Overreaction is an understatement

As Yvette spoke, Ms Rose tried to steal the conversation. It was too late. Mrs Edward tuned into Yvette and asked her to repeat herself. As Yvette repeated herself, her heart sank. She had never stooped so low in gossip to involve children. However, her desire to ruin Mrs Edward had gotten the best of her and opportunity was too rich.

“You son is looking up your friend’s skirt, you might want to address that before it becomes a habit”

That was all the venom that was needed. The flash of instant horror in Mrs Edward’s face told a story of a conflicted woman who as overstressed and on the verge of losing control… now pushed over the edge.

Ms Rose was trying to move and alert Andrew of the coming danger. The boy’s arm gave way and he slipped and his face landed hard. Had Ms Rose kept her shoes on, his face would have landed on the top of her foot, but being she had moved, his face landed in her shoe.

Yvette tried not to laugh. It was funny. The boy had landed his face in Ms Rose’s shoe. Little did Yvette know that the perception of perversion that gave to Mrs Edward would kick off a domino chain reaction that would forever mark the life of this boy.

Everyone was stunned to see how aggressively Mrs Edward tried to move her son from the shoe of Ms Rose. The boy didn’t respond very quickly to the efforts. If Yvette didn’t know better, she would have assumed that Mrs Edward had kicked her son in the abs in an effort to quickly remove him from Ms Rose’s shoe.

Andrew seemed in a trance. His body shook briefly then went limp. Mrs Edward was already in motion and through tightly gritted teeth, she hissed a command for the boy to move. Her arms grabbed him with what cannot be described with any other words than hate fueled passionate aggression of humiliation.

Mrs Edward’s face was beyond crimson red. She picked up her son’s leg and arm and was already running out the sanctuary as if about to dispose of the most vile stinking diaper known to humanity.

Yvette and Ms Rose scrambled to give chase. By the time they arrived outside the sanctuary, a young lady was clutching her arm in shock. Her belt was missing from around her waist.

Angry mutterings was coming from the now locked bathroom. A crowd was gathering from having seen these women fly down the hall at breakneck speed after Mrs Edward. No one was surprised, though they should have been, to see how fast Ms Rose had given chase in her heels.

The pleading, the frantic knocks on the door, the urgency almost spelled of medical emergency.

When the bathroom door of the lady’s room opened, Andrew was standing totally bewildered. Mrs Edward explained something that made zero sense to everyone.

Mrs Edward explained to everyone that she had the power to birth a child and it was her right to put her child in a grave for being bad. He had been horrible. He had done the unthinkable. He had desecrated the sanctuary.

With that, she smacked the back of Andrew’s head so hard he nearly chocked. She asked Ms Rose to have the pastor urgently come to her house and have an emergency prayer session. Andrew as not to come back to the church until this emergency was resolved.

With that, Mrs Edward took off with great haste and intense urgency. The woman was clearly mortified. She didn’t even go back to the sanctuary to gather her things. Mr Edward had been called and could scarcely keep up to his wife who moved in stone cold silent.

Ms Rose was shaken. She hastily got all the personal effects of the Edward family. She gathered the children and gave them the cover story that Andrew had had an accident and she would be with them for the rest of the day until he got the help he needed.

As the realization of what Yvette had set in motion sunk in, her heart totally failed her as a heart attack took over. No wonder Ms Rose had tried so discretely to stop her. Yvette didn’t know how fragile Mrs Edward’s state of mind was. She was fighting to hold control and be a supermom in front of everyone. The woman was suffering the same isolation hurt Yvette had endured as a widow.

Back to Modern Time

Yvette had managed to recover most of her strength she had lost from the heart attack. The one person who had reached out to her and worked with her to pull her out of her deep depression was the one person who’s life she had ruined. Andrew.

He had worked with her and pushed her to keep her doctor’s appointments and work out. He had gone out of his way to take her ministry digital so she could do a lot of it from home. Andrew never expressed any anger towards her.

Strangely enough, there was never much trust that Yvette could pick up from Andrew. The boy seemed almost robotic about the actions he took and the help he had offered.

Ms Rose took the event very hard. The weeks following the incident tested the joy Ms Rose tried to show. She was grieving the loss of something very personal.

The church had bounced back from near catastrophic failure. The weeks after the incident, many questions were raised. Few answers came. Andrew had made a miraculous recovery from whatever ailment the family said had hurt him.

Ms Rose stopped doing sky high heels at the church. She did eventually meet someone and got married. Once married, she moved on to the church of her husband where it is said she returned back to her normal well dressed jovial self.

Andrew would never be seen in public around Ms Rose after the incident. The whispers between the older women suggests that Andrew eventually resumed his friendship with Ms Rose with the blessings of her husband. However, no one has ever seen Andrew around the couple to confirm.

Andrew had grown intensely private after that moment. Devoid of most normal emotions children showed, Andrew seemed to become an adult overnight. Caring, yes. Helpful, sure. Extremely motivated to excel at all personal cost without causing harm to anyone in his path.

When Yvette heard that Mrs Edward was trying to set up Andrew with a woman by the name of Erica, keeping quiet in her old age stopped making sense. She had to step in.

With a few phone calls and lots of favors called in, Yvette finally got the ear of Mr Edward. She spilled her guts out to him and asked for forgiveness. Mr Edward had been very silent. Too silent.

What Yvette didn’t know was that Mr Edward had just witnessed things about his son that had worried him and caused him to think back to the boy’s childhood.

Yvette had shared a lot of concerns but the details of the events in question were not clear. Too many tears to be fully coherent. The Ultra Conservative group had fallen from power shortly after the incident had happened. Now, with the past coming back, Mr Edward wondered if there was any other secrets he had missed.

As Mr Edward sat in the corner of the clubhouse, his mind raced back and forth in time. Something had happened to his son on more than one occasion. But the one Yvette had mentioned was the time Andrew changed and became the quiet son the family knew today.

The blind date Mrs Edward had put Andrew through was different than all. Andrew had been very masterful and surprisingly social. Yet, very slippery. Andrew had not revealed much about himself. He had not given the woman much to work with to sustain her attraction to him. Andrew had kept a good calm distance. The only emotions he had shown was the laughter when Erica had asked to call him Andy.

As Mr Edward watched through his security system on his phone the way Erica had combed through the house, it was clear that Andrew had erased himself from the family. For the first time, Mr Edward also noticed that Andrew had erased Ms Rose memories from the home too.

Initially, everyone assumed that Mrs Edward had pushed Ms Rose away. Now that was in doubt.

In other corners of the modern time

Kate sat wondering what made a man like Andrew so closed off. How can someone have such control over their emotions. Even happily married men who would never cheat were not that closed off. Andrew was.

Yet, Kate had the feeling she could help Andrew, if only he gave her a chance.

Andrew, from his part of the world, was cleaning up his apartment. He had made a complete mess of the place. It was not like him to do that. However, the way his inner demons had surfaced and played out vivid scenes from his past, he had thrown a fit and broken part of the wall of his place.

Erica’s skills at reading people had left Andrew feeling extremely vulnerable. As he had tried to meditate and review the very first pink incident in his life, he had gained new perspective. For starters, his mother had over reacted. Why was a mystery.

Ms Rose was badly hurt in the whole chain of events. It had taken Andrew a lot of effort to cage those feelings. He couldn’t do anything to protect her from the wrath of public opinion or his mother. Andrew never figured out what his mother had done to her friend. This haunted him and plagued him with guilt. If only… if only he could have reacted better and faster instead of freezing up…

Erica was soaking in all the information she had gotten about Andrew. All the gals who had fallen for Andrew and the father’s admission that their son was not broken… needed to be processed.

Something was bothering Andrew. Intimacy was beyond top secret. Whoever Andrew would allow to get close would have to understand his past in order to be supportive of his journey to finding his own inner peace.

Until that day came, the game plan needed to factor in the extra protective nature of Mrs Edward. No telling what that woman was willing to do to fix her sins from her past. And that was the rub, only two people really knew the sins of Mrs Edward. Neither of them were easy to crack. Neither of them talked about the past or let anyone close to know the past.

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When we pick up the story next week, we will see things from a very different vantage point of view. There will be a rich dark and riveting set of insights that only the characters who lived it can bring. Hopefully, after next week’s chapter, we can get on to the more romantic aspects of the story… or are there such…?

Listed below is all the content and chapters to present. It will get updated as the story unfolds. Until then, don’t hesitate to click like so I know you’re enjoying this story.

The Full Story…

All the chapters of this story will eventually appear below…