The Other Black Girl(90)

“Not really.” Kendra Rae hadn’t looked up.

“Oh. Well… this seems pretty mild by today’s standards… but I’m presuming readers weren’t too crazy about it back then?”

Lynn had scoffed. “They weren’t. No one at Wagner Books appreciated it, either.” She’d walked over to the couch with two steaming mugs and set them down on the small coffee table. “Tell her about Diana, if you’re feeling up to it?”

“Wait. Diana Gordon is involved in this, too?” I couldn’t imagine the beautiful, enigmatic author from the billboards advertising her latest bestseller-turned-feature film being involved in such a nefarious operation.

“We go back. Friends since we were younger than you ladies are. But the night I left, I heard Diana talking on the phone about something Imani said.”

“Imani’s another childhood friend of theirs,” Lynn had said.

“So you think she…?”

Kendra Rae had pursed her lips and shaken her head. “That change you’ve all been seeing happen to our kind? I think someone changed her, too.” She’d taken a quick sip of her coffee. “I think it was Richard—he’s the man Diana was talking to on the phone. That’s the only explanation I can think of for why she would try to do that to me. And why she wouldn’t be seen with me in public after what I said.”

“Richard Wagner was Kenny’s boss,” Lynn had said, before I could ask. “And he’s Nella’s boss now. I’d been sensing there was something behind the connection between Diana and Richard—he’s always at her functions and shows up in her acknowledgments far too frequently.”

I’d blinked. Hazel was toxic; that much I’d known. But I hadn’t known Richard Wagner and Diana were, too. What about my bosses? Had Anna had a hand in what happened at Cooper’s? Had everyone been in on it except me? “Why didn’t you tell me about any of this before?”

“Because I wasn’t one hundred percent sure before Kendra Rae confirmed the connection. Plus, I didn’t want you to go off and tell Nella something only for us to find out Nella is working on the other side. And she still can’t know anything,” Lynn had rushed to say.

“You didn’t trust me,” I’d said, hurt.

“Don’t do that, Shani. You knew what this was: a need-to-know-basis. I’m telling you now because you need to know.”

I’d turned back to Kendra Rae. This wasn’t the time. “And you guys think he’s the one who’s been behind all of this?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me in the least,” Kendra Rae had said.

I’d thought of Diana again. I’d only read an earlier novel of hers, since most people agreed her story lines were becoming more contrived with each new book she put out. But the one I’d read—a coming-of-age story about Black friendship that spanned forty years—had been so raw and so moving that it had made me cry on a bus.

My voice had been hopeful when I’d used it again, more like a child’s than my own. “But why would Diana do that?” I’d asked her. “Didn’t you say she was your best friend?”

The ultimate sin.

She hadn’t used those words to describe what Diana had tried to do to her, but I didn’t need to know all that to know what I’d seen in her eyes. That her best friend, bestselling author Diana Gordon, had committed the ultimate sin.

A truck blared its horn at a Seamless delivery person who’d strayed out of the bike lane. I looked up at the nearest street sign, those three words reverberating in my brain. Somehow, I’d managed to get to 100th Street without noticing. It was too late to turn back now, even if I did feel sick. And afraid. What if, one day, I showed up to Joe’s and Lynn had been turned? Then what would I do? Would I even know right away?

I couldn’t sit back and watch this happen to another person. I had to tell Nella. Besides, Lynn had already said herself that she didn’t trust me.

I surveyed the sidewalk, but she was nowhere in sight, so I moved to the side, pushing myself up against the glass window of a store on the corner so I wouldn’t be in the way. Then I unbuttoned my black trench coat, a feeble attempt to cool things down a bit. But it was too late for that. The space between my breasts had grown sweaty to the point of no return. My insides felt as though they were swallowing themselves.

I’m losing it, I thought, but I realized instantly that that wasn’t true. I’d finally found it. This was the clearest I’d seen in months.

I was planning out my article pitch to Nella when my phone started to buzz. Thinking it was Nella, I pulled it out immediately, prepared to say I’ll be there soon. But it wasn’t Nella. It was Lynn. Calling me.

Her voice sounded far away. “Shani! What the hell are you doing?”

Fuck.

“Nothing. I’m just…”

“You’re trying to meet Nella, after everything we told you? What the hell,” she repeated.

I whirled around the street, disoriented. “What? How do you know that?” I said, even though I knew immediately Will had talked. Never in a million years would he side with me over Lynn. Lynn was blood. “Do you have someone following me or something?”

“Yes,” Lynn hissed, “and you’re lucky I do. You need to go black now. I repeat, go black. You’re on your own.”