Black Sisters: Part 1

Life is good, is written in the sand.

Sean and Lauren/ Flickr

Deedra Hanley was a happy woman who felt lucky to find a man like David Hanley to marry. They had met in Key West, Fla. when she and a couple of girlfriends had gone there on vacation. David’s brother was there, too. He was from DC and she was working in Chicago. One day Deedra had gone alone to tour a former president’s home.

Deedra and David had not dated in Key West, but they did keep in touch after they both returned home. Over time they had gotten together often, fallen in love, and married. Life had been fairly good. He had finished the University of Maryland and was with the FBI. She taught middle school, just like she had done in Chicago. She now taught English at a high school that looked like a castle on the outside and was not far from where they lived. Initially they had lived in apartments. Then they moved to a row house. She loved to sit on the porch in the front and watch the people go by. She and David had decided, though, that to give their three children—Andrea, Tamia and Matthew David—better schools to attend, they would have to move.

Deedra thought that she would be despondent and never find house she would like as much. However, they did find one. It was a two family house and was very charming. She could still sit on the front stoop and watch the traffic go by, although there were not as many people walking around as there had been at the other house. Their dog Pasho, a shih tzu, also lived there with them.

The girls had now finished college. They were two years apart and lived in Highland Park, Michigan. They worked there and planned to do postgraduate studying there and eventually marry. Matt was only 16 and still lived at home. He wanted to go to college in Michigan near them.

Deedra often bragged to her girlfriends about how responsible and good to them David was. Here friends would come over to play whist or bridge periodically and were from the neighborhood. She remembered one occasion at her house.

“David is so good. I wonder where we will go on vacation this year. Maybe Africa or Italy.”

Lisa Stinson said,” Well, I heard about that fox he recently hired. He put her with one of his best men. He is going to train her. She could be headed for his job one day.”

David was now a top supervisor at the FBI.

Kim Darby said, ”Yeah, but Deedra doesn’t have to worry. The fox is getting married soon, I heard. I wonder how she got such a good job with travel. Did David previously know her?”

“I doubt it. He never said anything about hiring a friend,” Deedra responded.

They continued the bridge game and Deedra didn’t think anything more about it until David told her that an employee had gotten married, but they were not invited because the wedding was intimate and small.

Life continued. David was working long hours, so Deedra and Matt visited the girls in Michigan during spring break, although David would have preferred to have been sent to Fort Lauderdale where young people gathered, but that was out of the question at his age.

One day at the grocery store, Deedra ran in to Ann Gibson, a friend from the card group.

“Hey girl. That woman your husband hired didn’t waste any time. Someone saw her out shopping for baby things. They know who she is and she was telling the clerk that she is pregnant.”

(to be continued)


Issues |Family


Region |Maryland|Washington DC

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