Nichoatra: The Love He Could Not Keep

By Mackeline Wilson

When Nichoatra Williams, a middle age single woman meets a man she thinks could be a possible life partner, shes ecstatic. But soon after she finds out that he is married. Since he was recommended by her best friend, she agreed to a platonic friendship with him. After four months of his generosity toward her, he manages to penetrate the walls of her heart. Dispite his warmth and kindness, she is unable to move beyond the guilt of being with another womans husband. That is when his affection turned deadly.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468595161

Mackeline Wilson

Mackeline Sata Wilson was born in Monrovia, Liberia West Africa. She moved to the United States in 1978 to live with her father and stepmother. She is the eldest of eight children. Her parents were married for eleven years and divorced in 1975. Mackeline attended grade and high school in Bridgeport CT. Later in her life, she completed a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administrations. Her only son is the center of her world. Nichoatra was inspired by events in the author's life. "I learned a lesson about value, self love and a belief in a higher power (God). Without self love, it is easy to compromise one's values, and without a belief in a higher power, one can lose one’s soul when trying to find love in another person. I believe that bad relationships are never about the other person. True love can never be found in another person. Because we attract people and situations to ourselves by the way we think and feel, we can attract true love when we find it in ourselves. Finally, inner peace is what we find when we pay attention to the trials and tribulations in our lives., then free ourselves from them. "

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© 2012 by Mackeline Wilson. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any

means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 04/25/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-9518-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-9517-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-9516-1 (ebk)

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in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the

publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

I could feel Forest’s gun pressing against my temple—but the strange thing is, this time I wanted him to pull the trigger. I knew that if Forest had ended it back then, I would not be here now, feeling Roderick’s words rip through my heart like a bullet through human flesh.

In Loving Memories of My Uncles:

Elder Archibald Archie Sharper, Jr.

&

Samuel Napoleon Wilson

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I give thanks and praises to the creator of heaven and earth. I thank God for giving me this story, and most of all, I thank God for the drive and desire to tell the story. I thank God for my family and friends who supported me through this journey. I pray that God will grant each of you great health, inner peace, knowledge and wisdom to find and fulfill your calling.

To my son Hasaan Mikail King, I love you more than life. I thank God for sending you through your dad and me. You have brought joy and pain in my life. I understand now that without the pain, I could not appreciate the joy of having you as a child. Thank you for giving me a purpose in this life, and thank you for being my dictionary. May God continue to guide us as we learn how to be better people.

To my parents, Robert MacDonald Wilson and Helena K Sharper, thank you for giving me life, and thank you for laying a foundation early in my life that have guided my path through the years. May God continue to bless you. I love the two of you.

To Joy Victoria Page, Grace Marie Page, and Joshua Johnson, thank you for showing me unconditional love. Thanks to Gloria Gonleh and Trocon Page for allowing me to share the love of your beautiful children. May God bless and grant your heartdesires.

To my siblings, Wheaton T Wilson, Roberta M Natue Wilson, Jonathan M White, Mac Wilson, Dianne Wilson, Andy Rolfee Wilson and Jemima Feta Wilson. May God bless and protect all of you. I love you all.

To Mardea, Aaron, and Foran Pans, Georgette & Kelvin Gray,

Sister Fatu Kollie, Wheata Jackson, Rashid, Lawrence, and Judah. Thank God for putting you all in my life. Patience Ford, you prayed for me when I was not well, and your powerful and faithful prayers healed me. You are forever blessed. To Aunt Josephine and Uncle Donald James, may God continue to guide and protect all of you. I love you all.

To the Page-Stryker and Sharper Families, I love each of you and I am blessed to call you family. May God continue to bless and bring us closer together.

To James, thank you for being a kind and loving force in my life. Thanks for your contribution to my healing. I believe you were sent in my life to show me what was wrong with me, and in your presence I learned how to fix what was wrong with me. May God bless you and your family.

Last but certainly not least, to my prayer sisters, Aquila Roberts-Ford, Casselia Major-Goodlin, Doris Parker, Lynnette

Murray-Gibson and Theo Gaye Garduah, thank you all for your friendship, guidance, prayers, and sisterhood. May God continue to guide and direct you on the right path. May each of your dreams be fulfilled.

CHAPTER 1

Roderick (The Meeting)

I DID NOT HAVE any reason for visiting the bank that day except to see her. As I entered the building, my heart began to race, and my palms became sweaty. But then I saw her, and my fears instantly disappeared. She looked like an African goddess.

She was attending to another customer, so I sat in the lobby, waiting for my turn to sit by her, daydreaming about how wonderful it would be to call her mine. Although I had been watching her now for about two years, I had never gotten the courage to ask her out. I knew her name, and I often dreamed of her smile, which made me feel so warm inside. But that was all I knew of her. A woman this beautiful must be married, I thought, although I hadn’t seen a ring on her finger. She must at least have a lover.

That day, for some reason, I felt confident enough to strike up a conversation that I hoped would lead to finding out more about her. I watched her close her conversation with the other customer, shake his hand, and then turn in my direction. Oh my God, I thought. Here she comes! This girl is truly beautiful. She was about five-foot-eight, with just enough curves, and had a natural beauty: almond-shaped eyes, smooth skin the color of milk chocolate, and full lips that begged to be kissed. She appeared tobe in her mid-twenties. As I stood up to meet her, she stretched out a hand and smiled.

Hi, I’m Nichoatra Williams. You can call me Nicky. How can I help you today?

I felt at a loss for words, but somehow I managed to pull out a few. Hello, I’m Roderick Sanders … you can call me Rod, I said, fighting not to appear nervous. I need to ask a question about my check card. I tried to use it at the grocery store, but the cashier would not accept it—she said it’s missing some kind of logo on the back. Can you help me with that?

Nicky smiled. I know exactly what the cashier is talking about. It’s called Interlink, and it allows you to use your debit card at any participating store. We will have to order you a new card with the logo, but it will only take a few days for you to receive it.

Okay, great, I said.

May I see your ID, please?

I handed her my ID and the check card. I was disappointed that she did not remember me; I had hoped she would, because I had found a way to see her any time I had a legitimate reason to visit the bank. I’ve sat in this seat about a dozen times staring into those beautiful eyes of yours, and you don’t remember me? I asked shamelessly.

I’m sorry, she said. You do look a little familiar. But it is the bank’s policy that we ask to see every customer’s ID.

Well, my feelings are hurt, I said with a smile. You’re the one who opened my bank account two years ago!

She laughed. I promise I’ll remember you now, she said.

It was just a brief conversation, but now I wanted her more than ever. It didn’t matter if she had a husband or a boyfriend; I wanted to be in her life, even if just as a friend. As I sat in my car in the bank parking lot, wondering how I could let her know my feelings for her, I remembered a conversation I’d had about her with my best friend, Kenneth Jomo, who had told me that he knew a friend of hers.

I called Kenneth immediately. I knew I could count on him to connect me with this beautiful stranger who had captured my heart the moment I laid eyes on her. She could not simply slip away; I had to have her.

Kenneth promised to contact Nicky’s friend right away. A few minutes later, Kenneth called me to say it was okay to go back into the bank and talk to Nicky. I didn’t know what had been said; I’m not sure I wanted to know. All I knew was that she had agreed to listen to me, and that was enough.

I took a few minutes to pull myself together and gather my thoughts. I wanted to say the right things to her … I wanted her to like me. As I reentered the bank, she was on her way out to lunch. As luck would have it, I was able to persuade her to eat with me.

CHAPTER 2

Nicky (The Meeting Part 2)

I WAS EXHAUSTED, AND as I got ready for bed that day, I hoped the next one would be better. My day had started out with an international phone call to Liberia, and it had ended up in a business communications class that seemed never-ending. The instructor was long-winded, as usual, and it was hard to concentrate on school because my thoughts kept drifting back to the phone call. I was elated when the three-hour class finally ended.

For the past five years, I had been trying to purchase a piece of property—about three hundred acres of forestland—in Liberia, my home country. When my father first told me about the land deal in 2006, I thought it sounded like a great opportunity. I sent him two thousand dollars, which I felt would be more than enough, since he had told me it would cost only five hundred dollars to purchase and survey the property. In 20071 traveled to Liberia to see the property for myself. To my surprise, there was no property to see—my father had invested my money in some scam and lost it all. And he never told me he had lost the money. I found out the hard way.

Ultimately I ended up spending more than five thousand dollars for a piece of forestland that should have cost a tenth of that—and still I owned nothing! Worse yet, I was scammed by the person I trusted most, my own father. Needless to say, I wasangry and hurt. Still, I wanted to own property in Liberia and build a farm there. A farm would provide food and employment for people in the surrounding towns, and it also would provide a steady income for my parents.

Before I returned to the US from Liberia in 2007, my father had sworn to me that he had paid six hundred dollars to the town’s chief, who owned the property and had agreed to sell it. My father told me that he still owed a balance of five hundred dollars. Because he is my father, and because I sympathized with the fact that he and my mother were still living in Liberia after its long civil war, I took him at his word and left Liberia with the intention of sending the remaining five hundred dollars. This time, however, I would send the money to my mother, who would handle my affairs there moving forward.

My parents had been divorced for more than thirty years and lived in separate towns in Liberia. When we were children, my siblings and I were brought to the United States by our paternal grandmother. Over the years, we provided as much financial support as we could to our parents in Liberia. But my goal was to help my parents become financially independent. The farm would give them that independence and alleviate some of our financial burden in the long term.

When I returned to the United States, some of my confidence was restored, because I had turned all business over to my mother, and I had no reason to believe that she would waste my money as my father had done. But I must say that doing business in Liberia is like dealing with the mob. Everyone wants money from you—and in the end, even if you pay them, they will still screw you over. You know the system is corrupt when you cannot even trust your own parents. What a mess! I believe fourteen years of civil war destroyed more than just the infrastructure of Liberia; it also destroyed the integrity of the Liberian people.

My phone conversation this morning was with the land commissioner of Margibi County, which is where I was told the property is located. Margibi is a suburb of Monrovia, the capital of Liberia. After my father’s deceptive behavior, I had instructed my mother to take a trip to Margibi in order to verify that the property did, in fact, exist. When my mother returned from Margibi, she reported back to me that she had not seen the land but had met the commissioner, who had asked to speak with me in person. As I was unable to make another trip to Liberia, I arranged to talk to her by phone instead.

When I placed the call, I was surprised to hear the soft voice on the other end of the phone. Hello, this is Mrs. Jennairi, commissioner for Margibi. A woman—thank God, I thought. I felt I could trust a woman far more than I could any man, especially after my trust had been destroyed by my own father. (Liberia also had a female president—a first for the country and the entire African continent. Mrs. Ellen Jonson Sirleaf had been elected in 2005, after one of the worst civil conflicts Liberia had ever endured. From what I’d seen during my visit, I can say that Mrs. Sirleaf was doing a superb job rebuilding her war-torn country.)

Yes, hello, I said. This is Nichoatra Williams. My mother spoke with you about the land in Margibi?

Yes, she replied. It’s Nicky, right?

Right.

Your mother spoke very highly of you, Nicky. How are you? As I listened to the feminine voice on the other end of the line, I recalled my 2007 trip to Liberia, when I visited the commissioner’s office in Caldwell, a small town just outside of Monrovia. A couple of friends and I had started a nonprofit organization, and one of our projects was to build a clinic there, so I met with the commissioner of Caldwell to finalize some documents.

When I entered the building where our meeting was to take place, what I saw brought tears to my eyes. The dim little