Empty Vows

Book 2: Lexington, Alabama Novel

by Mary Monroe

Genres: African American Women's Fiction; Historical Fiction; Southern

Synopsis

In this scandalous follow-up to the Depression-era tale Mrs. Wiggins, awardwinning and New York Times bestselling author Mary Monroe brings even more period drama as a proper church-going woman ensnares a widower living too many secrets—and lies …
Forty-something widow Jessie Tucker is beloved throughout Lexington, Alabama, for her kind heart and endless generosity. But she feels it’s past time she rewarded herself—especially when upstanding Hubert Wiggins tragically loses his
wife and son. Making herself indispensable, yet discouraged by Hubert’s lack of romantic interest, Jessie cooks up a deception she knows will make pious Hubert do right by her …
Hoax or not, Hubert couldn’t be happier. The passionate self he’s long hidden from everyone has a new, much-riskier secret love. And the unsuspecting second Mrs. Wiggins will help him maintain his ever-so-devout image in the community …
But when Hubert is not the ardent lover Jessie always dreamed he was, she turns her desires to handsome younger man Conway. Suddenly the “good church wife” can’t resist temptation at all. And someone is watching: Conway’s new girlfriend
and Jessie’s longtime rival—Blondeen. Now Blondeen has the perfect opportunity to harass Jessie, destroy her reputation, drive her out of town—then become the real wife Hubert should have had all along …
In one shattering night, Jessie, Blondeen, and Hubert will each go too far. Andwhen their web of deceit threatens to drag them under for good, they will have only one chance to erase the past and claim everything they’ve ever wanted. If their secrets don’t destroy them first …

Release date: March 29, 2022

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Friday, November 17, 1939

I SAT STOCK-STILL AS THE DOCTOR AT THE COLORED CLINIC TOLD ME they had pronounced my twenty-one-year-old son Claude dead. Dr. Underwood looked young enough to be my son. I would have preferred somebody older with a lot more experience, but this “youngster” was the only doctor on duty that night. In a gentle tone, he told me, “I suspect it was either a heart attack or a stroke, or maybe something that can’t be diagnosed here. I’m so sorry for your loss, Mr. Wiggins.”

“You ain’t as sorry as I am! You need to tell me more than that!” I blasted as I wiped tears off my cheeks.

“If I could, I would. I’m almost certain that it’s a genetic issue,” Dr. Underwood said, still speaking in a gentle tone, as if it was no big deal to him. I scolded myself for coming down so hard on him. With all the sick and dying folks he had to deal with, death was second nature to him. He couldn’t let his emotions get in the way. Death was also second nature to me because I was a undertaker. I’d seen more dead bodies than this doctor had and I never let my emotions get in the way neither. But losing my son was almost more than I could stand.

“There ain’t no genetic or any other health issues in my family,” I protested.

Dr. Underwood furrowed his eyebrows and caressed his smooth chin as he gawked at me. “Didn’t your daddy’s brother die of a heart attack some years ago?”

My head was spinning like a tornado, and there was so much bile rising in my throat, I didn’t know how I was able to keep talking. Somehow I managed to get a grip so I could answer. “Um, yeah, he did. But he was eighty pounds overweight and ate everything he shouldn’t have.”

“Maybe there is something defective on your wife’s side,” he suggested. “I heard that Maggie’s daddy and mama died way before their time.”

“My late father-in-law was a alcoholic and drunk hisself to death. His wife died when she caught that virus that was going around the world about twenty years ago. But Maggie has always been as strong as a bull. And so was Claude.”

“Mr. Wiggins, I declare, even the most robust bulls die sooner or later.”

My son had never been seriously sick a day in his life and neither had I. If what had happened to Claude was heredity, it had to have come from Maggie’s side of the family, or his birth daddy’s. Me and her was the only ones who knew I wasn’t the boy’s real daddy. We hadn’t been able to create a child the normal way (I’ll explain why later). Out of desperation, we’d set up a stranger and tricked him into getting Maggie pregnant. I never met the man and didn’t know nothing about his background.

The staff at the clinic did the best they could for us colored folks, but they wasn’t as sophisticated and knowledgeable as the doctors at the hospitals that only treated white folks. One of their doctors might have been able to offer a better explanation as to what killed Claude. Segregation laws varied from one county to another, so the coroner in our little country town couldn’t perform autopsies on colored corpses. Sometimes we never found out exactly why one of us died.

When Maggie came home this evening after helping serve at a party given by one of the wealthy white women she knew, I was barely functioning. It took all of my strength for me to compose myself enough to tell her that our only child, Claude, had suddenly up and died a few hours ago. Maggie was devastated because she loved that boy more than she loved life. On top of that, he was the only blood relative she had left in the world. My nightmare continued.

Several hours after I’d told Maggie about Claude’s passing, I found her unconscious on our living-room couch with puke all over the front of her nightgown. I refused to believe she was dead, even though it was obvious that she was. I drove her to the clinic anyway. The staff was just as shocked as I was that I had returned so soon with another body.

The doctor on the graveyard shift told me the same thing about Maggie that the evening shift doctor had said about Claude: She had died of a heart attack or a stroke. Words could not describe my pain. I went back home to grieve some more.

Less than a minute after I walked back into my living room, I blacked out.

I woke up the next morning in my old bedroom at my parents’ house. Mama was hovering over me with her eyes so bloodshot and glazed over, she looked like she belonged in bed herself. “Was I dreaming, or is it true that Maggie is dead too?” I asked in a raspy tone.

Mama sniffed and nodded. “We done lost them both, son. Me and your daddy found you passed out on your couch last night, so we brought you over here. You must have fainted.”

That was the last thing I remember before I fainted again. I didn’t come to until the next morning. I was so weak and disoriented, Mama had to bathe and feed me. I don’t know how I made it through the day without fainting again or losing my mind.

I wasn’t doing much better the next day. Back at my house, me and Mama was sitting at my kitchen table. It was the middle of the afternoon, but I was still in my bathrobe. On top of the bags underneath my puffy eyes, I hadn’t shaved in two days and my hair was so askew I looked like death warmed over. But I didn’t care how bad I looked, it wasn’t half as bad as how I felt.

“I can’t believe God would allow all this misery to happen to me at the same time,” I complained to Mama. I wondered if He had finally decided to punish me for loving men.

“Baby, don’t question the Lord’s actions. One thing you have to keep in mind is that He don’t put no more of a burden on nobody than they can carry,” she insisted.

“Hogwash! What kind of God thinks losing my whole family at the same time ain’t more of a burden than I can carry?” I shot back.

“Don’t put all the blame on God. Have you done anything that would deserve His wrath?”

Mama’s last question threw me for a loop. “Who me?” was all I could say. If God was punishing me for loving men, how come He hadn’t chastised me before now? I’d started having relationships with men when I was in my teens, more than twenty-five years ago. “Um . . . I can’t think of nothing I done wrong,” I mumbled.

I decided to change the subject. The last thing I wanted to hear was Mama implying that I was doing something that the devil had put me up to and that God was only trying to get my attention back. I blurted out the most appropriate thing I could think of: “I guess I shouldn’t question God’s mysterious ways, right?”

“Right. You and nobody else should be that brazen. Shoot. Jesus didn’t and He was the Lord’s son—and perfect in every way!” Mama screamed. She stopped talking and sucked in a deep breath. Her tone was much softer when she added, “Baby, try to remember that it was their time to go.”

I had heard that phrase so many times, all it did now was irritate me. For one thing, it didn’t make no sense. Whenever a person died, it was “their time to go.” But I didn’t like to argue with my mama because I usually lost anyway. I decided to be as cool and calm as I could. “I’m going to get through this and go on with my life as quick as possible,” I declared.

“Me and your daddy will do all we can to help you do that,” she said with a heavy sigh. “You ain’t got no close friends to keep company with you, and you don’t need to be by yourself too much right now. You want to move back home with us for a spell?”

I shook my head. “I want to be by myself tonight. The sooner I get used to being alone, the better off I’ll be.” I didn’t give Mama enough time to respond before I went on. “Um . . . I’m going to get in touch with the Fuller Brother morticians. I want them to handle the funerals,” I announced. I never thought I’d give business to my only competition.

Sixty-year-old Ned Fuller and his fifty-eight-year-old brother, Percy, had been thorns in my side ever since I’d inherited the business from my daddy’s deceased older brother. They was so hifalutin and insensitive; their funeral home had a great big WELCOME sign tacked up on the wall by the side of their front door! Knowing how jealous they was of me because I got the most business, I knew they was going to charge me a pretty penny. But I didn’t care. All I wanted was for this double funeral to be over and done with as soon as possible so I could move forward.

Mama scrunched up her face and threw up her hands. “The Fuller Brothers? I declare, I can’t believe you want to give them snooty devils your business. Y’all been feuding for years. Besides, this involves our family. Don’t you think Maggie and Claude deserve the best home-going possible? Folks will think you done lost your mind!”

“Mama, I don’t care what folks think. It’s bad enough that I ain’t never going to see my wife and son alive again. After all I done already been through, the last thing I want to do is handle their funerals. And, as much as I don’t want to admit it, the Fuller Brothers’ work is almost as good as mine.”

I DONE ATTENDED A LOT OF FUNERALS IN MY LIFE, BUT THIS WAS THE first one with two bodies. Looking at them caskets sitting end to end in the front of Reverend Wiggins’s church chilled me to the bone. I was so numb, I couldn’t even feel the hard pew I was sitting on.

I stopped crying so I could eavesdrop better on what the people sitting behind me was saying. “Mother and son. Don’t they look peaceful? That rose-colored shroud Maggie got on suits her. S-she loved roses,” sobbed a woman whose voice I didn’t recognize.

“They both look as good in death as they did in life,” remarked the man who lived next door to Hubert.

The person who spoke next had such a husky voice, I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. “I declare, Hubert must have spent a fortune on them bronze caskets and all of them flowers.”

I tuned everybody out after the woman who used to help Maggie prune her and Hubert’s pecan tree said, “I wonder what Hubert is going to do with all of them nice frocks and hats Maggie left behind. Me and her was the same size . . .”

I wanted to turn around and say something, but I was in so much grief, I didn’t know what to say that I hadn’t already said in the past few days.

When I couldn’t stand to look toward the front of the church no more, I read the program over and over. By the fifth time, I had memorized every word, especially the ones that had been misspelled.

I started crying again.

“Sister Jessie, you look like you about to fall out. Can I get you a glass of water?” one of the ushers asked me as he leaned over.

“Thanks, but I’m fine.” I sniffled and wiped my eyes and nose with my handkerchief. I had been crying off and on since Maggie and Claude died a few days ago. Ever since then, I’d had problems sleeping at night. When my husband, Orville, died last summer, I hadn’t been able to sleep much them first few nights then neither. When I went without sleep for two whole days after his funeral, I knew I had to do something drastic. My money was tight, so I couldn’t afford to buy nothing that would help me sleep. I was so desperate and exhausted, I didn’t care what I had to do. I didn’t have enough nerve to go in a store and steal something, so I “borrowed” some tranquilizers from the nursing home where I worked. Some of the nurses gave them to the unruly patients to keep them doped up so they wouldn’t have to deal with them. I’d seen some of them old folks go to sleep at night and not wake up until after noon the next day. I had never took a whole pill because they was so strong. I would always crush one up and stir half of it into a glass of water when I got ready for bed. Within minutes after my head hit the pillow, I was out like a light and didn’t wake up until the next morning. I’d relied on them pills several times in the last few months. That was the only way I was able to get a full night’s sleep last night.

I didn’t know how I was going to go on without Maggie. She had been my best friend for more than twenty years. It broke my heart to know that the last conversation I’d had with her before she died was about her son’s death. “Jessie, that boy was my life. How in the world am I going to live without him?” she’d sobbed as she wallowed in my arms on her living-room couch.

“You going to go on because me and all the folks in this town who love you will help you get through this,” I told her.

“If I hadn’t gone to help out at that party tonight, I would have been home and he’d still be alive.” Maggie’s statement didn’t make no sense to me. The boy had died of natural causes. I didn’t want to make her feel no worse by asking her to explain what she meant. If I’d known it was going to be our last conversation, I would have asked.

I was going to miss Maggie’s son as much as I was going to miss her. Claude was only a few years older than my son, Earl. They never got to be close friends because Earl was retarded. But Maggie had treated him as good as she treated Claude. She’d even babysat him for free when I went to work, and refused to take money, no matter how many times I offered to pay her. That was the kind of praiseworthy woman she was, even though she’d been raised by a used-to-be prostitute and the town drunk.

Maggie had always been there for me and Orville, no matter how mean and nasty my husband was to her. She’d even sung a solo at his funeral.

Now that Hubert needed to be consoled, I was going to do all I could to help him through this sad mess. I sighed and shook my head. After mopping my face with my handkerchief for the umpteenth time, I glanced around the room. Hubert’s daddy’s church was not that big, but it was the most ornate colored church in Lexington, Alabama. Pictures of the Lord, His disciples, Moses parting the Red Sea, and the Virgin Mary hugging Baby Jesus covered almost every wall. The floor was so clean you could lick it and not get a speck of dirt on your tongue.

I had been a member of this church all my life, but like a lot of folks who let other things get in the way, I didn’t attend as often as I used to. And the last three times I’d come was to attend funerals, including my husband’s.

The service hadn’t started yet and people was still filing in. Hubert’s parents was all over the place. His daddy was stomping up and down the aisle with the tail of his long black robe flapping like buzzard wings. He was trying to make sure everything was in order before he went up to the pulpit to get started. Hubert’s plump mama was dressed in black from head to toe, including a wide-brimmed hat with a veil that completely covered her fleshy face and neck. Even though she was weeping and wailing up a storm, she was still able to make her way around the room so people could hug her.

I was so deep in thought, I didn’t realize Hubert was talking to me until he poked my side with his elbow. I had almost forgot he was sitting right beside me on the front pew. “Oh? W-what did you say, Hubert?” I asked. I was so embarrassed my face got hot.

“I was just saying that I appreciate you dropping off that casserole and sweet potato pie yesterday, and helping me with my housekeeping chores these last few days,” he told me in a low tone. “My icebox hadn’t been cleaned out since Maggie . . .” Hubert stopped talking and dropped his head. He sniffled for a few seconds before he honked into a plaid handkerchief. He cleared his throat before he continued. “Maggie stayed on top of everything. It’s going to be hard for me to carry on without her. When we got married, she took over doing everything for me that my mama had been doing all my life. She even washed my back, like Mama used to do.” Hubert exhaled and gave me the most hopeless look I ever seen on his face. “Jessie, what am I going to do now?” He screwed up his mouth and started rubbing the back of his head. “My brain feels like it’s fixing to explode. I been feeling so weak, I’m surprised I’m sitting here right now, still conscious.”

I rubbed the side of his arm. “Hubert, you ain’t going to be like this for long. You are the strongest man I know and the smartest. Besides, you got your mama and daddy, the church, me, and other people to look after you.”

Sitting directly behind us on the next pew was twenty-eight-year-old Blondeen Walker. She was a pretty woman with big brown eyes, nut-brown skin, and a heart-shaped face. And she liked to draw attention to herself. Today she had on a low-cut black dress and enough rouge on her cheeks to coat a barn. She had been giving me side-eye glances ever since I entered the church.

When Blondeen suddenly tapped me on my shoulder, I turned around. Even though I had a fake smile on my face, there was a scowl on hers. She was one of the many folks who had been bringing food to Hubert’s house and consoling him since Maggie and Claude departed. “Jessie, in case you didn’t know, the first pew is for the family,” she snarled.

Before I could respond, Hubert whirled around and told her, “Jessie is like family. I’m the one who told her to sit here.”

Blondeen’s face got so tight, I could have bounced a dime off it.

We turned back around and she didn’t say nothing else. But each time I looked in her direction, she gave me the evil eye. She wasn’t the only one, though. I seen several other women glaring at me like they wanted to bite my head off. I didn’t have to be a mind reader to know what they was all thinking: Hubert was up for grabs and they wanted dibs on him first.

I LOST TRACK OF ALL THE FOLKS WHO WENT UP TO THE PULPIT AND praised Maggie for being such a godly woman. One of the white ladies she used to work for showed up and spoke for ten minutes. She agreed with everybody that Maggie was one of God’s favorite children because she had been so much like Him.

Several of Claude’s friends and acquaintances spoke, including the mama of the first woman he’d been engaged to marry. His first fiancée’s name was Daisy Compton, and she was the kind of woman that mothers warned their sons to stay away from. But Claude hadn’t listened to Maggie. Not long after him and Daisy told everybody they was getting married, she suddenly packed a few clothes and took off with another man last June. Nobody had heard from her since. Some folks was even convinced that she was dead, because she hadn’t even contacted her children, or anybody else in her family. Maggie had not cared much for that woman, but she’d always treated her with respect.

Toward the end of the service, I went up to the pulpit to say a few words. “Maggie was the most righteous, caring, and generous woman I ever met. God broke the mold when He created her. I’m sure she’s up there in heaven helping Him and guiding the angels that might not be as saintly as she is, the same way she done with her friends down here on Earth.” I wanted to say more, but I couldn’t. I started crying again and Hubert had to run up and help me back to my seat.

After the long service, which included eight hymns sung by one of the ushers’ godsons, and four more songs by the choir, things was finally coming to a close. More than two dozen women had fainted. Reverend Wiggins told the folks who wanted to eat to go to the dining area downstairs. I never knew anybody who went to a funeral who didn’t stay long enough to eat.

Everybody stood around eating from plates overflowing with everything from macaroni and cheese to peach cobbler, reminiscing about all the good times they’d had with Claude and Maggie. “I’m sure going to miss poor sweet Maggie. I went to school with her,” said a female who had bullied her almost every day from the first day of school to the last. This was the first time I’d ever heard this hypocrite say something nice about Maggie and it made me sick.

My mood went from grief to disgust when I overheard a woman ask another one the same thing that had been on my mind since Maggie died: “I wonder what lucky woman is going to land Hubert?”

If that wasn’t bad enough, I overheard another one make a comment to Hubert when she didn’t realize I was close enough to hear. “Folks wondering if you and Jessie are going to get together, now that both of y’all is single again,” she said in a smug tone. Before Hubert could respond, the same woman added, “There is a heap of other women in this town who would suit you better.”

“Jessie’s been like a member of my family as far back as I can remember. She’s a sweet, upstanding woman, but she ain’t no more interested in me the way you mean than I am of her,” Hubert replied.

I cleared my throat loud enough for him and that heifer to hear me. They whirled around at the same time to face me. “Hubert, excuse me for interrupting, but my son is getting fidgety, so I’d better take him home now,” I said in a stiff tone. “I just wanted to come say bye and to thank you again for the ride over here.”

“Oh, I’m sorry you and Earl have to leave. You want me to have somebody fix y’all a plate to eat later?” he said. “If you can wait a little longer, I can take y’all home.”

“No, that’s all right. I got leftovers from yesterday, and my sister and her husband can give us a ride home.”

Hubert’s eyes had dark circles around them and was slightly swollen from all the crying he’d done. Without all the makeup I had slathered on my face, my eyes would have looked as bad as his. “Okay, Jessie. You take care of yourself and your boy. I’ll be seeing you directly,” he told me as he gently massaged my shoulder.

“Thank you.” I totally ignored the woman, but from the corner of my eye, I seen a grimace on her face as I walked off.

I couldn’t wait to get out of that church. I didn’t say nothing to Earl at first when I located him. I just took him by the hand and led him toward the door.

“Why do we have to go now, Mama?” he asked as he stumbled along.

“Um . . . I don’t feel too good,” I muttered.

He gulped some air. “You sick? You going to die too?”

“No, baby. I’m going to live for a real long time.” I glared at some of the women who had been giving me the evil eye during the service. I didn’t want to deal with them no more today. That was the reason I didn’t plan on going to Hubert’s house later, where a lot of the same folks who’d attended the funeral would end up so they could continue consoling him.

All I wanted to do was be alone and think about all the things I’d overheard. There was no telling what else them hussies had spewed about me behind my back. What amazed me was why some of them thought me and Hubert would get together in the first place. But since them busybodies had put the thought in my mind, I couldn’t get rid of it. Especially since the notion of me and Hubert as a couple was so far-fetched. I was sure enough going to think more about it, though. And if I ever thought it would benefit me to be with him, I would definitely take action.

I wasn’t too worried about growing old alone. There was other single men in Lexington. A few had asked me out, but I had turned them down. But if they had been anything like Hubert, I would have done everything I could to hold on to them. I was only forty-one, so I still had a lot of good years left. And I had a lot of love to give, so I didn’t plan on being single for the rest of my life.

I wondered how Hubert felt about being single again now. He’d been with Maggie for so long, and had always seemed so happy as a married man, everybody was already predicting that he wouldn’t be single for long.

Even though Maggie was gone, I was still determined to continue my friendship with Hubert. When he remarried—and there was no doubt in my mind that he would do so—I hoped that the new Mrs. Wiggins wouldn’t be the jealous type. If she was, I’d let her know right off the bat that Hubert had always been like a brother to me, and as long as he wanted me in his life, I’d be in it.

THE DAY AFTER THE FUNERAL, NOVEMBER 22, WHICH WAS ALSO the day before Thanksgiving, Mama, Daddy, and Jessie Tucker, Maggie’s best friend, came to the house to help me pack Maggie’s belongings. As much as I wanted to tackle this painful chore at a much later date, I couldn’t put it off another day.

A hour after we got started, me and Jessie went in the bathroom to box up the more personal female items. “Jessie, Mama got dibs on the makeup and hair products, but you can have all of them smell-goods,” I told her. “Maggie was so ahead of other women. She’s the only colored woman I know who wore the same fragrances as the rich white ladies.”

“Thank you. Bless your soul until the Rapture. She was always so generous about letting me splash some on whenever I wanted to,” Jessie said. Her voice cracked when she added, “That woman was a saint in every way.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth.” My throat was so dry, it hurt every time I spoke.

Before I could say anything else, the door swung open and Daddy shuffled in. “Shake a leg, y’all. I want to get this over and done with as soon as possible. I’ll let some of the church elders decide who to donate what to, and then they can oversee the distribution.” He snorted and snatched a towel off the rack above the sink and used it to wipe sweat off his face. And then he covered his nose with the towel and honked into it. “All this stress is messing with my allergies,” he griped. “This has been so tiresome. Let’s finish up so I can return the truck I borrowed. And I need to get Mother home soon before she falls out. She’s getting too overwhelmed looking at all the nice stuff Maggie left behind.”

“I’m starting to feel like that myself, Reverend Wiggins,” Jessie mumbled. I didn’t make a remark, but I felt the same way too.

My beloved son’s young wife, Maybelle, had took his death so hard, she had been too grief stricken to pack up his stuff. But she had packed hers and took off to Miami last night to live with relatives. I was glad she and Claude hadn’t had a baby, because it would have been even harder for me to move on, with my grandchild living in another state.

By now, Daddy was as distressed as Mama. Nary one of them was able to go to Claude’s house to help me and Jessie pack up his things. I was concerned about where everything was going to end up. If I would see a woman—especially a floozy—prancing around town in one of Maggie’s shar. . .