Cheron rode with me to Richmond and waited in the car with me for two and a half hours after we arrived. She said she didn’t want me to get into another altercation with Rorrie, not while I was pregnant. I had been on cloud nine since Khalil had proposed to me a week earlier. It didn’t really faze me when he broke the news to me about Rorrie telling him that she was pregnant. It happened before he and I were together and to be honest, I wasn’t convinced that she actually was. I didn’t want to bring it up to my man, but I, of all people, knew that women ran some serious games when the fear of losing their man came into play.

Cold, hard proof was what I came for. I had gotten her address off of the Internet and her schedule from the hospital that she was doing her residency at. She must have been doing overtime, because it was eight o’clock and she was supposed to get off at five. I didn’t mind waiting, since I had Cheron in the car with me; we actually joked and laughed our way through the wait. Because of my newfound cravings, we had a cooler full of Yoo-Hoo and Sprite and a bag of snickerdoodles that I had been devouring, when I saw a car pull up. My heart began to beat faster when I saw the door open. A second later Rorrie climbed out.

Without a care in the world she made her way toward the apartment and Cheron and I exited the silver Taurus rental slowly. By the time she reached her door and pulled her keys out she hadn’t even noticed we were behind her. When she finally looked over her shoulder I thought that she was about to use the bathroom on herself.

“What do you want?” she yelled.

“Calm down,” I said. “I just want to talk. I don’t want to fight. I can’t fight…I’m pregnant.”

She looked timid as she tried to place Cheron’s face. “Talk about what?”

“Khalil told me that you said you were pregnant.”

“I am.”

“Are you planning to keep it?”

“I’m not sure. Why is it your business?”

I held out my ring finger. I might as well have thrown a brick in her face. “He and I are getting married next week. I just want to know for sure that you’re pregnant and that it’s his.”

“Where do you get off? Of course it’s his. He and I have been together for…”

“Were together,” I cut her off. “You were together. Look, I’m gonna need you to use this,” I said as I pulled the EPT box out of my purse.

She covered her face and exhaled. “What’s that going to prove?”

“If you have to ask, then maybe you’re not really pregnant.”

She turned her keys and tried to enter her apartment quickly but Cheron blew past me and grabbed the door. “Are you trying to pull some shit?”

“You cannot force your way into my place.”

“Rorrie, we can handle this like adults or we can get ignorant up in here. You might not recognize her face, but this is Cheron, Manny’s ex-girlfriend. The Manny you got killed because of your little plot to steal Tank from me. I’m sure she would love the chance to tear you apart, but I’ve been trying to keep her calm the whole three hours that we’ve been waiting for you to get off work. Now if you want me to back out of it and let things pop off however they do, I can do that.” I paused and watched Cheron give Rorrie a stare-down that Mike Tyson would have been proud of. Clearly Rorrie was shaken. “Just take the test and we’re out of here.”

“Okay, I’m not pregnant,” Rorrie cried out. “I’m not. I told him that to try to keep him.”

“Screw that. She needs to take the test. We gotta be sure,” Cheron said.

I extended my hand and the test. “It’ll take a few minutes.”

She looked at me and then at Cheron, who seemed like she was fuming. I followed her to the bathroom, where she peed on the stick. Four minutes later and I had a negative result in my hand. Rorrie collapsed on the couch and erupted into tears as we headed out the door. I looked back and took what I was sure would be my last look at her, only to see her staring at me.

“Hailey,” she whispered. My eyes and hers were locked together as if we were peering into each other’s soul. “I’m sorry.”

There were so many things that she had to be sorry about but I knew that those words were for my mother. I turned and headed out the door, finally confident that the book was closed on her in both mine and Khalil’s life, forever.

We rode in silence, listening to Beyoncé’s B’day for the first hour. Finally Cheron broke the silence. “So how do you feel?”

“I feel great.”

“That’s good. I’m happy for you.”

Twenty minutes passed before I realized that Cheron had something more she wanted to discuss. “Hailey, I don’t know how to say this…”

“Just spit it out.”

“Okay, I will.” She paused and turned the volume down a notch. “You’re doing really well. New house and driving a car that cost a fortune. A husband and a baby…” She took a deep breath. “I think that if the shoe was on the other foot and it was me who had run into all of this good fortune, I would have looked out for you.”

I was a little shocked at what she’d said. “Say what?”

“I would have broken you off. It’s obvious that you’re rich and I still live in my little apartment in Southeast. I’m just saying. You know things aren’t easy.”

“Cheron, you have a lot of nerve. I’ve always looked out for you and I always will. But what do you expect me to do? Buy you a house, a car? I’ve always given you money. Hell, I paid for Madison’s tuition last year. What do you expect?”

Her feelings were hurt but she didn’t come off like a victim. Instead she told me: “I’d like some money. I’d like a couple hundred thousand dollars. If it hadn’t been for you, Manny and I would have been together and he would’ve had me living like a queen, but I didn’t get that chance.”

I shook my head. “Cheron, Manny had a wife and a baby on the way. He was fucking me on the side and who knows who else. On top of that, he probably would have been locked up by now.”

“You don’t know that…”

“This is ridiculous. But you know what, I’m glad I see where you’re coming from. You should know that I have your daughter in my will. I love you both and I’ll always look out. She’ll never go without, but I’m the one who was on her fucking back for all these years not you. You made your choices and I made mine. You think this shit was easy. You don’t know the half of it. I’m ashamed and I’m just beginning to forgive myself for what I did to me, for what happened to my mother. My life has been torture for years. Yeah, I’ve had money and material things but absolutely no peace and surely no real happiness. Until now. Until Khalil.

“And yeah, I do have plenty of money. But if you think I’m going to give it away you’re crazy. What you can do is run this boutique that I’m about to open. I’ve had you in mind ever since the opportunity came for me to open it in Manhattan. I was planning to set you up in a nice place and have you…”

“I’m not moving to New York,” she said, cutting me off.

“You really should…”

“Hailey, forget I said anything. Forget it. You do you.”

Her voice was cold and chilling. I decided to drop it and we rode in silence the rest of the way home.