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WHEN I WAS Alittle girl, I dreamt that I was dancing on stage in front of an auditorium filled with people. Everything was going well, until it was time for me to perform an arabesque. I dreaded it, and I remember feeling that in my dream, even holding my breath as my leg extended behind me.
Needless to say it was perfect, just as I’d rehearsed, but as soon as my leg lowered, and I straightened, the auditorium stilled. It was so quiet I could hear my breathing, the rapid tap-tap tap-tap of my heartbeat, and I could feel every set of eyes on me. I didn’t understand it, but I remembered that feeling, carried it with me from that dream so that should I ever feel it again, I would know it by heart.
That’s how I knew something was wrong when I walked into the office on Friday morning. That feeling, the one from my dream all those years ago, wound its way through my limbs, starting at the very tips of my toes, and ending at the crown of my head.
It wasn’t my outfit. My white linen skirt, and soft denim button back shirt were brand new, and blemish free. It wasn’t my hair. My blonde locks were braided to the side, with a few wisps framing my face. I could have fooled myself and assumed it was the way I looked because everything was new and someone was bound to notice that I wasn’t wearing the same outfit several times in one week. But my intuition told me it had nothing to do with any of that.
Aaliyah saw me approaching her desk, and closed the gap between us with hurried steps. She ushered me straight into Macy’s office, and shut the door. Macy was on the phone, and she looked up at me from her desk with concern in her eyes.
“Yes,” she said into the phone, “She just got here.” With a pause to listen to who was on the other end, she pursed her lips. “Okay, I’ll see if we can get a press conference this afternoon. Until then, lay low, and avoid the press.”
She hung up, and rose from her chair.
“Something happened,” I stated, looking between Aaliyah and Macy’s worried expressions.
“Yes,” replied Macy. “Photographs of Braelynn, along with a pretty extensive story about her and Caleb, have been sold to the press.”
“But how would that happen?”
“We were hoping you could tell us,” said Aaliyah. My brows knitted together.
“Why would I know?”
Aaliyah shared a look with Macy, and a vague feeling of apprehension rooted itself in my chest. I never bothered to ask whether or not they knew about Braelynn, but I was starting to understand that there was very little about Caleb’s life they didn’t know about.
Finally, I caught on. “You think I did it.”
The ensuing silence was all the confirmation I needed, and the first thing that popped into my head was if Caleb thought the same thing. He hadn’t said anything to me when I left for work this morning, and after last night I thought we were finally in a good place. He would have told me if something like this had happened. Wouldn’t he?
I realized it didn’t really matter. I was the outsider here, which made their accusation seem plausible. Aaliyah might have been a friend, but her sense of loyalty was far greater to Caleb than to me, and the same went for Macy.
“It’s not that,” Aaliyah started, her expression imploring. “It’s just, well, you’ve been living with him, and the photo’s that have been sold to the media are quite personal. They’re close-ups, Kadence.”
“I think what Aaliyah is trying to say that the person who took the photographs had to have been in Caleb’s penthouse,” added Macy.
“Show me,” I said.
Aaliyah took Macy’s iPad from her desk, and opened the browser. It wasn’t difficult to find the pictures, or the article. They were plastered across every major news publication in the city. Something like this should be trivial, but because of who Caleb was, who his family was, finding out that he had a baby girl was newsworthy.
I gasped when the images of a sleeping Braelynn started popping up, close-ups of the sleeping infant, and a few of her looking up at what had to be a camera, her big blue eyes so full of trust. My apprehension and subsequent hurt were replaced with indignation, and a fierce need to protect Braelynn.
I wanted to tell Aaliyah, and Macy that I had nothing to do with the pictures, or the article, but I stopped short when Macy’s office door swung open. Caleb walked in, his face drawn tight with outrage.
“Give us a minute,” he told Aaliyah and Macy, his arctic blue eyes fixed on me. Both women walked out, leaving me alone with a severely irate man.
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” he asked, slamming the door shut behind him. “I gave you a place to stay and you repay me by exposing my child to the world?”
“Caleb, I would never,” I replied, my voice strong with ire. “I care about Braelynn. I would never do anything to hurt her, to hurt either of you.”
“I should have known you couldn’t be trusted.” Caleb stopped in front of me, and I could feel the sense of betrayal rolling off him in sweeping waves.
“Well,” I thinned my lips, “It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind.”
“You were the only one who could get that close to Braelynn,” he replied, never breaking our eye contact. “The question is, why? Why would you do this to us?”
His conviction was a slap to the face. He sounded so sure that I was responsible. Was it even worth trying to defend myself when he believed, so completely, that I was to blame?
I regarded him, running my gaze over the tight lines of his cheeks, and his forehead, and what I found was a man who was trying to protect his child at any cost, even if that meant disregarding how much his accusation hurt my feelings. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to know what he was thinking, if he truly thought I was capable of and willing to do what he thought me guilty of.
