L & L Love & Liberation
Volume III
by
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Ingrid met her twitching eyes with a steady gaze, and her only thought was to get her out of her house. “Please, I don’t feel well. I want you to go.”
“Such manners! I can’t understand how my son could have married a person so uncivilized and vulgar.” Her eyes moved again to stare in the direction of the bed. “But of course there are other things to be considered. I’m sure that a woman with your experience knows how to cajole a man.”
“Get out!” she cried, “and don’t you ever come back here.”
Ina got slowly to her feet with the help of the cane she gripped, and moved toward the door, her inflamed eyes fastened on Ingrid with horrendous resentment. Ingrid walked ahead of her down the hall. At the head of the stairs she stopped.
“I’m sure you can find your way from here.”
A sudden flash of madness appeared in Ina’s eyes along with seething anger, provoked beyond control now by her agonizing defeat, firing her compulsion for revenge, and exploding the urge to hurt Ingrid, to vent the hate that steamed inside her like a boiling kettle. Her mind became oblivious to all else and she turned upon Ingrid in blinding rage. While bracing herself against the banister with her left hand she raised the cane with her right.
Ingrid stared at her in startled panic, in disbelief, and although shocked into insensibility she instinctively threw her arms across her stomach to protect her unborn child. A split second later she felt the stroke of the cane as it struck her and a sharp pain darted up her arm to her shoulder. She moaned and lurched violently to one side against the railing, momentarily stunned. Before she regained her balance, Ina threw her weight against her, pinning her there, bent backwards, and leaning out over the floor below as she struggled to free herself, her arm throbbing like an open wound, all the strength gone from it. The hands that held her were like iron, made strong by the many months she was forced to use them to support the weight her legs rejected. “Oh! God!” she cried helplessly. Where was Nadine? She realized with horror that Ina intended to force her over the railing. A million thoughts ravaged her mind in the few seconds she tottered on the verge of falling. She twisted her head around and looked down with panic stricken eyes. The distance between her and the floor below seemed much further than she remembered, but she realized that looking down from any height seemed greater than the actual distance. If she had to fall, she knew it would be safer to jump, to land on her feet. As a child she had jumped off high tree branches for the thrill of it. She recalled the tingling in her legs, the stinging bottoms of her feet, like an electric shock as they came into abrupt contact with the hard ground jarring her entire body. But she wasn’t a child at play; she was a woman fighting for her life and the life of her baby, David’s baby. She realized with brutal reality that she would not land on her feet, she would tumble end over end and land in a heap on the hard marble floor below, crushing out the tiny pinch of life growing inside her womb. With her good arm she pushed violently at the white face hovering over her, threw her weight forward and slipped out of the cold clutching hands. Her legs became tangled in the cane and she went sprawling awkwardly to the floor bruised and screaming.
Ina spun around, gasping for breath, trembling with anger, and raised the cane again, striking out blindly at the helpless figure struggling at her feet. Ingrid’s screams brought Marie on the run. At the foot of the stairs she looked up and saw Ina bringing the cane down again and again on Ingrid’s back, head, and shoulders as she crawled toward the head of the stairs on her hands and knees in an attempt to escape.
“Stop!” Marie screamed, running up the stairs.
Ingrid had managed to crawl past the reach of Ina’s weapon, but she continued to lash out whipping the cane against thin air with hissing force. She was leaning away from the banister in an awkward position, stretching out her arms, straining to reach Ingrid while her left hand clutched the railing to support her unbalanced weight.
Ingrid saw Marie coming up the stairs and made a feeble dizzy attempt to pull herself up by the railing, but she was too debilitated by the ravaging pain of her injuries, swayed drunkenly and pitched forward, tumbling down the stairs like a rag doll, rolling to a stop on the triangle shaped landing midway of the staircase. Marie rushed to her and knelt at her side.
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About the Book
Ingrid’s pregnancy unleashes a storm of unforeseen dangers created by David’s mother, Ina, in an attempt to end their marriage. Ingrid stands up to her as no one ever has because she loves David more than she fears his mother. Conrad leaves the state to avoid a confrontation with Frank Irwin. He drops back into Ingrid’s personal life months later with surprising consequences. He warns Ingrid of impending danger while David is in New York. David returns to live his worst nightmare. Ingrid looks for answers where David’s heritage is concerned, facts that can shake the very foundation of the Black’s name and change David’s future. David faces a scandal after Ingrid confronts Van Newton with her suspicions that prompts him to admit the truth that he fears will cost him his son’s respect, if not his love. The media picks up on the tragedies in David’s life and he confesses all on National Television. Ina is the key to David’s hopes and fears, being the only one who can unlock the truth that will at last answer the questions hanging in the balance between life and death, one answer that would either set him free or turn his life into a living hell for which there was no escape. An investigation by a ruthless and determined detective, who leaves no stones unturned, leads to the source of an incredible scheme of greed and duplicity that spanned more than twenty-six years and finally ends in an explosion of deadly violence as the story unravels to a surprising, almost unfathomable, climax.
About the Author
Doris Woodard Wallace brings L&L to an end with this third and final volume. She admits it has been a challenging experience, also an enjoyable one, and wonders if her novel L&L is the first undertaking of such magnitude that spans close to seventeen hundred pages. She is the author of the trilogy Flynn, Books I, II, & III. Each book is formally complete though intentionally related in basic theme. However, this is not true of L&L. Each book must rely on its sister books to complete the story and explain the meaning of love in the lives of her main characters who travel relentlessly uphill in search of liberation.