The Choir Director 2 by Carl Weber Read Free Book Online Page A

hope the judge made them rot in jail for a good long time.”
    She shook her head and whispered, “I never went to the police. I was too ashamed.”
    “You never went to the police? But it wasn’t your fault.”
    “I never should have been at his house. I was afraid they would just tell me I asked for it by going home with a stranger.”
    As she broke down in tears again, I knew that nothing I said would really comfort her. So I did the only thing I could; I held her as she cried.
    After a while, I asked, “When did you see him?”
    “At my bachelorette party, after we left the rehearsal dinner,” she told me.
    “But it was a private room. How could he possibly have gotten in?”
    “He was the bartender out front,” she said. “I’d recognize him anywhere. I’d recognize all of them anywhere. It was him, Monique. It was him.” She clutched onto me, burying her head in my sweater as she trembled with tears.
    I rubbed her back again and tried to soothe her. “Come on, Tia. Don’t let him take your life away from you. You’ve worked so hard to build a good life. Don’t let these bastards hold you back. You can make it through this. What about therapy?”
    “I thought I could.” She stood up, separating herself from me. “That’s what I kept telling myself over and over, that I could get through this. But then on the limo ride to the church, I just kept seeing his face. I could feel him. I could smell him. I could feel his sweat dripping off his skin onto mine. I could hear his body smacking against mine, using and abusing me as if I wasn’t even human.” She shuddered, a look of pure disgust on her face. “I felt dirty and violated all over again. The last thing I could do was allow Aaron to touch me. We couldn’t start our lives together like that.”
    “We’ve got to tell Aaron about this, Tia. He needs to—”
    “No! I can’t. I can’t go back to Aaron, and I can’t go back to the church.”
    I closed my eyes and said a quick prayer for guidance in this situation that felt impossible.

Bishop
    6
    The stress of the past couple of days had caught up to me, and it felt really good to be lying in my bed doing nothing now. I couldn’t remember ever being this worn out. I was definitely feeling my age.
    With Aaron’s recent celebrity status, Tia’s disappearance had turned my church into a three-ring circus, with me in the middle circle as the ringmaster. We had media parked outside the sanctuary, cameras flashing during Sunday service, and a congregation that was overrun with gossip and speculation about things that had absolutely nothing to do with them. We’d had our share of touch-and-go moments the past few years at First Jamaica Ministries, and media scrutiny pretty much came with the territory of being pastor of a large church, but this time around felt particularly stressful to me.
    It wasn’t helping matters much that my wife and I seemed to be on different wavelengths. Her sudden disappearance without even a phone call on a Sunday afternoon caused my anxiety to skyrocket. Normally I wouldn’t worry about Monique; we had a tight bond and a strong marriage, but I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that she might be out somewhere with Jackson Young. I wasn’t usually prone to jealousy, but something about the way she had lit up when he started paying her compliments just didn’t sit right with me. That was one shady character, and I was really struggling to understand why my normally confident and self-possessed wife had turned into a giggling, blushing girl in his presence.
    When I heard the front door open and Monique called out my name, I felt a mixture of annoyance and relief. I wasn’t about to let her know it, but I was glad she was home.
    “In the bedroom!” I hollered. A moment later she entered our bedroom, waving as she made a beeline for the bathroom and quickly shut the door behind her.
    “TK?” she called out from behind the door.
    “Yeah, honey?”
    “I saw Tia