Page 102 of The Unfluencer

Heat swarms my skin. I lower my forehead to the steering wheel, tightening my grip around it. “And what’d you do about it?”

As she tells me how she sat in her car and cried for exactly fifteen minutes—no more, no less—then drove straight to a newsstand, picked up a copy of the day’s paper, and turned straight to the classifieds, I feel myself rooting for her like she’s a heroine in my movies.

Her journey wasn’t action-packed. There were no high-octane car chases or masked intruders on remote islands. But it was an adventure. One that included saving every penny to fill her tank, pack up her life, and head home without looking back. Her adventure was a do-over. She didn’t look for love again until she’d forged her own path—education and a career worthy of a Graves woman.

Listening to her, so much makes sense.

Thinking about her sitting in her brass-and-brocade living room, perched on her favorite antique telephone chair, mauve-hued lips smiling, softening, the pieces fall into place. Of course she thought she was protecting my mother and me. Zion & Zara is in our bloodline as strong yet graceful Black women. Our legacy. A place to start before a career in finance, so we’d always be able to understand, earn, and manage our own money. Only then would we receive our trust funds.

It didn’t work with Phyllis, but she didn’t give up on me.

It’s a cool balm to my heart. The why I’ve always yearned to know. It’s her version of tough love. Why she never led with her heart. Or let me. It wasn’t manipulation.

I wasn’t her pawn—I’m her legacy.

“If I was a little too by the book,” she says with a small laugh, “hopefully you’ll forgive me. I was just doing what I thought was best. For both of my girls.”

It’s quiet for a beat.

I’m still recalibrating. Reframing history.

Fat tears trail down my cheeks, and I just let them spill into my lap. Suddenly, I hate that it took us this long to get here. She’s almost eighty, and I’m on the cusp of thirty-seven.

“I love you,” I say, proud as can be of my new love gene.

Gertrude Graves just about malfunctions. “Well, we don’t need to take things overboard now, do we?”

A loud laugh bursts out me as she tells me she hopes I’ll stop by soon for some peach cobbler and coffee, rushing me off the line. But not before she throws in that she’s proud of me, congratulating me on my Ascension Award, and giving me a tip to keep an eye on newsstands for an article dropping soon about Zeek Harrison.

When I set my phone on the passenger seat, I sit there for a second. Despite the tiny ache in my heart, I’m smiling as I pull up the Ellswood Times website, actually contemplating making a U-turn of my own, headed back to the man I love.

Ellswood Times

ellswoodtimes.com

SOCIETY, POWER & CONSEQUENCE

BY THE ELLSWOOD TIMES EDITORIAL DESK

ELLSWOOD — THURSDAY, MAY 13

Ellswood society has long prized discretion, but even the most seasoned arbiters of decorum are finding it difficult to look away from the rapidly unraveling scandal surrounding Zaire “Zeek” Harrison, the longtime Gentry Network executive once credited with shaping the cultural juggernaut known as The Luxe Ladies of Ellswood.

Harrison, who served as vice president of original programming and development when the franchise first launched and later became its unmistakable public face—hosting reunion specials and moderating conflicts with practiced authority—was poised to be instated as executive producer across the Luxe Ladies franchise. That ascent has now been halted indefinitely.

At the center of the controversy is a flash drive discovered concealed within the bonding board of a painting by the late Sherry Easton, an original Luxe Lady who died two Januarys ago following what was ruled at the time a tragic accident.

According to sources close to the investigation, the drive contains secret video recordings allegedly documenting a pattern of sexual harassment involving more than a dozen influential cast members. Those individuals, excluding Sherry Easton, are said to have signed nondisclosure agreements during their tenure with the franchise—agreements now under legal scrutiny as authorities assess whether they were used to suppress complaints.

The discovery has triggered a cascade of secondary investigations. Harrison is reportedly a person of interest in a suspected break-in at the 50-acre estate of tech billionaire Warner Easton, CEO of Echelon Technologies, which recently launched the RealSpace Engine to early critical acclaim. Harrison is also linked to a separate incident at the Artery Gallery, a Founders & Benefactors Legacy Ball Ascension Award-winning venue where Sherry Easton’s highly anticipated artwork is scheduled to be exhibited this coming Saturday, May 15. Investigators believe both incidents may have been attempts to recover or destroy the flash drive before its contents came to light.

Most chillingly, the Ellswood District Attorney’s Office has confirmed that Sherry Easton’s fatal car accident is being reopened, with authorities now examining the possibility of foul play.

As whispers turn into subpoenas, Ellswood’s old guard has begun to speak—none more sharply than Gertrude Graves, the city’s self-appointed moral historian, reigning Ms. Black Senior Georgia, and interim Zion & Zara president, following Cornelia Livingston’s legal troubles with The Morning Tea earlier this year. Graves, who has been a vocal critic of luxury reality television, remarked at a private Ellswood Country Club luncheon:

“Reality television doesn’t democratize society, it trivializes it. What we are witnessing now is not a fall from grace, but a correction.”

Returning cast member of the upcoming season of Luxe Ladies Jada Banks, who recently signed the NDA, said: “Silence is the price of staying. I signed an NDA because I was afraid of being labeled ‘difficult.’ In Ellswood, that label follows you longer than the truth.”