Page 67 of The Wright Man

It was as if we were all playing a game where nobody mentioned what was really happening. He came home later and later. His nights out were more frequent, but when he did come back, it wasn't for long. We heard him sneak in at 3 AM, and heard the muffled conversations when we walked by his door.

I didn't want to know the truth. I didn't want to ask.

But the truth was getting louder every day.

Weeks became months... Movie nights at the Reeds became anime nights with Maleek. Wash days with Ms. Dana became wash days with me. Our grief didn't disappear—but it softened.

Until one afternoon.

We were all at the Wright house. Maleek's house now, more or less.

Tina was painting her nails in the dining room. Bella was sprawled on the rug arguing with Maleek about what character had more plot armor, and I was finishing up the last braid in his hair.

The house felt almost normal.

Then the phone rang. The landline, which none of us had bothered to disconnect after Dana's death.

Tina answered like she always did, flipping the receiver to her ear without a second thought. But this time... she froze.

The words that followed weren't even real. "Leek... It's Kareem. He's been arrested."

* * *

Angelica

Now

My eyes flew open to the present. Bedroom ceiling. Morning light. Breath short.

It was just a dream.

No, not a dream. A memory. One that never stopped bleeding, no matter how many years had passed. I lay still for a minute, letting the nightmare finish echoing inside me.

My body felt wrung out before the day had even started. The kind of tired that lives behind your eyes and doesn't care that you slept.

I rolled onto my side, still clutching the ghost of the memory like a worn blanket. It wasn't the first time I'd dreamed about Ms. Dana's death, but it had been a long while since my subconscious decided to do a double feature of two of the worst days of my life.

So why now? Why last night?

Yesterday had wrung me out. Top to bottom, inside out. And it was all still there—the good, the bad, and the impossible to name. Maleek had looked at me like I was someone worth seeing again. And Gavin had made sure I went to bed questioning whether I'd ever been worth much at all.

Maybe it brought the grief floating back up from the places I'd stuffed it into.

I sat up slowly, muscles stiff, skin dry from tears I'd tried to pretend weren't real. My throat burned a little, and my eyes were puffier than I liked—nothing a cold compress and a little concealer wouldn't fix, but still. I hated that my face told the truth before I could.

I padded into the kitchen on aching feet, hoping the comfort of routine would untangle me.

And there they were.

A bouquet of no less than three dozen roses sat on the counter in a tall glass vase—deep red, expensive, dramatic. Sprigs of baby's breath scattered throughout. Not gas station flowers this time, these were apology-aisle, Instagram-ready roses, probably delivered straight from the florist while I was still tossing in my sheets.

They were beautiful… But they weren't mine.

I'd never liked roses. Too obvious. Too cliché. Too thorny.

There was a card next to them, propped like a prop. Not even fully filled out. Just one half-scrawled sentence in Gavin's lazy handwriting:

"Sorry about yesterday. Let's do better. --G."