11. “I’m still sorry.”
“I’M STILL SORRY.”
YASMINE
The lock on my front door turned before I recognized the sound. I went still, hand on the trackpad, waiting for whoever had picked it in broad daylight to come murder me.
Then my mother let herself in carrying a foil pan.
“Hey, baby.” She bumped the door shut with her hip. “I brought you some chicken.”
I made myself unclench my hand from the trackpad. “Hey, Mama.” Mental note: get that key back.
She set the dish on the counter and looked at me. “Did you talk to Hale?”
Hale’s mouth, rough against mine. The bathroom door barely locked. My hand braced on cool tile.
That was not what she meant. It couldn’t be.
Right?
“About what?”
Her lips pressed thin. “The job for your brother. You said you’d ask.”
Oh.
That.
I reached for my teacup. “I’ve been tied up, Mama.”
“So tied up you can’t make time for your family?” She shifted her purse higher on her shoulder, gaze moving through the apartment like she was trying to spot whatever had made me unavailable.
I turned back to my screen.
“Fine,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll get to it when you can.”
That was too easy. I adjusted the saturation on the image and waited.
She didn’t disappoint. “I need you to talk to CeeCee.”
“About what?”
“She won’t answer my calls. Or Shaun’s. It’s been months and she won’t even—” Mama’s lips thinned. “Your brother isn’t doing well.”
I knew this was the part where I was supposed to act as if the world was falling and Texas would be swallowed into the earth, but I didn’t have it in me today. “Okay.”
“He’s not eating. He’s not sleeping. You know how sensitive he is.”
Sensitive.
Sure.
“He needs his wife back, Yasmine. He needs her home so they can fix this.”
“That’s between them.”
“It’s family business.”
“Shaun is a grown man, Mama. CeeCee is a grown woman. If she doesn’t want to talk to Shaun, that’s her choice.”
“She’s being dramatic. Marriage isn’t something you quit because your feelings got hurt.”
CeeCee was the least dramatic person I knew. Steady to the point of disappearing. Work, home, repeat. And so patient you forgot patience had a limit. What had finally pushed her past it?
“What did happen?” I asked carefully. “Exactly?”
Mama’s eyes flickered. “They had a disagreement about the future. But couples fight and Shaun needs stability right now. She knows that.”
I sighed. Shaun had a gift for making his consequences communal. “Mama, I’m not going to convince CeeCee to do anything. If Shaun wants her back, he can talk to her himself.”
“She won’t take his calls.” Her jaw set. “You always do this. Your brother is hurting and you’re sitting here acting like it has nothing to do with you.”
“It’s not my place.”
“She’s family.”
“I’m not getting involved.”
Her fingers tightened around the strap of her purse. “Fine. When this family falls apart, just remember you stood here and did nothing.”
The door clicked shut.
I stared at the screen until the photo blurred. Then I picked up my phone.
Hale’s text thread sat near the top, six unanswered messages.
A cat eating shit mid-jump. A woman running after a car she’d forgotten to put in park.
Stupid stuff, sent at random hours. Nothing that touched the bathroom or the parking lot or that single step he’d taken toward my car before I put it in reverse and left.
I’d been busy. That had been my whole personality this week. Busy was easier than honest.
I scrolled past Hale. Past Annie. Past the muted group chat, and stopped at CeeCee’s name.
My mother’s voice floated back to me. She’s family.
She was family, but she was Shaun’s first. And Shaun didn’t share his things.
Don’t get involved, Yasmine. Not your business.
I set the phone back down.
Then picked it up again a minute later and sent the message before I could change my mind.
The next day, I sat at the coffee shop on Ridge Street. It had exposed brick and overpriced oat lattes and just enough background music to keep two people from being overheard. I’d picked it for that last part.
I got there early, ordered something I wouldn’t drink, and picked a table near the back where I could see the door.
She came in fifteen minutes late. The breath went out of my lungs.
Pregnant. Visibly, unmistakably pregnant. Far enough along that my brain reached for numbers and came back useless.
She paused inside the doorway, scanning the room, and when she found me her face did something complicated. I clocked it as recognition, then resignation. That smallest flicker of here we go.
She walked over and lowered herself into the seat across from me, slow and careful, one hand braced against the table.
“Yeah,” she said, registering my face. “Surprise.”
My mouth opened. Closed. “CeeCee—”
“I know.”
“Why didn’t anyone—”
“Shaun and your mother both know. I take it they didn’t tell you.”
“You weren’t pregnant when I left. When?”
“I was only at eight weeks when you left.”
I blinked. I’d been away for three months, making her about five months along. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired,” she said. “In more ways than one. You?”
“Okay.”
She nodded. “Tell me why I’m here.”
“I’m not here to convince you to go back,” I said. “Mama asked me to talk to you.”
“Yeah. Figured.”
“What happened?” I asked.
She laughed, a humorless sound. “Your brother is a bastard is what happened. What always happens.”
It sucked to say, but that shouldn’t be a revelation, least of all to her. She’d been with him since high school and had weathered fifteen years of his moods, his ego and his version of reality everyone else learned to tiptoe around. “That’s not news, CeeCee. Why now?”
“He’s been seeing someone—” Her mouth twisted. “Fucking someone else. She decided I should know.”
“While you’ve been—” My gaze dropped to her belly. “CeeCee.”
“I told your mother,” she continued. “I don’t know why I thought she’d— I don’t know what I was looking for. Permission, maybe? He listens to her.”
Oh, CeeCee.
I already knew where that would have gone.
She saw it on my face. “Yeah. You don’t lie to yourself about him, not like the rest of us. She didn’t believe me. Said Shaun wouldn’t do that. That I must’ve misunderstood.”
Bullshit.
She sighed. “Then it turned into men get restless, and sometimes a woman has to decide what matters more, the marriage or being right. Then it’s ‘he’s under a lot of pressure.’ And with me being pregnant, he felt ‘neglected.’” She scoffed. “I’m done, Yasmine.”
“Good.”
Her gaze pinned me in place. “You don’t think I should try to work it out?”
“No.”
She stared at me like she was waiting for the rest. The careful qualifier. The woman-to-woman speech. The part where I told her marriage was hard and men were stupid and maybe Shaun just needed time.
I gave her none of it.
Her shoulders lowered by a fraction.
“Okay,” she said softly.
The espresso machine hissed.
Then she sat back, one hand still wrapped around her cup. “There’s more. The affair is new. He’s never done it before, as far as I know. But the money…” She shook her head once. “That’s been going on longer.”
I waited.
She laughed again, the same dry humorless sound, but her eyes watered.
“We’d been saving. For years, Yasmine. For the house and for—” She gestured at her stomach.
“For this. For a life that wasn’t in your mother’s guest room.
” Her hands tightened around the mug. “He took it. All of it. Didn’t ask. Didn’t tell me. Just took it.”
My stomach turned. “What did he do with it?”
“Day trading.” She said it like a curse. “He watched some videos online, decided he was going to make us rich and be his own boss.”
“How much?”
“Enough.” She met my eyes. “Enough that we’re not buying a house anymore. Enough that I can’t afford first and last on an apartment. Enough that I’m five months pregnant and sleeping on Crystal’s couch because my husband gambled away our future without asking if I minded.”
“When did you find out?”
“After the other woman called. I went looking. Figured if he was lying about that, what else.” She shrugged. A tired gesture. “Found the account statements. Confronted him.”
“CeeCee—”
“He lost sixty thousand dollars, Yasmine.” Her voice cracked for the first time. “Sixty thousand. And when I told him I was leaving, he said it was my fault for not being supportive.”
I didn’t have words. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to need them.
“I told your mother that part too.” She paused. “You know what she said?”
I could guess.
“She said marriages go through hard times. That money comes and goes and I should think about the baby. About what’s best for the family.”
“She shouldn’t—” I stopped. “He shouldn’t—” Nothing I could say touched it. “I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” she said, looking away.
“I’m still sorry.” I set my cup down. “Where are you staying?”
“My friend Crystal’s couch.”
“For how long?”
“As long as she’ll let me.”
“And the pregnancy?”
Her hand went to her stomach. “Doctor wants me resting. Less stress.” Her look said that was funny in the least funny way possible.
She didn’t believe me.
And suddenly I was ten again, seeing a woman in a blue dress in the church fellowship hall and not understanding why my father’s hand was on her hip. The look on my mother’s face when I told her what I’d seen.
The offer was out my mouth in the next breath. “Come stay with me.”
She blinked. “What.”
“I have a spare room.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“Shaun would lose his mind.”
“I don’t care.”
Her eyes came up. Sharp, assessing. Looking for the catch.
“Why?” she asked.
“You and the baby are more important. Come stay with me.”
The silence held.
Then, “Okay.” Quiet. Like a door opening. “I’ll stay.”
Her shoulders dropped for the first time since I’d walked in.
I finished my drink without tasting it.
When we stood, I hugged her. She felt fragile, all bone and tension worn thin.
“You deserve better,” I said.
She pulled back, nodded. “Yes, I fucking do.”
I sat in my car outside the coffee shop for a long time.
The sidewalk was full of tourists. People who’d driven hours to be somewhere quaint for the afternoon. They’d leave by dinner. I envied them.
My phone was in my hand before I realized I’d reached for it. Hale’s name on the screen. The last message still the one I hadn’t answered.
I thought about CeeCee’s why. How surprised she’d been by an offer that shouldn’t have surprised her at all.
Funny. I’d always felt like an outsider in the Valentine household. Turns out she did too.
I thought about my mother in my kitchen. Woman to woman. Talk some sense into her.
I put my phone in my bag without opening the message.
Started the car.
Drove back to my apartment to figure out how to make a spare room livable before I changed my mind about any of it.