Prologue--Devin

Sheeba Marguerite Parker wants love. She seeks it. She craves it. But there’s just one problem—she’s a PK. That’s right, a preacher’s kid.

Sometimes God confused me. For example, if a man could commit adultery in his heart just by looking at a woman to lust for her, why would He create a girl as beautiful as Sheeba? Every time I saw her I stared--gawked even. I couldn’t help it. I saw her face and immediately began daydreaming about smelling her perfume, touching the small of her back, and whispering I love you into her ear. Now before you think I was some obsessed, stalker freak"I wasn’t. I was just Devin"the janitor’s son who had a crush on Sheeba ever since my dad’s cleaning company won the contract to clean the mega church her family owned.

For as long as I could remember, my dad had always been the “cleaning man” for the Southern Baptist Seventh Day Adventist Church of God. After he won the contract, Dr. Reverend Parker even invited us to be members of the congregation--and we were for a while, until my mother died of a brain aneurysm. That’s when things changed. That’s when we stopped being a family. When she died, everything died with her. My dad fell into a deep depression, and he blamed God for her death. Things got so bad, he refused to set foot inside of any church, and Dr. Reverend Parker’s church wasn’t an exception"even if he was paying.

“You want me to go into the house of the Man who murdered my wife?” Dad asked me.

“Yes,” I said, hesitantly before following up with the little bit of God’s word I had gleaned in between intervals of staring at Sheeba in the pulpit.

I tried to tell him that God didn’t kill Mom. I tried to tell him that God loved Mom as much as he did, but it all fell on deaf ears. Sometimes I though Dad wanted someone to be held accountable for something so tragic, sudden, and unexplainable as my mother’s death. He wanted the answers that no one could provide, not even the doctors. So he blamed God. My father was adamant that He was the only logical reason that my mother could be alive, happy, and healthy one minute and dead the next.

I didn’t agree with my father’s logic, but I understood it. “I understand Dad.” I had a lot of practice saying that sentence. A majority of the time it was the only thing I felt like I could say. The first time I said it was a week after my mother’s funeral. Dad and I were parked in front of Southern Baptist, and although Dr. Reverend Parker had sent his condolences, it was time to get back to work.

Like I had done so many times before, I climbed out of the pickup truck and unloaded the cleaning equipment onto the street. I expected Dad to follow suit, but he didn’t. He remained in the driver’s seat--sitting motionless and staring out of the window. I stood at the rear of the truck and stared at him. Although I couldn’t see his face, I knew he was contemplative--no doubt thinking about Mom. Maybe he was grieving, I thought to myself. In my opinion, it was definitely time for anything other than the strange silence he had exhibited since the doctor told him she was gone.

I knew there were stages of grief and that everyone grieved in their own way and time. I grieved for my mother, and I knew I would grieve for her a long time. I guess I just wanted some resemblance of my dad. I wanted him to be present and tell me that although Mom was gone, we would get through it, and we would do it together.

As I watched him shake his head back and forth, I searched for words to comfort him, and the only thing that had comforted me came to my mind.

“Dad you don’t have to be sad,” I said, standing in front of his window as he continued to look straight ahead. “She’s in heaven with God now, but you will see her again soon. I promise.”

Dad turned his face, drenched with tears, toward me. The pain and utter despair in his eyes made me regret what I had said. I knew immediately that nothing I said, or could ever say, would comfort him. Even now, I don’t think the words exist.

“I can’t do this,” he said, looking at me"barely able to get the words out.

“I understand Dad,” I said, opening the door.

I reached into the truck and wrapped my arms around him and squeezed as tight as I could. I wanted him to know that he still had me even if he had no one else. Unbeknownst to me at the time, that was the first day I became the “cleaning man.” Dad refused to go into the church that day and everyday after. Since we couldn’t afford to lose the contract, Dad dropped me off at Southern Baptist on the weekends, everyday after school, and picked me up when I was done.

Although becoming the “cleaning man” ruined my chances with Sheeba--that’s if you want to believe I even had a chance to begin with"I didn’t mind. Dad needed time, and I understood that. After I assumed his duties, he spent most of his days in bed crying--staring at he and Mom’s wedding picture and sleeping next to one of Mom’s dresses he had laid out next to him on her side of the bed.

“I understand Dad,” I said, one day after seeing him talking to the dress, underneath the covers, like Mom was lying next to him.

Although everyone I told thought he had finally gone off the deep end, I genuinely understood. Mom and Dad had been married for over thirty years. He called her his soulmate--someone God made specifically for him to walk through life with. A classic HelHouse relationship, Mom and Dad met during their first year in college. Mom was attending Helsman College and Dad was attending Belhouse College. Up until her death, I thought their coupling was fate or even happenstance until Dad told me that fate had nothing to do with it. If it were up to fate and chance, Mom wouldn’t have been his Helsman sister but his roommates’. Let Dad tell it, the moment he saw Mom he knew she would be important to him. I asked him how he knew, and he said he just did. Somehow he knew she was tied to his destiny. Therefore, he bribed his friend to let him assume his identity until he made Mom fall in love with him.

The plan was simple enough. Once Dad had won Mom’s heart, he would come clean about the switcheroo, tell her his real name, and hope it wouldn’t backfire. Because Dad could ask to see Mom under the guise that she was his Helsman sister and he was her Belhouse brother, he was able to see her every day. Dad said it took just one week to make Mom fall in love with him; however, Mom said it took at least a month for Dad to win her over. However, once he did, they were inseparable"until her death at least. But to be honest, I would argue that they still are.

Dad told me about he and Mom’s Helhouse relationship shortly before I found out that Sheeba was going to Helsman. I saw it all as a sign and the chance I had been waiting for. Like my father, I immediately developed a plan. But before I share it with you, I want to reiterate that I wasn’t an obsessed, stalker freak. I was a man in love. Maybe it was genetic, but just like my father knew about Mom, I knew Sheeba was important to me. I knew that she was somehow tied to my destiny. And instead of waiting on fate, I took matters into my own hands.

I enrolled as a freshman in Belhouse College--determined to no longer be the “janitor’s son” or the “cleaning man.” I was determined to be Devin Foster--a man with the chance to reinvent himself. A man with the chance to win the heart of the girl he loved--Sheeba Marguerite Parker. I wanted her, and I was determined to have her.