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Somehow, I made it through the trial that October, feeling miserable not only because I had to relive my husband's brutal death, but I was nearing the final trimester of my pregnancy, which is an uncomfortable time for any woman, especially a twenty-two year old widow. The jury deliberated for only two hours before finding Giovanni guilty of murder and sentencing him to life in prison for murder with a deadly weapon. The trial judge ordered that the .38 pistol Giovanni used to shoot Adonis be chopped into fifty pieces that were scattered across the bay in Virginia Beach.
From his cell in the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Giovanni continued to maintain that he was innocent, saying that the shooting was an accident. He also tried to spread rumors about Adonis and his family about everything imaginable-and about many things that weren't. No one ever uncovered any evidence to support his ugly rumors.
I paid no attention. I was still numb and didn't care about any of it. I was dimly aware of being glad that Giovanni had gotten life in prison. Death would have been too easy for him, and he deserved to have to live with what he had done. The justice system had done what it could. No verdict could change the fact that Adonis was gone. Meanwhile, I continued to live, though many wouldn't have called it that.
I stayed on in our house in Virginia Beach for a while, my mother and stepfather moving in with me to help me prepare for the baby. Abraham and Marcella wanted me to stay next to them so that they could also help out with their future grandchild. Plus, I wanted to surround myself with Adonis's family, with his belongings and our dogs, with anything that could help me keep Adonis close.
The hardest thing was going to bed at night. Adonis and I had a double king-size bed; it was so big that sometimes he'd wake up and joke around when he saw me on the other side of the mattress, waving at me like we were standing across a river from each other. I would just wave back and grin. Now, when I woke up, I was alone on one side of the river. He had crossed it already, but I couldn't see him.
I shut myself off from everything. I didn't want to go anywhere, do anything, or see anybody. I was just trying to be. There were periods when I slept a lot and other times when I stayed up for three days straight.
The months crawled by. People kept trying to pull me out of my well of grief and get me excited about the baby. Nothing worked. I slept with pictures of Adonis, snapshots of him doing ordinary, everyday things, like eating or playing with the dogs, because that's how I saw him. I even carried stacks of photos around with me, so that I'd have him with me everywhere I went. I'd go to a friend's house, maybe, and be surrounded by well-meaning people, but I'd still be that weird pregnant girl sitting alone, off in a corner with my pictures of Adonis.
I ached for him every day.
Occasionally, Abraham would insist that I come over to work for Q Productions. He, Angelo, and Mercedes all went back to work, coping with the murder of their beloved son and brother in their own ways. They were trying to keep Adonis's memory alive and hoping to bring me along with them into a future where I no longer felt like I had a place. Why would I want to live in a world without Adonis?
Nevertheless, I took Abraham up on his offer and stopped trying to make myself believe that the family wanted nothing to do with me anymore. It took them months to beat it into my head that they were still my family too.
"As long as you've got that Q on your monogram, you've got us." Abraham said as him and Marcella hugged me tight and placed their hands on my protruding belly.
I worked at Q Productions, working with Abraham's rock groups and other singers. When I could, I wrote a little music and lost myself in my guitar. Somehow this was possible: I could express my grief through music, when words just wouldn't do it. I found it funny, though, how hard it is to play a guitar when your seven months pregnant. It was the first time I had laughed in months.
I continued to work as a producer and songwriter for Q Productions up until I was put on bed rest due to doctors orders, as things started getting weird with my pregnancy. Trust me, none of us had any idea what was going to happen was coming. And it threw the whole family for a whirlwind.
