Tala Read online

  “So?”

  “She was calling about money. I sent her less this month,” Tala admitted. The shame was clear in her eyes.

  “And you feel bad about that.”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” Kelsey said, knowing that this had just ruined Tala’s evening. “I’ll take you home if you want.”

  Tala couldn’t meet Kelsey’s eyes. “Thank you, Kelsey.”

  Chapter 10

  When Kelsey got home after dropping Tala at her doorstep, she found she was too restless to sleep. She tried to read a book, but couldn’t focus on the words. She turned on the TV but the images on the screen bored her.

  With nothing left to do, she went out to the office and began organizing the space for Tala. Tala had been trying to do it on her own since the first day Kelsey had given her the key. Kelsey had been so busy with a series of maintenance problems at one of the properties that she hadn’t had time to fix up the office for Tala. She had the time now though. And since she couldn’t sleep, she may as well finally get it done.

  Kelsey brought boxes of paperwork up from the basement. She rearranged the office furniture, moving the large mahogany desk to the center of the room and the long “client couch” to the far wall. There were a few pictures in the basement that she’d never gotten around to doing anything with, so she hung them on the office walls. By the time she was done, she had created a calm but professional space for Tala to work in.

  Satisfied with the results, at two am, she finally went to bed. At six, she was awakened by a text.

  “Are you awake, Kelsey?” Tala had written.

  She was now. “What’s up Tala?” She texted back.

  “Stephen will be leaving for work soon. I thought we could have breakfast before we start our day.”

  Kelsey thought it was cute that Tala called it “our day”. Careful, she warned herself. Cute or not, Tala was still a married woman.

  **********

  Stephen didn’t have to be at the office for another two hours but Evelyn had asked to get together, and rarely was he given the chance to have sex twice in the same week.

  He didn’t like Evelyn much as a person, if he was honest with himself. She had always had a superior air about her. In the past, he’d been able to chalk her arrogance up to being one of the best attorneys in the city, but when her superiority extended to placing in his own wife beneath her, he tended to get upset.

  “What does your wife do all day anyway?” She sneered, as she often did when she was feeling particularly feisty.

  This time Stephen had an answer. “She’s taken a bookkeeping job.”

  “My, haven’t you become progressive Stephen. First you allow friendships with lesbians, and now you’re even allowing her to work.”

  “Oh hush, Evelyn.”

  Evelyn snickered. Stephen was fun to annoy. “Let’s get to the office now,” she said. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  And neither of them noticed her smeared lipstick on his abdomen.

  **********

  Tala was cleaning the bathroom off the master bedroom when Stephen got home. Knowing her husband often liked to shower after a long day of work, she moved on to the sink and nodded that the shower was free.

  Tala had enjoyed her day with Kelsey. After breakfast, Kelsey had given her another driving lesson, and then they’d gone back to Kelsey’s place where Tala discovered that Kelsey had redecorated the office for her. She’d been pleased to see the paintings on the walls, the lamp on the desk, but most importantly, the new laptop that awaited her. Kelsey had said she’d purchased it several months earlier but had never actually bothered to use it. So it became Tala’s.

  “Did you have a good day, Stephen?” she asked, wiping down the bathroom counter as he undressed.

  Stephen caught a glimpse of the lipstick on his stomach and quickly turned away from his wife. “It was a good day, Tala. Thank you.”

  He jumped in the shower and scrubbed away the mark of his betrayal before his wife could see it.

  Or so he’d thought.

  Tala said nothing, but she had indeed seen the lipstick. How could she not? It was a bright red smear across his lower abdomen-- and she knew exactly who wore bright red lipstick.

  Her stomach turned as she remembered all the times she’d suspected there was something going on with Evelyn Greene. The older woman had been rude to Tala since the first time they met. Tala had long suspected there was something more behind that rudeness. Stephen consoled her by saying that Evelyn’s rudeness was “just Evelyn being Evelyn.” She was a bitch, he’d say in his less kind moments. You had to be if you wanted to be a top attorney at a firm like his.

  Over dinner, Tala considered her options. She could confront Stephen now, or she could try to gather more proof. She opted for the latter. She waited until Stephen went to bed then crept down to his office. Stephen had always paid the bills. At first, Tala had assumed it was because he liked to control things, but now she realized it was probably because he’d been hiding this all along.

  Quietly, she shuffled through his papers. She opened desk drawers, and peeked at the files on his computer, but the evidence was sitting right there on top of his desk.

  Tala opened Stephen’s credit card statement to find several charges for a suite at the Marriot downtown. She looked through older statements and realized the charges were always for the same hotel and seemed to happen once or twice a month. Armed with this knowledge, she folded the credit card statements into a neat little pile and went upstairs to confront her cheating husband. It sickened her to think how faithful she’d been, even with her ever-growing desire for Kelsey, while Stephen was running around satisfying his own desires with that horrible woman from his office.

  “You must wake up now, Stephen!” She demanded, standing at the foot of the bed like an angry ghost.

  “Tala—what the hell?” Stephen rubbed his sleepy eyes.

  “What the hell, you!”

  “What happened?”

  “Are you having sex with Evelyn Greene?”

  Stephen’s heart froze. “What? Of course not.”

  “Then where did that lipstick come from on your stomach?” She threw the credit card statements at him. “And why do you keep renting a hotel room downtown?”

  Stephen’s face reddened. “Why are you going through my things, Tala?”

  “Do not turn this around on me, Stephen. You go off and satisfy your desires while I remain loyal?” Stephen’s cheating didn’t hurt half as much as her own faithfulness did.

  “It’s nothing, Tala,” Stephen said. “Evelyn and I both love our spouses. This is just something we’ve done over the years and I suppose it’s been a bit of a hard habit to break.”

  “Years? You mean you have been having sex with that woman our entire marriage?”

  Stephen knew when he was defeated and bowed his head in shame. He never wanted to hurt Tala. He never thought she’d find out at all. But she had found out, and all he could do now was tell her the honest truth and hope his honesty would matter to her.

  “It’s been going on since before you and I met,” he quietly admitted. Maybe now that it was out in the open he could end things with Evelyn for good because she’d no longer have this secret to lord over him.

  Tala shook her head. “I am so ashamed of you, Stephen. This is not the man I thought you were.”

  She turned to walk out of the room.

  “Tala, wait!” Stephen jumped from the bed.

  “No, Stephen. I do not wish to speak with you now. This time I will rent a hotel room. Only I will be in it alone.”

  “You can’t just leave,” Stephen pleaded.

  “I must. I cannot be around you right now.”

  Stephen didn’t know what to do. “You’ll just be gone the night?” He asked, worried his wife might disappear forever. She was already getting stronger with her mother. What was there to stop her from getting stronger with him too?

  “I do not know.”


  “Tala, please.”

  “Just let me go right now, Stephen. We will discuss this another time.”

  Stephen didn’t see how he had a choice in the matter and watched the woman he loved walk out the door.

  Tala didn’t like the idea of spending money on a hotel room. She had been raised not to waste and, until she figured out what to do about Stephen, she was fearful of spending one dollar of the money she’d managed to save over the years. She knew of only one place she could go.

  **********

  Kelsey woke to the sound of Snickers meowing loudly and a series of unfamiliar thuds coming from downstairs. Fear gripped her heart. There was someone in the house. Reaching for the gun she kept in the nightstand by the bed, she quietly crept downstairs.

  The sounds got louder as she approached the kitchen. She moved through the back hallway, swung open the office door, and raised the gun.

  “Kelsey, don’t shoot!”

  Kelsey dropped the gun to her side, and stepped into the dark office. “Tala?”

  Tala’s heart pounded. “What are you doing with a gun? You could have killed me!”

  “What are you doing creeping around my house in the middle of the night?”

  Tala fell on the couch, relieved to still be alive. “I have left Stephen.”

  Kelsey’s jaw dropped open. “What do you mean you’ve left him?” She placed the gun on the desk and sat on the couch beside Tala, who instantly started crying.

  “He has been unfaithful with a woman from his office.”

  “Tala, I’m so sorry.”

  “I do not care about his cheating.”

  “You don’t?” Kelsey was confused.

  “I have desires too, Kelsey. But I do not act on them because it is wrong to do this to another. Now I see that while I have been suffering over my feelings for you, Stephen has been doing whatever he wants.”

  “Your feelings for me?” Kelsey asked quietly. It eased her heart to learn she wasn’t the only one suffering these things.

  “I have many feelings for you, Kelsey,” Tala admitted. “So many, they scare me.”

  She held Kelsey’s hand close to her heart and it eased the weight of the world that had suddenly fallen on her shoulders.

  “And now that Stephen has done this I am forced to make decisions I have tried not to make because I am not the only one my decisions affect.”

  “Does Stephen know you’re here?” Kelsey asked, thinking he probably wouldn’t be too pleased to know Tala had run directly to her.

  Tala shook her head. “I told him I was going to a hotel.”

  “He’ll see your car if he drives by,” Kelsey warned.

  “He will not see it. I parked several blocks away.”

  Kelsey laughed. “Do you really think that was necessary?”

  “I do not know what I think right now. I only wanted to hide.”

  “Come in the house, Tala,” Kelsey said, offering to help her to her feet.

  “No, I will stay in the office. I do not wish to intrude.”

  “You’re not intruding. There’s a spare bedroom you can sleep in. You don’t have to sleep on this lumpy couch.”

  Tala felt the warmth of Kelsey’s hands on hers as she pulled her to her feet.

  “Come on,” Kelsey said, leading Tala to the kitchen door. “Please come inside.”

  Kelsey made Tala a cup of hot tea with lemon and showed her to the guest room. She gathered extra pillows and blankets and placed them on the bed.

  “Is there anything else I can do?”

  “Will you lay in the bed with me Kelsey?” Tala said.

  Kelsey stiffened. Nervous energy filled her body but she did as Tala asked.

  “I would love to kiss you,” Tala whispered. “I would love to touch you—but I will not. If this does ever happen between us, I would like it to be when we are both in a good place and not distracted by the bad things others do.”

  Desire swelled within Kelsey but she did her best to push it aside. Much as she wanted to explore every part of this beautiful woman lying beside her, she too knew it was not the right time.

  “Come here, Tala,” she said, pulling her into arms as protective as a mother’s.

  Tala rested her head on Kelsey’s shoulder. She thought about the gun still sitting on the office desk and felt ill at ease.

  “Why do you have a gun, Kelsey?” she asked.

  “For protection.”

  “Protection from who?”

  “I had a tenant once,” Kelsey started to explain. She hated reliving this story but after pulling a gun on Tala, she knew Tala deserved an explanation. “I was still living in one of my rentals and he lived downstairs. He was a good guy at first. But then he started throwing loud parties and stopped paying rent. I tried to give him a break. I was soft then” she remembered. “I let him go on the rent, and I ignored every time the neighbors called the police because of his parties, but in the end I had to evict him.

  “One night, after receiving the eviction notice, he broke into my apartment and threatened me with a knife. He was clearly high at the time. I screamed really loud and it must have freaked him out because he ran out of the apartment.

  “After that, I got the gun, moved here, and I have never again let a tenant know where I live. I use a PO Box when they ask for my mailing address.”

  “That is horrible, Kelsey,” Tala said. “I am sorry you have suffered such a thing.”

  “It was a long time ago.” Kelsey wrapped her arms just a little bit tighter around Tala’s thin body. “I’m more worried about you right now.”

  Tala curled her body to Kelsey’s and soon the two women were asleep.

  Chapter 11

  There was no sleep for Stephen. He spent the darkest hours of night pacing the house and chastising himself for ever letting things go so wrong. He called every hotel in the city only to get the same reply over and over: no one by the name of Mercado or Wright had checked in within the last twenty-four hours.

  At eight in the morning Stephen called in sick to work and by nine he decided to stop by the only other place he could think of. Tala had pointed out Kelsey’s house to him weeks earlier, and Stephen couldn’t imagine who else might have heard from her.

  Tala saw Stephen’s Lexus pull into the driveway. She’d been awake for hours and ran to the guest room to wake Kelsey.

  “Stephen is here,” she exclaimed. “Kelsey, please do not tell him I am inside.”

  Kelsey didn’t like being involved in other people’s drama, nor did she like lying, but Tala was in a very bad place and wasn’t yet ready to face her cheating husband.

  Kelsey rose from the bed, took a quick glance at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, and nervously went to answer the door.

  “Hello, Kelsey,” Stephen said. His handsome face looked like it had aged five years overnight. “I was wondering if you’ve heard from Tala.”

  “I haven’t,” Kelsey said, with greater ease than she felt. “She was supposed to come by at eight but I haven’t heard from her yet. Is everything okay?”

  The older man shook his tired head. “We had a disagreement last night and she left. If you hear from her, could you please ask her to call me?”

  Kelsey nodded and closed the door. Stephen’s car disappeared from the driveway and Tala reappeared in the living room.

  “A disagreement he calls it,” Tala scoffed.

  Kelsey shrugged. “I don’t suppose there was anything else he could have called it without outright telling me what he did.”

  “I have been thinking,” Tala said, following Kelsey into the kitchen to watch her make coffee. “I shall go back to Manila.”

  Kelsey’s heart dropped but she did her best to hide her disappointment. “For good?”

  Tala took Kelsey’s hands in hers and smiled. “No, my Kelsey, not for good. I must see my family, and if they look well enough, then perhaps it is finally okay for me to end this with Stephen.”

  “And if they don’t look w
ell enough?”

  Tala’s eyes grew wet. “Then I do not know.”

  PART II

  Chapter 12

  When Tala’s plane landed in Manila and the doors opened to let the passengers out, she was immediately struck with the smell of mildew and despair. Humidity hung in the air so thick, it could even be felt on the small walk from the gangway to the short line already forming at the immigration booth.

  Stephen had been saddened to see her leave, but he hadn’t looked half as heartbroken as Kelsey had when Tala bid her goodbye. Kelsey thought Tala was never coming back, that much was obvious. But as Tala made her way through baggage claim, and into the suffocating heat outside, she knew in that moment that nothing in the world could stop her from seeing Kelsey again.

  Tala stepped out of the terminal to find a small SUV outside packed with her parents, her brother and sisters and two aunts.

  “Anak!” Dalisay squealed, pulling Tala into her arms and into the vehicle at the same time. She smothered Tala’s face with kisses. “We are so happy to see you,” she said in Tagalog. “Cristano!” She turned to her husband. “Tell your daughter how you are happy to see her!”

  Cristano blushed at his wife’s reprimanding. He had fully intended on telling his daughter how happy he was to see her, but as usual, Dalisay ruined the moment.

  “Welcome home, anak,” Cristano said, embracing his daughter in an awkward hug.

  Her brother, sisters, and aunts greeted her with the same awkward enthusiasm.

  “Okay, drive,” Dalisay commanded of the stranger at the wheel.

  “Who is that?” Tala questioned.

  “That is our driver,” Dalisay boasted.

  “You have a personal driver?”

  “Not always,” Dalisay said quickly, thinking it wouldn’t do if her daughter knew they were living as well as they were. But there was no hiding the family’s new circumstances when they drove out of the slums just beyond the airport and continued to drive for at least two hours. The car pulled into a gated community and wound around several small streets before stopping in front of a large brick house with a high wall in front of it.