to walk down the makeshift aisle in her grandmother’s flower-filled backyard. “It ain’t too late, baby,” her mother had whispered, filled with doubt as to whether her soon-to-be son-in-law, King Wesley Brook, could curb his whorish ways and be satisfied with and faithful to her daughter. But Tai—blinded by love and encouraged by the foot of her oldest son, Michael, kicking her in the side—had taken her father’s arm and walked into the holy matrimony that at times had been a holy mess.

  “I trust Rafael, Mama.”

  Rafael isn’t the one I’m worried about, is what Tai thought. “I know,” is what she said.

  Tai remembered not too long ago when Princess, then a freshman in college, had defied her parents to remain at her boyfriend’s side�
�and in his bed. Tai had seen herself in her daughter’s defiance, and in the unbridled love she’d seen in Princess’s eyes. And she’d recognized some of the same traits in Kelvin Petersen that had attracted Tai to King: charm, good looks, swagger, and endless testosterone. Princess was a lot like her mother, but she was also her father’s daughter. Tai worried that in time it might be Princess, not Rafael, who’d sleep outside the marriage bed. But Princess and Rafael had been counseled to within an inch of their lives, so even though she couldn’t shake the ominous feeling that had plagued her for days, she figured there was no more to be said.

  Standing, Tai turned and faced Princess. “Derrick and Viv are arriving in a little bit and I’m going to spend some sistah-girl time with her at their hotel. Do you need anything before I go?”

  “No,” Princess said, reaching for her ever-present iPad and scrolling the task bar. “My dress will be delivered in about an hour, and then Erin and I are meeting for lunch before I go to the airport to pick up Joni.”

  “Erin has been an absolute godsend.”

  Princess nodded. One of Kansas City’s premiere wedding coordinators, Erin Flynn had been written up in the Kansas City Star at the precise time Princess was searching for help in planning her big day. She’d been thankful to snag one of two remaining openings in Erin’s very full schedule. “She should be. We’re paying enough.”

  “Correction, darling. Your Daddy is paying enough.”

  “Ha! Okay, Mama. Point well taken.”

  And to his credit, Tai gratefully thought, he hasn’t complained a bit. “When is Sarah flying in?”

  “She gets in late tonight and will take the shuttle straight to the hotel.”

  “All right, baby.” Tai kissed Princess’s forehead. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  Princess stared at the door her mother exited and couldn’t stop the tears that welled up in her eyes. Her mind was telling her to marry Rafael, but her heart—and her dreams—were being invaded by another man. And no one besides the prayer partner whose number she now dialed would know that the woman getting ready to marry Mr. Right was thinking about Mr. Wrong.

  3

  Like a Good Neighbor …

  “How do, Maxie.” Henry Logan’s long, sure strides quickly ate up the distance between his yard and Maxine Brook’s driveway. “Here, let me get those groceries for you.”

  Mama Max chuckled at the name that only Henry called her. Besides her husband, Obadiah, who called her Maxine, everybody—including those who were older—called her Mama Max. “Now, Henry, don’t strain yourself. I might be old, but I think the Lord’s done left me a muscle or two.”

  “It’s no trouble,” Henry replied, easily hoisting the two grocery-filled sacks into his arms and following Maxine through the garage and into the kitchen. “Besides, you might think you’re getting older, but I say you’re getting better.”

  “Ha! Man, you’d better get on way from here with that foolishness.” Maxine’s face was fixed with a frown, but her dark brown, still-bright eyes twinkled. Truth of the matter was, she’d come to appreciate Henry’s company since her longtime neighbor’s son had moved back home to care for his mother. Just after he’d arrived, Beatrice Logan had had a stroke and Henry was forced to put her into an assisted-care facility. Maxine appreciated that he hadn’t wanted to be more than a phone call and a ten-minute ride from the woman who’d raised him single-handedly after her husband died. He said he was keeping the place ready for his mama’s return but neither one of them really thought that eighty-five-year-old Beatrice would ever come back to the block. There was somebody else who Maxine thought would never again live on the block or, more specifically, in her house, which again made her all the more thankful for this kind man’s company. Henry was a man, but harmless, with Maxine having known his mama nigh unto thirty years, and him being so much younger than her. Maxine wasn’t sure how old he was, but she had a pretty good idea that she’d beat him into glory.

  “What do you think about this unseasonably warm June weather?” Henry asked, removing groceries and setting them on the table as if it were the most natural thing for him to do. It was. He’d been Beatrice’s only child and not only had she been an overprotective disciplinarian, but she’d also taught him everything that the daughter-she-never-had would have needed to know. Henry could cook, clean, wash, and iron. And what Beatrice hadn’t taught him, the army had.

  “This Kansas weather can’t be any crazier than last year,” Maxine replied as she placed flour, sugar, and other baking goods into the pantry. “Over a hundred degrees one day, and under fifty the next? Whoever heard of such? I think those old folk were on to something. Weather ain’t been quite the same since we started sending men to the moon.”

  Henry smiled but said nothing.

  “Beatrice would agree with me, son. In fact, if she was here she’d tell you that if God wanted us all up in the air, he would have given us wings.”

  “Ha! She would indeed. But I don’t think it has anything to do with our space travel.” Having handed Maxine the two-liter bottle of cola, Henry leaned against the doorjamb. “I think it’s all about global warming.”

  “Well, God said no more water but fire next time. I thought he was talking about a few fields, or cities, though. Not frying up the whole earth!”

  Knowing it would be pointless to go into a diatribe about climate systems, greenhouse gases, and fossil fuels, information gleaned from his addiction to the Discovery Channel, Henry looked at his watch instead. “I’ve got a couple more yards to cut before the sun goes down, so I’d best be getting a move on. I’ll get to yours tomorrow, Maxie.”

  “I sure appreciate it. You plan on seeing your mama tomorrow?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, give her a how-do for me. And tell her that I’ll see her on Monday. My grandbaby is getting married on Saturday, so it’s going to be real busy these next couple days.”

  “I remember your telling me that. Princess, correct?”

  Maxine nodded.

  “Well, Maxie, I wish her every happiness. Marriage isn’t easy but a good one is worth the sacrifice.”

  Maxine didn’t dare touch that sentence with a ten-foot pole. “Thanks for helping with the groceries,” she said by way of dismissal. “And don’t forget to drink a bunch of water while you’re cutting those yards. They was talking on the news about keeping hydraulic.”

  “Uh, you mean hydrated, Maxie?” Henry countered, hiding a smile.

  “That too. Whatever word keeps you from passing out and crushing my lilac bush.”

  “I’ll be sure to put a gallon jug on the back of my lawn mower.” With a wave of his hand, Henry was gone.

  Maxine hummed a verse as she decided on whether to bake a lemon, red velvet, or buttermilk cake. “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and grieves to bear. What a privilege to carry, everything to God in prayer.” “I haven’t made a buttermilk cake in a while,” she muttered to herself, opening the fridge to reassure herself she had all the right ingredients. But then Obadiah loves my red velvet. “Who gives a good hallelujah what that rascal likes?” she asked aloud, reaching for the lemons and the buttermilk and pointedly ignoring the semisweet chocolate. Thinking of her soon-to-be ex-husband almost took away the joy of cooking. Obadiah Brook had lost his mind and spurned his marriage almost a year ago, and that she was thinking about the cakes he favored made Mama Max want to slap her own face.

  “ ‘Jesus, keep me near the cross,’ ” Maxine sang loudly, chasing unwanted thoughts away with every word, “ ‘there a precious fountain, free to all a healing stream, flows from Calvary’s mountain. ’”

  The phone rang.

  Maxine heard it but she sang on, even louder than before. “ ‘Near the cross, near the cross. Be my Glory ever.’ ”

  The phone rang again.

  “ ‘Till my raptured soul shall find … rest beyond the river.’ Hello?”

  “Hey, Mama,” King Brook said. “Sounds like I interrupted you
r church service!”

  “Hello, son. Just praising the Lord is all.”

  “He’s worthy.”

  “That He is.”

  A brief pause and then, “Mama, I was just wondering if you’d heard from Daddy.”

  And with one sentence, the rest her raptured soul had found flew straight out the window, replaced by indignation. “Why would I be hearing from that man?”

  Because “that man”—as trifling as he is—is still your husband. She heard King sigh into the phone. “I’m not trying to start nothing, Mama. I just called his house and his cell. When I didn’t get an answer, I tried to reach Tai and got her voice mail, too. He’s supposed to get in sometime today. I just thought that maybe you’d heard from him.”

  “Hmph. Ain’t a reason on this earth that that rascal would be calling me.”

  “Really? You have no plans to speak to Daddy this weekend? During this special time when your first grandchild is getting married… this is how it’s going down? Listen, Mama, I don’t want to take sides here—”

  “Only one side to take and that’s the Lord’s—”

  “And I know you’re still upset—”

  “And with your father trampling all over his marriage vows, I shouldn’t be the only one—”

  “But for Princess’s sake, do you think that we can be civil for just a few hours, maybe even all of Saturday? If we can just get through the ceremony and the reception, then you and Daddy can go on”—acting like old fools—“not talking to each other.”

  This wasn’t a new plea to Maxine’s ears. Tai had spouted a similar one for the last two months. She’d promised her daughter-in-law not to cuss him out on the church grounds (Maxine was a Christian after all) but that was as far as her word could travel. “If he comes to the house,” she’d finished, “then he just might get real acquainted with my cast iron skillet. Real acquainted.”

  “I guess we don’t need y’all side by side at the rehearsal dinner, but it would be nice if you could sit together on Saturday. Do you think that could happen?”

  Maxine almost smiled. King Brook was a grown man, almost fifty years old, but in this moment he sounded like he did when he was fourteen and wanted to go to the high school dance where the devil’s music was being played. “Even though you’re asking me to take the chance on lightning striking me, son, you know how much I love Princess. Come Saturday, I’ll behave.”