Fake Me To Church

Chapter 18.2 - The Widow's Might

- AHMED -

"The night after Charity watched Ernest kiss Kristie, she came home to our room in tears and told me everything. I was livid; I stayed in that night to make sure she was okay, but I found Ernest the next day and demanded an explanation. Having been almost drunk out of his mind, he could barely remember kissing anyone, but I wouldn't let him forget what he'd done to Charity—what Marcus had made him do.

"It had never been my intention, but Ernest found her later that day and apologized; and wouldn't you know it, she forgave him. I tried telling her that men like Ernest couldn't be trusted. Marcus may have tricked him into kissing Kristie, but it was his choice to drink—to become so intoxicated because he felt safe around his 'friends' that he thought they'd never make him do something he'd regret. Though I suppose something good did come out of it; he finally disavowed Marcus and the rest of his pathetic posse of blue-eyed holier-than-thou's."

"And just what did you think you were?" Steven cut in. "You talk about my dad and his friends, but you literally tried to stop Charity from reconciling with the man she loved—"

"I was trying to protect her," Prudence said with an edge. "Trying to protect her from the same thing that happened to me." She gave a sigh and looked off into space. "I'd thought for the longest that God gave me the gift of singleness—that I would spend the rest of my days serving Him, and that there was no existence that could possibly be more blessed. But when I heard what your father said about one of his so-called friends—that almost every girl at seminary was out of his league—I just couldn't stand it! I knew that so many of the men there, black and white, found me attractive. So I agreed to go on a date with him to spite your father."

Prudence paused, uncrossed her legs. "But Marcus Hall doesn't take kindly to being shown up. The next morning, I received a call from my date's mother; she threatened to send men to my parents' home and have it burned to the ground if I didn't cut off all communication with her son at once. I tried telling him what happened, but he wouldn't hear it. He was sure that I must've been making up excuses to stop seeing him, and I finally gave up trying to convince him otherwise after I got another call from his mother." She turned to Steven. "And that is why I warned Charity about continuing to see Ernest. I was terrified for her safety.

"But I could never manage to convince her. She'd fallen hard for Ernest, and there was no talking her out of it. For his part, Marcus was...well, it's difficult to say. Things were different for Ernest and Charity than they'd been for me and Jeremy..."

"Wait, Jeremy?" I asked, surprised. "The same Jeremy who—"

"Jeremy Stapleman, yes," Prudence affirmed. "He was the one. The one Marcus didn't deem worthy of dating even me, the obligatory light-skinned girl in a school of black suits pasted onto white bodies." She drew another deep breath, then exhaled. "But Ernest's rejection of Marcus as a friend was a thousand times worse; it cut him deep, perhaps even deeper than watching Ernest trot across campus with the darkest woman in town."

"That's enough," Steven breathed. "I don't care what you say. My dad is not a racist."

"Oh, definitely not," Prudence answered evenly. "He's just a bitter man filled with hate...or at least, he was. To be fair, I haven't seen or heard from him in over twenty years. But if you can't bring yourself to believe what I've told you so far—well, you might want to stop listening..."

"No!" Steven screamed. "Tell me everything. I want to know what happened next!"

"You needn't lie to yourself," Prudence said evenly. "You don't want to know what happened; you want an excuse. That's the reason you took Charity's diary in the first place, isn't it? You want to find some indictment, some evidence that Charity hated your father enough to ruin his life and slaughter everyone who ever hurt her. Well, I've got news for you: while your father was festering in his own weeds of anger and resentment, Charity finally grew up. She stopped being some dreamy-eyed girl and grew at last into the woman God meant for her to be. She learned about love, real love—God's love. She's not the villain of this story."