“Why don’t you sound shocked?” She pulls away, peers into my face in the moonlight. “You don’t believe this, do you?”
I stare back, wishing I had learned to lie to her, but I never did. “I don’t know what to believe.”
“Believe me.” She scrambles off the trampoline and walks swiftly back into the house. I heave a sigh and follow. She’s already up the stairs and in the guest bedroom by the time I join her. She jerks my T-shirt and boxers off, tossing them onto the bed and walking over to the chair where she draped her jumpsuit. She pulls it on and slides her feet into the high heels.
“Where are you going?” I ask, as if I don’t know.
“Home. I have to warn my family.” She stops and closes her eyes. “My mother. What am I going to tell her?”
“What did Piers say exactly?”
“He says there’s an early copy going around. Several people have read it, but it hasn’t been published yet. It paints my father as some kind of hypocrite for posturing himself as a civil rights activist and pillar of the community, which he was, while having an affair with your mother, which he wouldn’t do. I know in my bones they didn’t, Ez.”
Considering how evasive my mother has always been, I honestly don’t know what to believe. A tear slips down Kimba’s cheek, which she brushes away impatiently.
“I need to get home, tell my family, figure out a battle plan, including an injunction to shut this shit down before it hits bookstores.” She grabs her bag from the bench at the foot of the bed, pausing to look at me. “Can you talk to your mom and find out why anyone would lie about this? Help me get to the bottom of it?”
I nod wordlessly and follow her down the stairs, reaching for my keys from the dish on the foyer table. “I’ll take you home.”
“No.” She looks from my keys to my face and bites her lip. “I already called for an Uber.”
I frown and glance at the front door where, not two hours ago, we shared our bodies with each other, peeled our souls back for each other. Will it only take a rumor for us to lose that again so quickly?
Her expression is implacable, and maybe I could persuade her, but it’s obvious she wants to be alone.
“Will you please call me when you know more?” she asks. “After you talk to your mom?”
“Will you promise that we won’t allow our parents’ drama, whatever this is, to come between us? Because I’m not losing you over some stupid shit, K
imba. Not again.”
“I just don’t know what to believe.” She looks at me, uncertainty in her eyes. “I don’t want to lose you either. I do know that.”
It’s a small comfort, but I take a few steps forward and press her soft body into the door. I bend to brush her bottom lip with my thumb, and then kiss her, gently at first, and then with increasing heat and intensity. The visceral attraction, the thing that magnetizes us, that has always drawn us together, doesn’t fail me now, and she’s pliant and kissing me with unchecked hunger within seconds. Her phone dings with an alert, and she pulls back, checks her cell, and grimaces. “My Uber’s here.”
I open the door for her and she rushes down the steps toward the waiting car. Before she gets in, she turns to me one last time. “Call your mom.”
So many times I probed this issue with my mother, seeking confirmation of my suspicions and hoping I was wrong, but she always managed to shut it down, play it off or freeze out my attempts. I watch the taillights of Kimba’s Uber die, swallowed by the night.
“Not this time, Mom,” I say. “This time there’s too much at stake.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Kimba
“This is ridiculous,” Kayla says from her seat at the kitchen table the next morning. “Daddy? Your source must be mistaken.”
I look at each of them, Mama, Kayla and Keith, and wish like hell I could spare them this ordeal. Mostly Mama, who has been largely silent since I broke the news to them at the emergency family meeting I called. She’s probably in shock.
“I wish he was wrong.” I thank Esmerelda for the toast and herbal tea she’s become so adept at preparing.
“I mean, Ruth Stern?” Keith asks, his face twisted disparagingly. “I don’t believe it. If Daddy was gonna cheat, it would be with somebody finer than Ruth Stern.”
All three women at the table swivel our heads to him as if on a string and glare.
“Daddy wouldn’t cheat ever,” I snap.
“You would comment on the way she looks.” Kayla sits back in her seat and folds her arms across her chest. “Typical.”