Page 31 of The Art of Scandal

Alesha’s presence deflated Rachel’s confidence. She accepted the glass and sipped instead of responding.

“I’m sure your husband had something to say about it.” Alesha was dressed in her signature white, with a wall of pearls wrapped around her neck. A reporter had once asked if she chose the color to symbolize solidarity with women like Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris. Alesha said no. “My husband left me to either go find God or fuck his way through South America. Neither would be surprising. White represents rebirth, and I did that. I started over.”

Alesha scanned the room. “Where is that son of a bitch? Did you ask him about it?”

Rachel gulped more wine. “Ask about what?”

“Don’t play dumb.”

“It’s nice that you think I’m pretending.”

Alesha took Rachel’s glass and thrust it at a server. “Oh, you’re smart. A little too smart for your own good. It makes you reckless.”

Rachel thought of the dick pic saved in her photos. The one she could easily forward to a tabloid with a time and date stamp. These last few weeks, she’d been the pinnacle of restraint. “It’s just a dress.”

Alesha grabbed her arm and squeezed. “I’m not talking about your damn dress. I’m talking about you keeping your head in the clouds, while your husband is plotting against you. I told you years ago not to trust that man, but you wanted what you wanted. Now you’re walking in here dressed in dead animals with murder flowers in your hair, telling me everything is fine.” The grip on Rachel’s arm slackened. “I can help you.”

Alesha’s eyes were wide and pleading. But the lesson Rachel had learned about accepting her aunt’s “help” couldn’t be undone with a few supportive words and lukewarm wine. While Rachel had grown up knowing nothing about Alesha Williams, the woman knew everything about her. She knew that Rachel’s mother had abandoned her. She knew that Peter was taking care of Faith while he was sick and Rachel was in college. She knew that after he died, Rachel didn’t have a job and couldn’t afford childcare. Alesha offered to help only out of obligation. Or maybe guilt.

Now Rachel could finally say the words that she couldn’t back then. “I don’t need your help.” She shook off Alesha’s hand. “I’m not that desperate anymore.”

“No,” Alesha said, exhaling a frayed sigh, like she’d been holding it in for years. “I don’t think you’re desperate. Just lost.”

“There you are!” Sofia’s voice startled them out of the moment. Rachel turned away, relieved to have something else to focus on. She forced a smile as Sofia grabbed her hands. “You look stunning.” She swept appreciative eyes over Rachel’s dress. “Can we wear leather now? Who’s the designer? There must be a story.”

“It’s actually vegan.” Rachel angled herself to show off the intricate stitching at her sides. Alesha was still hovering, so Rachel injected a sugary lightness in her voice that she knew would grate on her aunt’s nerves. “But I told Giovanni to make it impossible to tell.”

Sofia threw back her head and laughed, causing a dozen eyes to turn their way. She wore a green cocktail dress with a matching bolero shrug. A diamond choker sparkled at her throat.

“Alesha, did your niece tell you she’s hosting the gala this year?” Alesha didn’t respond and Sofia kept talking, uninterested in her answer. “People still get so excited about the Abbott name. Ticket sales have almost doubled since we made the announcement.”

“Rachel is also a Thomas,” Alesha corrected. “Our family was here before the Abbotts, remember? The first Black family to settle in the region? Her great-grandfather’s bank financed the first Vasquez Coffee plant. Did you put that on your little flyer?”

Sofia’s gaze sharpened. “You know we don’t printflyers.”

Alesha had left out the fact that while Vasquez Coffee had flourished, the savings and loan had the same fate as other Black-owned small businesses in the 1960s. They closed when their customers moved on to bigger and whiter financial institutions. Alesha enjoyed reminding anyone who would listen that the Vasquez family had abandoned their lone Black investors as soon as the Abbotts had opened their wallets. The bank closure had bankrupted the Thomas family, and according to Sofia, Alesha had been “trying to claw her way back to relevance ever since.”

Theirs was an old beef that predated Rachel, and despite her last name, she didn’t want to be put in the middle of it. “Excuse me. I’m going to get another drink.”

“Stay.” Alesha grabbed her arm. Rachel tried to pull away, but her aunt’s grip was fueled by intergenerational spite. “Did you know Rachel curated exhibits for the Museum of Modern Art?”

Sofia turned surprised eyes to Rachel. “Is that true?”

No, not completely. Rachel’s time at MoMA was a summer internship drafting exhibition outlines for shows she wasn’t around to see. It was also sixteen years ago. She hadn’t worked for another gallery since. But Sofia’s tone was starting to grate. Her brows were too high, signaling disbelief.

“It is true,” Rachel said, and name-dropped six of her mentors who were only famous in New York art circles. Sofia’s eyes got bigger and her mouth rounder with each one. Rachel prayed Sofia didn’t have them on speed dial. By “mentors” she meant listening to them speak on panels in crowded lecture halls.

“You attended Howard, right? So did Lyric.” Sofia spun around and waved at a tall, tawny-skinned Black woman with waist-length locs. Rachel’s former classmate looked the same as she did sixteen years ago. Ethereally beautiful and effortless—like she had gotten dressed by wandering through three different closets, pulled out the worst pieces, and reconfigured them into mixed-media art. This was Rachel’s punishment for being a liar. Not only the humiliation of being outed as one, but being outed by an accomplished, gorgeous woman who had also been cryogenically frozen in time.

Sofia touched Lyric’s arm. “I want you to meet our local First Lady, Rachel Abbott. Rachel and her husband are hosting the art gala.”

Lyric offered her hand with a blank smile. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Rachel’s spirits soared at the possibility she’d been forgotten, but crashed again when Sofia said, “She also attended your alma mater and studied… art history, wasn’t it?”

Rachel braced herself for Lyric inevitably asking which year she graduated, and Rachel would be forced to admit she hadn’t. Her father died during her senior year, and she’d left school three credits short of her degree. Then the conversation would spiral with Lyric realizing she wasthatRachel, the one who left in a cloud of scandal surrounding her final project, and Sofia’s nose would be sky-high again, while Alesha added public embarrassment to her long list of Rachel’s failings.

“Oh?” Lyric’s expression didn’t change. “DC is such a small world sometimes,” she said. “But you must be excited about hosting this year. Sofia has a wonderful theme planned.Spectacle.It should make for some interesting interpretations.”

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