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“How did Mom find out?”
“At the grocery store. She was standing in the checkout line when she saw it,” Tiffany said. “Right on the damn cover.”
Nicole winced.
“Mom left her cart and walked out to her car. She called me from the parking lot.”
Nicole sank onto the edge of the worktable. “How is she?”
“She was crying so hard I could barely understand her.”
Roxanne Wright never fell apart in public and hardly ever let herself do it in front of her own family. She’d been a pageant queen once, and she still carried herself like the judges were watching, with her back straight, her smile in place, and every word measured. Even when she was angry, she could put somebody in their place without raising her voice or mussing a hair.
This story wouldn’t stop with the tabloids. Television would pick it up—Hard Copy, A Current Affair, the sports shows, all of it. So would the magazines that thought they were better than the tabloids, dressed up with nicer photographs and careful wording, like that made it any less humiliating. Soon, everywhere her mother went, she’d have to wonder who recognized her as Melvin Wright’s wife—the woman he’d spent his whole career putting on a pedestal. His queen, he’d always called her. Now, to everyone following the story, she was the wife he’d cheated on, with an outside baby on the way. Allegedly.
“Does the article mention us?” Nicole asked.
“No, not specifically—not that they would have to. Everybody knows he has a family.”
The first thing Nicole felt was relief, and she couldn’t help it. Nobody at school knew she was Melvin Wright’s daughter except Bailey, Cedric, and now Drew. Unless one of them said something, she could walk onto campus tomorrow without anyone staring, whispering, or asking whether her father had gotten a twenty-eight-year-old woman pregnant.
The relief lasted about two seconds. Her mother had broken down in a grocery store parking lot, and Nicole was worried about what people on campus might say to her. Selfish as hell.
“Where is Mom now?”
“She should be home. I’m on my way over there now.” That explained the traffic behind her.
“What about MJ?” Their brother was the hardest Wright to get on the phone. “Did you call him?”
“Yeah. I called him before I called you.”
“How’d he take it?”
“He’s worried about Mom, but it’s not like he would drop everything and come see about her.” Tiffany gave a bitter little laugh. “Work always comes first with that one.”
“Please tell Mom I love her. And call me when you get there.”
“I will. And Dad could’ve at least given us a heads-up before this story dropped.”
“Maybe he didn’t know.”
“Yeah, well. He knows now. I’m sure he’s sitting with his publicist instead of checking on his wife.”
“Mom doesn’t want to talk to him. You know that. She specifically said she’d only speak to him through their lawyers.”
“Can you blame her?”
Nicole understood why her mother was hurt, but part of her was angry too. Now they were getting a divorce before the results had even come back. It felt rushed, like she’d already decided he was guilty and there was nothing he could say. Saying any of that out loud would only upset Tiffany and make things worse at home, so Nicole kept it to herself. It wasn’t her place to take sides, though being the only one of them still speaking to their father had probably made it look like she already had.
“Mom’s hurting. I get it,” Nicole said.
“Do you?”
“As much as I can.”
Tiffany scoffed. “You still believe him?”
“Let’s not go there, okay? I don’t want to fight with you.”
