She picked up the phone. “Chloe. Oh, and Presley too. They both texted…”
She swiped and read for a few seconds. When she turned back toward me, her mouth gaped open, her attention still on the screen.
“What?” she said in an astonished tone. “No way.” She hurried back to bed and slid under the covers as she continued to read.
“What’s going on?” I asked, concern creeping in.
She let out a howl of laughter as she continued to read. “Look at the Tattler.”
“My phone’s in my pants.”
Rolling to her back, she moved next to me, holding her phone up where both of us could see it. She pointed out an anonymous post in the community news thread that said Felix James had been fired from Lansford Development. The poster claimed to be a friend of someone who worked for the company in Nashville.
“You think it’s true?” I asked.
“It’s almost unbelievable, maybe too good to be true. Except the timing… My mother intended to tell my grandfather everything, from my paternity to the fact she’s filing for divorce. If anything could convince him to get rid of Felix, that would be it. He has a thing where he insists on the company staying in the family. A divorce and no blood ties would mean Felix is no longer part of the family in any way.”
“But Felix has been with that company for years, hasn’t he?”
“Since before my grandfather arranged for him to marry my mother.”
I reared back mentally, trying to wrap my head around that. “Arranged? Forced?”
“The same way Felix attempted to force me to marry Rick.”
I knew she’d been engaged to this Rick prick, and that when she’d broken the engagement, Felix had cut her off and kicked her out. Rumors had circulated suggesting the engagement had been arranged, but I’d not really believed that was realistic. “I wasn’t sure if that was true or a rumor.”
“It’s true,” she said. “Welcome to the James family. We put the F-U in dysfunction.” She laughed dryly.
I thought about Addie and her future. My biggest wish for her was a happy, productive life, whatever that looked like for her. I couldn’t fathom how a parent could manipulate and discount their child’s life to that extent. For business? You built a business up to give your children the best life you could, not the other way around.
Magnolia continued to read the comments on the app as I tried to grasp the difference between our families. Hers was more like the soap operas my mom had sunk into in her last few years when she wouldn’t get out of bed. Crazy, unbelievable stuff. That was Magnolia’s reality.
My family might’ve been stretched for money more often than not, but I wouldn’t trade them for the world. A good family was worth a hundred times more than a huge bank account.
I noticed Magnolia tapping away on her screen.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Texting my mother to see if she knows whether it’s true. I know it’s late, but I need to know. If Felix was indeed canned, who knows what he’ll do?”
“You don’t think he’d blame you, do you?” I frowned, uneasiness swirling in my gut. I didn’t trust that son of a bitch for anything.
“If anyone, he’d blame my mother,” she said distractedly. “Or my grandfather.”
I rolled toward her, my arm across her belly, content to breathe her in and hold her while she got to the bottom of the latest chapter of her family’s drama.
“My mom told my grandfather everything a week ago,” Magnolia read from a new message. “He told her he was going to ‘make some changes.’”
I lay there listening to her periodic comments as she scrolled and texted, content to be a sounding board and a personal heater while she unraveled the truth. I couldn’t help thinking how incredible it was that she was relatively normal considering her background. I knew when we’d been kids that lots of people called her a mean girl and talked behind her back. Others hadn’t fully embraced her but accepted invitations to her parties because those were the places to be seen. Even back then, I’d seen beyond all that to the girl beneath the surface.
It had all started in sixth grade when I’d forgotten my lunch one day. I’d elected not to call home to see if my mom could deliver it, knowing she and my dad were hard at work and didn’t have time to make up for my mistake.
I’d been out on the playground after the lunch break, and Magnolia had pulled a bag of chips out, smiled at me, and given them to me. They were salt-and-vinegar flavor, which she’d said she didn’t like, but those chips had made an impression on me and helped fill my empty stomach that day. Allowed me to see beyond the rich-girl exterior to the kind gesture. As we got older, I wasn’t blind to some of her antics, but I sensed somehow that there was a girl beneath all that who was hurting. I’d had a crush on her from that day in sixth grade forward.
By the time we were juniors, when one of our old family cars quit and was beyond repair, I was allowed to use my mom’s car to get to and from school and football practice as long as I picked her up from her cleaning job each night. I remembered the first time I’d caught a glimpse of Magnolia driving her little sports car past me, up the long driveway and into the six-car garage. Instead of being intimidated, I’d been captivated. A few months passed before the opportunity to speak to her had finally arisen.
It had blossomed into a tentative, fledgling relationship. One that I’d fucked up, not her. Felix was the culprit and the liar, but I’d been the fool who jumped to wrong conclusions. I should’ve known Magnolia wasn’t the bad guy. I’d gotten to know her, had started to think we might have a special kind of connection.
