The Widow Of Magnolia Lane

Part 1

**Warning***

**This story contains language that may be offensive to some including:  Urban vernacular, cursing, and some sexually explicit scenes***

If you love Urban Thrillers, Suspense, Drama, and Mystery.....You have come to the right place.

ALL RIGHTS ARE RESERVED

COPYRIGHT 2018 SHANNON REYNOLDS

ANY COPYRIGHT IS PROHIBITED

I HAVE A VERY GOOD LITERARY LAWYER WHO LOVES TO SUE!!!

----------------------------This Story is Unedited------------------------------------------

Monday September 25, 2017 3:35 pm

The bruise on her face, just under her right eye, was no longer plum and red. It had eased into a healing space of yellow and brown. She picked up the makeup sponge and applied concealer over it. She was never one to adorn her face with cosmetics. Natalie Dupree' never needed a reason. "You get yo' skin from our side of the family" her southern grandmother used to say.

Other than the occasional lip gloss and mascara, she never acknowledged a moment to smudge the coloring liquid over her cheeks and chin, until she married Joseph Randall.

He had beaten her more times than she could count in the past 16 years and on this day as she sat at her vanity looking at the sad reflection mirroring back, she felt a sense of peace. Today was the day she was leaving him for good.

He used to love her. Joseph stopped at nothing to win her heart. He showered her with affection and had fresh roses delivered every other day at her job. He took her to restaurants whose names she was unable to pronounce.  She ate food that she had fantasized about eating after watching the food channel. He bought her a Mercedes and would give her his credit card to go shopping anywhere she dreamed. When she asked the limit, he would smirk, "There is no limit". She had been shown love by a man before but never at the magnitude Joseph Randall could afford. He was 13 years her senior and an established lawyer at a prominent law firm in Bethesda, Maryland.

Thanks to Joseph, Natalie perceived wealth with happiness. Rich people seemed happy. Spending lavishly as Joseph did without a care in the world.   A far cry from a world she had known all her life. 

Being raised by drug-addicted parents in one of the worst neighborhoods in Baltimore, drugs and crime surrounded her. It was the norm to see her parents passed out on the couch after school with needles dangling from their arms and belts tied tightly above their elbows. The refrigerator would be bare and the house was always in a disarray. It was the only world she knew and Joe exhibited a universe that she could only dream of.  He offered her a fairy tale. 

When he asked for her hand in marriage, she said yes before he finished the sentence. At the time he proposed, she was living in a small one bedroom roach-infested apartment. She had an 8-year-old daughter and was working for pennies at a local nursing home emptying bedpans and colostomy bags.   

Maybe, she used to think, maybe this man could give her the life she always wanted. Without much thought, she took a leap off of the tallest mountain and became Natalie Randall, blind to the jagged rocks and deep ocean that awaited her flight.

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Natalie leered at the woman looking back at her. Her green eyes began to glisten with tears. She glanced over at the pictures of her children sitting atop the large marble vanity.  "How did I get here?"  Is this the life I was meant to have?"  She would ask herself that question a thousand times.