Page 166 of Pregnant By A Rich Demon 3

Outside the windshield, New Orleans kept moving the way it always did—somebody’s radio thumping two blocks over, an old man walking his dog past the oak trees, the sky doing that thing it does in the afternoon where it goes gold at the edges like it’s trying to apologize for something.

I thought about the woman who drove up here an hour ago, feeling herself, feeling powerful, thinking she’d finally stepped into a life built just for her.

That woman was still in here somewhere. She just had two more truths to carry now, and neither of them was going anywhere.

I started the car.

“Whatever this is,” I said out loud, to nobody, to myself, to the empty seat beside me, “it’s still mine to figure out. Ain’t nobody deciding that for me. Not today. Not ever.”

And I pulled out of that parking lot like I meant it, even though inside, I was still falling apart, piece by piece, all the way home.

Chapter 18

DELPHINE

Iwas standing at the front window before I even heard the car, because a mother knows. Days of silence from my child put me at that window whether I meant to stand there or not.

Then, I saw it—a Mercedes so clean and so expensive it looked like it had been dropped into my neighborhood by mistake, gleaming against my cracked curb like it belonged to somebody else’s life. And there was a man in it, one of them security types Truth had mentioned, scanning my block like he expected trouble to walk up out the damn ditch.

My stomach dropped, and my blood rose at the same time. Two feelings that had no business living in the same body, but that’s motherhood for you.

I watched my daughter sit in that car for a long minute before she even got out, gripping the wheel like she was praying. Something about her stillness scared me more than if she’d come running up crying. I’d left that woman eleven voicemails. Eleven. I called Raven. I called Saroya. I was two seconds from calling the coroner’s office to see if they had an unidentified body matching my baby’s description, and here she comes finally, gold swinging in her ears, dress fitting her like it was sewn on, looking like a whole magazine cover.

She got out. Some folder clutched to her chest like it was made of glass.

I had the door open and my hand on my hip before she made it halfway up the walk. I’d been rehearsing this moment for days, and Lord, I let her have it.

“Truth Renois.” My voice cracked across that yard like a whip, and I meant for it to. “You’ve got some nerve pulling up here in that car, looking like a whole diva, when you ain’t called your mama in days. Days! I done left you eleven voicemails. I called Raven. I called Saroya. I was two seconds from calling the damn coroner’s office to see if they had an unidentified body matching your description!”

“Mama—”

“Don’t Mama me. You out here dealing with God knows what, carrying my grandbabies, and I gotta hear from your sister that you’re staying with Amai in the Garden District like this is a Tyler Perry movie! I’m your mother! I birthed you! I should not have to find out you’re safe through the family group chat!”

I was still going, working myself up good, finger pointing, and I could hear somebody’s lawnmower running two houses down like the whole world just kept moving while my nerves were shot. Normally, she’d stand there and let me finish, maybe even smile a little at how country and dramatic I get when I’m scared half out my mind.

But I didn’t even get through my whole sentence before I saw her chin start trembling.

Her eyes went glassy, and then she was crying—not the pretty kind, the real kind, shoulders shaking, breath hitching, that folder slipping right out her arms and hitting my porch step with a soft slap.

Every bit of anger dropped off me like a coat I didn’t need anymore.

“Oh—baby.” I was down them steps and had my arms around her before she could get another word out, pulling her into my chest the way I did when she was seven years old and scraped her knee on the sidewalk. She still smelled like something expensive under all that grief, but underneath that, she still smelled like my child.

“It’s okay,” I murmured into her hair, rocking her right there in the yard where anybody driving by could see, and I did not care one bit. “Mama’s got you. Whatever it is, Mama’s got you.”

She cried into my shoulder for a long, long minute, right there in the sun, designer clothes and all, and I held on tight because underneath all that shine, she was still just my baby girl falling apart.

I got her inside eventually, sat her down at my kitchen table—the same one that’s been there since before she could walk, scarred with knife marks and a ring from some hot pot decades back—and set a glass of sweet tea in front of her like that could fix something. Maybe it could. I believe sweet tea can fix a lot of things this world tries to break.

“Now.” I sat across from her, hands folded, watching her face close. “Tell me.”

So, she told me. The appointment. The doctor’s face when she walked in. The results.

“Two different fathers, Mama.” Her voice cracked all over again just saying it out loud a second time. “The girl is Amai’s. The boy is Kaisen’s.”

My mouth fell clean open, and I swear I didn’t have a word to say, which for me is close to a miracle.

“I thought—” I shook my head slow, trying to reset something in my mind that had already made itself up weeks ago. “I thought y’all said it was gonna be Amai’s. Both of ’em. I done been sitting here for weeks, thinking, ‘Okay, once them results come back, my baby can finally figure out the rest of her life. Get some peace. Move forward with that man since y’all clearly ain’t stopping what’s already started.”