22. SKYE
SKYE
I almost didn’t recognize the woman in the mirror. This is who I used to look like before my life went to shit.
Aubrey let me borrow this dress she bought well before the twins were born. It was a deep wine red satin that poured over me like water, a corset bodice laced up snug with panels of lace let into the sides with thin little straps.
It hugged everything I usually kept hidden under scrubs and swallowed up under athleisure, every curve I’d spent years trying not to have anybody look at too long.
My hair was up. A little gold at my ears.
I looked like somebody. I looked like the woman I used to be before the world took her apart, except softer now, fuller, marked by everything that had happened in between.
I turned to the side and almost lost my nerve. Then I decided I didn’t care. For one night, I was going to have eyes on me.
“Miss Skye.” Dream’s voice came from my doorway on a gasp, and I turned to find her and Rita both standing there, Dream’s mouth hanging open, Rita leaning on her cane with a knowing little smile. “You look like a princess.”
“A princess.” Rita snorted. “Baby, that’s a Queen right there. Ain’t nothing princess about that dress. Turn around, let me see you.”
I turned, feeling foolish and warm at the same damn time, and Rita nodded slow like a woman appraising something valuable.
“Mm. Yeah. You wearing that dress, it ain’t wearing you. Good.” She pointed the cane at me. “Now you go on to that party and you have yourself a time, you hear? A real one. Lord knows you earned it working in this house like a mule.”
“I don’t work that hard.”
“You work harder than anybody in it.” She said it plain, no joke in it, and it landed somewhere soft and unguarded in me before I could put a wall up against it. “Go have your night, baby.”
Dream came and pressed her little body into my side, careful of the dress, and looked up at me. “You’re the prettiest lady in the whole wide world.”
I bent and kissed the top of her head, and for one dangerous second the ache of her rose up in me so strong I had to breathe through it. Every time I hold this child. Then I set it down, because I was good at setting it down, and I straightened back up and smiled.
“Y’all are gonna give me a big head. Go on, let me put the final touches on my make-up.”
The caregiver from Aubrey’s agency would be here in about 20 minutes and then it would be time for me to head out.
The doorbell rang while I was still upstairs, and by the time I came down Kira was already standing in the foyer.
She was here for Storie. Justice wasn’t home, he was already at the casino, so it was just me coming down those floating stairs into a foyer that held Kira and all the perfume she’d arrived in.
She heard my heels on the wood and turned. Her eyes traveled over me, taking in the dress, my hair, all of it. Her mouth tightened before she could stop it. She hadn’t expected me to look this good, and judging by her face, she wished I didn’t.
“Well.” Her smile came a half-beat late. “Look at you. You’re going out?”
“Yeah, there’s a party at the casino.” I kept it pleasant.
Her face slipped and she fixed it quick. Not quick enough. Because she hadn’t been invited. She was standing in the foyer picking up a child for the weekend while the help went to the party, and it was written all over her before she could tuck it away.
“That’s nice,” she said, in the tone women use when a thing is not nice at all. “He didn’t mention it.”
“Did he not?” I let that sit there, soft as anything.
Before Kira could find her footing, Storie came down the stairs behind me with her weekend bag over her shoulder. And on her wrist, catching the foyer light with every step, was Monica’s tennis bracelet.
Kira’s eyes went straight to it.
“Storie.” Her voice changed, went careful. “Is that… that’s your mother’s bracelet.”
“It is.” Storie held her wrist up, let it shine. “Pretty, right? I’ve always loved it.”
“I have too.” Something raw sat under Kira’s words.
“Daddy gave it to me.” Storie said it light, easy, a girl sharing good news.
“The other night. He said it wasn’t healthy, keeping all of Mommy’s things locked up in that closet like she was coming back.
Said it was time to start letting some of it go.
” A small, sweet pause. “He’s been talking a lot about moving on lately. Like, a lot.”
The foyer went very quiet.
I watched the realization spread across Kira’s face.
The color drained from it, and her hand went to her throat.
She looked at the bracelet on Storie’s wrist, then at me in the red dress, headed to a party she hadn’t been invited to.
It didn’t take much to figure out what she was thinking.
Monica’s things were being passed around.
Justice was moving on. And the nanny was the one walking out the door to be with him.
And God help me, a piece of me wondered the same thing she was wondering.
Moving on. With who?
The thought came before I could stop it, warm and terrible.
Is he talking about me? And right behind it, cold and certain, the thing that always came to shut that door: He doesn’t know you.
If he knew you, if he knew one true thing about who you are and what you’re doing under his roof, he wouldn’t want you within a mile of his children.
Don’t you dare want this. Don’t you dare.
Kira looked like she might be sick right there on the marble.
“Well.” She pulled herself together with visible effort, reaching for her keys, her purse, her dignity. “Storie, go grab your charger, you always forget it. I’ll be in the car.”
Storie went back up the stairs, unhurried.
Kira turned to me at the door. Whatever she was thinking, she hid it quick and gave me a smile that never came close to looking real.
“Have a good night,” she said. “Really.”
She did not mean one word of it, and we both knew she didn’t. I stood there a second trying to settle.
Before she could head out, Storie was on the stairs again, charger in hand, and she stopped a few steps up and looked down at me. Looked at all of me, slow, taking in the dress, the hair, the heels, and it raised the fine hair on my arms.
“You look really pretty, Miss Skye.” She smiled, soft and warm, the exact right expression, the way a sweet girl smiles at a woman she likes. “That color’s perfect on you.”
“Thank you, Storie.”
“Red.” She let the word out gentle, almost fond, coming down the last few steps toward the door. “My daddy loves the color red. It’s his favorite. Did you know that?”
Kira gave a faint smile then headed out of the door. “Well goodnight!”
“Have fun this weekend,” I replied.
She was past me and out the door in a flash, off toward Kira’s car in the dark, her mother’s bracelet winking on her wrist.
As soon as she left, the caregiver arrived and it was time for me to head out and play Cinderella for the night.
I went to Aubrey’s so that we could go to the party together. She was waiting in the car for me when I arrived. By the time I climbed into Aubrey’s passenger seat, she took one look at me and hollered so loud I jumped.
“Oh, it’s OVER for these people tonight!” She grabbed my chin, turned my face side to side, taking in all of it. “Skye. SKYE. You better had come out that house looking like this. I’m calling the ambulance now for whoever sees you first.”
And just like that, some of the cold shook loose. Because Aubrey was warm, loud and real. She was mine, and she was so happy for me it cracked something open. I let her fuss. I let her be excited enough for both of us.
“You ready?” she said, throwing the car in reverse, grinning at me in the dark.
I looked out at the road, at the night, at the one good thing I was finally letting myself have.
“Yeah,” I said, and I almost believed the girl in the red dress deserved it. “Let’s go.”