Chapter 5: Forty Minutes
Renee turned out to be the owner of a boutique twenty minutes away.
She and David had gone to college together, decades back, and when he explained — not everything, just enough — she said, "Bring her in.
I'll have something ready."
The drive was quiet.
Aaliyah sat in the passenger seat watching the streets go by.
David kept both hands on the wheel.
"I want to ask you something," Aaliyah said, when they were stopped at a light.
"Okay."
"Did you ever suspect?
Before today?"
He was quiet for a moment.
"I had a moment, once.
Early on.
Something Sandra said didn't line up." He paused.
"I chose not to pull at it."
"Why?"
"Because you were three months old and you had just grabbed my finger for the first time." He glanced at her.
"Some things feel more true than facts."
She looked back at the road.
"I'm not angry at you," she said.
"You don't have to decide how you feel yet."
"I know.
I'm just telling you."
The boutique was small and smelled like cedar and something floral.
Renee met them at the door — a tall woman in her fifties with silver-streaked hair and reading glasses pushed up on her head.
She looked at Aaliyah once, quickly, the way someone does when they're sizing up a situation rather than a person.
"Come with me," she said, and that was all.
Thirty-five minutes later, Aaliyah was standing in front of a mirror in a deep green dress that fit like it had been made for her.
Simple.
Clean lines.
Nothing like the one Mia had destroyed, but something better in a different way — more grown, more certain.
Renee stood behind her with a pin between her teeth, making a final adjustment at the hem.
"Your father told me what happened," she said, around the pin.
"Not all of it.
Enough."
Aaliyah watched her in the mirror.
"What did he say?"
"He said his daughter worked for six months to buy something that mattered to her, and someone took it away out of spite." Renee stood up and removed the pin.
"He said she deserved to walk across that stage looking exactly like who she is."
Aaliyah's throat tightened.
"Don't," Renee said, not unkindly.
"You'll ruin your face."
Aaliyah almost laughed.
It came out slightly wrong but close enough.
David was waiting near the front of the shop.
When she came out he stood up from the chair he'd been sitting in and just looked at her for a moment.
"Yeah," he said quietly.
"That's right."
Renee refused payment.
David argued.
She held up one hand.
"Buy me dinner sometime," she said.
"Take care of your girl."
In the car, with twenty minutes to spare, Aaliyah's phone lit up.
Not Kezia this time.
Sandra.
She stared at the name on the screen.
Let it ring.
The call ended.
Then, thirty seconds later, a text came through.
*I know you're angry.
You have every right to be.
But there's something I didn't tell your father.
Something about Marcus.
You need to know before someone else tells you.*
Aaliyah read it twice.
David was watching the road.
He hadn't seen the message.
She turned her phone face-down on her knee.
*After graduation*, she typed back.
*Not before.*
She put the phone in her bag.
"Ready?" David asked.
"Yes," she said.
She wasn't.
But she was going to walk across that stage anyway.
She had earned it.
Nobody was taking that from her today.
May you like
What she didn't know — what she couldn't have known — was that Marcus Webb was already in that auditorium.
He had been there for an hour.
