Chapter 11 #2
Aurora met her on the front steps of the estate.
Folake, who was Black, thirty-two, a freelance journalist with a Substack that had amassed sixty-thousand paid subscribers, came up the steps in a printed jumpsuit and high heels she had no business wearing on gravel and threw both her arms around Aurora before she had even set the bag down.
“Hi, mama.”
“Hi, Fo.”
“How are you, mama?”
“Tired.”
“Have you eaten?”
“Yvette is making gumbo for lunch.”
“Get me inside this monstrosity. Halston, you are looking more handsome than you have any right to look. Hi, baby.”
Halston, standing in the foyer, accepted Folake's brief one-armed hug.
“Folake.”
“Don't Folake me. Both of you are insufferable. Where is my child?”
“Library.”
“Tell me you have not made her read in a library all week.”
“Folake. She is eight. She likes the library.”
“I am taking her to the bay, we are going to be barefoot and I am going to make her laugh. That is what I am here for. I'll be back for the wine.”
Folake swept up the marble staircase calling Imari's name. Halston watched her go then turned to Aurora.
“How does she always do that?”
“What?”
“Refill the room.”
“That is her gift, baby. That is the only gift Folake has ever had.”
*****
That evening Folake and Aurora sat out on the bayfront veranda with a bottle of cold pinot grigio and two glasses, the bay shining black and silver under a near-full moon, the cicadas droning.
Imari was upstairs asleep with the golden retriever’s curled up at the foot of the bed. Halston was inside his father's library on a call with Mason about something for the hearing. He had told Aurora not to wait up, but he had also kissed her at the doorway before he had gone in.
She would wait up.
“All right,” Folake said, sliding a glass over to Aurora. “Drink.”
“I'm drinking.”
“Mama. Drink.”
Aurora drank.
Folake tucked her feet up under her on the wide wicker couch. The straw sun hat had come off. Her braids were piled up on top of her head in a soft loose bun. She looked at Aurora for a long moment.
“Maeve always called him the longest shot of your life,” she said.
“Don't.”
“Mama, I'm telling you. The longest shot of your life. She used to say it on every birthday, every gallery opening, every time you dated somebody new. She would say Folake, that man is okay, but Aurora's longest shot is still that boy from Pinewood Hollow.”
“Maeve was insufferable.”
“Maeve was right.”
Aurora was quiet for a moment.
“How is the new piece coming,” she asked.
“Nope. We are not talking about my work.”
“We are. I have been talking about my marriage, my dead best friend and a custody hearing for forty-five minutes. We are talking about your work for ten.”
“Mama.”
“Ten minutes, Folake.”
Folake rolled her eyes. But she settled then unspooled her latest investigation with the same dry self-deprecating wit she had used to land on the New York Times op-ed page twice in two years.
She was writing a long piece about a Houston city councilman's misuse of charitable foundation funds. She had a source nobody else had and had been working at it for fourteen months. She was, she said, two weeks out from filing but her editor was nervous, and she was sleeping four hours a night.
“Fo. You need a break.”
“I am literally on a break. I am in Pinewood Hollow drinking your husband's pinot.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Mama. The break is when the piece runs. I will sleep then. Right now I am working.”
Aurora smiled.
It was the first quiet smile she had had in three days. Folake caught it.
“There she is,” she said softly. “There's my mama.”
The pocket door behind them slid open. Halston came out onto the veranda with a glass of bourbon, his jacket off and his shirtsleeves rolled up.
He kissed the top of Aurora's head and dropped into the wicker chair opposite.
Rhett was right behind him, in a polo shirt and dark jeans, two more glasses in his hands.
Folake looked at Rhett.
Rhett looked at Folake.
There was a half-second pause. Aurora, despite herself, looked at Halston. Halston did not move his face. He was very deliberately not moving his face.
“Folake Adeleke,” Halston said. “Rhett Talbot. My COO. Best friend since prep school. Texan. Allergic to nothing. Drinks too much bourbon.”
“Houston man,” Folake said.
“Born and raised.”
“My condolences.”
Rhett grinned. The Rhett grin. He sat down on the arm of the couch beside Folake and set his bourbon on the table beside him.
“LA woman,” he said.
“By way of New York, Atlanta and Lagos for two years. Don't try to put me in a box.”
“I'm not trying to put you in a box. I am asking, very politely, if you would like a second glass of pinot grigio, because there is bourbon next to my chair and I would like to drink it without being judged.”
“Why would I judge you, Mr. Talbot?”
“You have the air of a woman who judges men who drink bourbon on bayfront verandas.”
“I have the air of a woman who judges Houston in general.”
“That is the only correct opinion in this house. Halston, I love this woman.”
“Rhett. Behave.”
“I am behaving.”
“You are not behaving.”
“Aurora,” Folake said, watching Rhett over the rim of her wine glass. “He is a problem.”
“He is a problem, Fo.”
“He is my problem. I have not been a problem to anyone in three years and I am about to take him on as a hobby.”
Halston, beside Aurora, laughed.
Aurora leaned her head onto his shoulder. He laid his arm along the back of her chair, his fingers brushing the loose curls at her temple.
A bourbon-and-pinot evening with two Black women on the veranda and two white men, and somewhere in the house a sleeping eight-year-old, and a dead best friend who would have been laughing the loudest of any of them.
Aurora had the strange but warm thought that she was going to remember this moment on the veranda for the rest of her life.
Halston pressed his lips briefly to her temple. He whispered, “Mason called. He has the witness list from the Larkin attorney. We're solid.”
She nodded against his shoulder. She did not want this to ruin this moment on the veranda.
*****
The next afternoon Halston's phone rang on the desk in his father's library. Aurora was in the doorway, on her way to the sunroom, when he picked it up. As he listened. his face changed.
She stopped.
He hung up and did not say anything for a long second.
“Halston?”
“Open your phone.”
She opened her phone.
There was a screenshot waiting on her text thread with Yvette. The screenshot was from a Houston tabloid blog called The Magnolia Mirror. The headline read: MRS. IVERSON SEEN AT THIRD WARD APARTMENT WITH UNIDENTIFIED MAN AS NEW HUSBAND TIED UP IN BOARDROOM.
Below the headline were three long-lens photographs of Aurora, two days earlier, in jeans and a soft white t-shirt, carrying a cardboard box out of her old Third Ward apartment building, accompanied by Demetrius Greaves, the graphic designer who had helped Aurora design her last two book covers.
Demetrius had volunteered, when she had texted him asking who could help her move the last of her boxes out of the old apartment, to drive over with his truck on his afternoon off, because that was what Demetrius had been doing for Aurora for six years.
Demetrius was thirty-three, Black and was in a backwards baseball cap and a black t-shirt.
He was carrying her favorite art-book box on one shoulder and laughing at something Aurora had just said.
In the photographs, Aurora was laughing too.
The photographs were perfectly composed.
The headline was a lie.
“Halston.”
“I see it.”
“Halston.”
“Aurora. I see it.”
She had to make herself look up at him.
He set his phone down on his father's desk. He came around the desk to where she was standing in the doorway. He set his hands on her shoulders. He looked at her with straight steady eyes.
“Aurora,” he said quietly. “I know who Demetrius Greaves is. You told me about him two weeks ago when he sent you that birthday card. I know he is your friend. I know he was helping you move the last of your boxes out so we could close out your lease. I do not need an explanation. I do not need to ask you anything. I trust you. I want you to hear me say it before anyone else in this house says it back to me. I trust you.”
Aurora's eyes filled.
She did not let the tears fall yet. She put both her hands on his chest. She felt his heart under his shirt.
“I love you, Halston,” she said.
It was the first time she had said it to him as a wife.
He went still under her palms. He let out a long slow breath. He pulled her in against him by the back of her neck, very gently, and pressed his forehead to hers.
“Aurora.”
“Halston.”
“Aurora, baby. Say it again.”
“I love you.”
“Aurora.”
“I love you, Halston.”
“Say it one more time.”
“I love you.”
He closed his eyes. He did not say it back. Not yet. He had said it to her on the library rug the night they read the letter, and he was saving the next one.
Aurora knew that. Aurora let him save it.
He held her there in the doorway of his father's library, one hand against the back of her natural curls, the other flat against her lower back, and they stayed like that for a long moment.
He drew back, looked down at her, took her hand and led her across the marble foyer and up the wide staircase.
Aurora went, because the day was still bright outside, and because she did not know exactly what was about to happen.
He took her into the master bedroom, shut the door, took her phone out of her hand and set it face down on the dresser beside his.
He did not touch her after that.
He did not, for the next forty-five minutes, do anything except sit on the edge of the bed beside her, his hand laced through hers, and let her talk about every single thing the photographs had made her feel, and let her name every single person she was angry at, and let her cry without trying to stop it once.
After she had cried herself out, he simply tipped her sideways against his shoulder and held her there. He did not kiss her. He did not pull her into his lap. He did not do one thing with her body that day.
He just held her until her breath evened out. Then he said, very quietly, into the top of her hair, “All right, Mrs. Iverson. Let's get you a glass of water.”
*****
That night, after Aurora had read a bedtime story to Imari, had braided her hair and had turned out the light, Imari padded down the hallway in her pajamas with the Squishmallow under one arm and the wooden hummingbird in her other hand, and she pushed open the door of the master suite without knocking.
“I had a bad dream. Can I sleep in here.”
Halston, who had been sitting up reading something on a tablet next to Aurora, set the tablet down.
He pulled back the covers without a word.
Imari climbed in between them. She turned on her side and set the Squishmallow against Aurora's collarbone and the hummingbird on the pillow above her own head. She slid her small hand into Halston's and closed her eyes.
Within two minutes she was asleep.
Halston, billionaire, had his other hand laid flat against the small back of the eight-year-old goddaughter he was about to legally adopt looked back at his wife.
He mouthed across the dark bedroom, without making a sound, four words.
I love you too.
Aurora closed her eyes. She did not need him to say it out loud. She had it. She had it forever.