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“Then what? You know I don’t play this vague, guessing-game shit. Somebody tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s Nina,” her stepmom said. “She’s not sick, but she is having…issues.”
Nina was her fourteen-year-old half sister, the oldest of her dad and April’s three children. Koko, the youngest of the girls, and Miles, her dad’s only son and his true pride and joy, were eleven and eight. All three were named after Kenneth Kelley’s favorite musicians, Nina Simone, Koko Taylor, and Miles Davis. London was forever grateful that her own mother had pushed back against naming her after Muddy Waters.
“What types of issues is she having?” London asked, finally able to breathe again now that she knew no one was on their deathbed. She took a sip of her water.
“I caught her taking nude photos of herself yesterday,” April blurted.
London choked on the water. “What?”
“You heard me. And not just topless, but full-on nudes! Front and back!”
“Oh, God,” London groaned. She set her elbows on the table and started to massage her temples. “Please tell me she didn’t text them to anyone.”
“April was able to stop her before she could,” her mother said.
“And I stood there and made sure she deleted them from her phone,” April added. “I watched her as she did it.”
“Did she delete them from the deleted files?” London asked. They both stared at her like she’d just flown in from Mars.Wonderful.London took another drink from the cup of water, hoping against hope that it had magically turned into vodka.
“Just a little tip,” she said. “When you delete pictures and videos from your phone, they go into a deleted files folder where they’re still available for thirty days.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that,” April said. She frowned. “I need to make sure some pictures Kenneth and I took—”
“Stop right there.” London held her hand up. “Do not evenattemptto finish that statement.” She sucked in a deep breath and slowly blew it out. She made a mental note to contact Taylor about those stress-relieving yoga techniques.
“Back to Nina,” London said. “Why was she taking nudes? Does she have a boyfriend? Did he pressure her into taking the pictures? And did you tell her how easily those can get out and fuc—freaking ruin her life!”
Dammit!She would have hoped that Nina knew better than to do something like this!
“I don’t think she has a boyfriend,” April said. “I think she likes this boy, and she took the pictures because she’s trying to get his attention. The two of them are in the marching band together. He’s a drummer, of course.”
“I thought he played saxophone?” Janette asked.
“No, it’s definitely the drums.”
“That is not the important thing here!” London said.
“Hmm,” her mother said. “As two women who were both married to a musician, let me tell you, it matters, honey.”
“It does.” April nodded.
London had never wanted to flip a table more than she wanted to at this very second.
“Fine,” she said. “This saxophonist or drummer kid, did he pressure Nina into taking the photos? And are you sure this is the first time she’s done this? Or that she hasn’t tried to do it again?”
Damn, how could April even be sure of that? Nina could have taken a bunch of nudes ten minutes after her mom made her delete the ones she’d caught her taking. Those pictures could be making the rounds on the cell phones of horny little marching band members as they sat here ordering dinner. Or, worse, already plastered all over the Internet.
“I don’t know,” April said, her voice trembling. “We got into a big fight over it. I wanted to take her phone away, but then I thought, what if there’s a school shooting or she gets into an accident? How would I get in touch with her?”
London pressed her fingers hard against her temples. She didn’t have any kids because she didn’t want to deal with this kind of shit. Yet, here she was, dealing with this kind of shit.
And where was Kenneth in all of this? Had April even bothered to tell him? Would he have left the golf course, or practice with the seventies cover band he played with on the weekends, or whatever the hell he was into these days to see about his daughter?
The server finally showed up to take their meal order, placing a basket of hot bread in the center of the table and running through a list of dinner promotions. London told him she was good with just the bread, but one look from The Mothers had her adding a side salad and an order of shrimp scampi, which looked to be the least threatening items for someone who was prehypertensive.
Of course, their current conversation was doing more to send her blood pressure through the roof than anything on this menu could ever do.
