CAUGHT
I slide my key in the deadbolt, but the door is already unlocked. I enter, leave my shoes in the foyer and head upstairs. Wifey is sitting on the couch in silence—and darkness until the switch I flipped in the foyer bled light into the room. There’s an empty bottle of wine on the end table. Her glass is half full. Her cell phone chimes twice, two messages she ignores.
“That’s a first,” I say.
“What?”
“You’re not gon’ answer those?”
She rolls her eyes.
“It’s awfully quiet in here. Where’s Dre?” I ask about our teenage son she agreed to pick up from basketball practice although it was my turn.
“In the shower.”
I kiss the top of her head. “Thanks for the last-minute favor. I didn’t expect that briefing with my informant to take so long.”
“Mhmm,” she mumbles into her glass, swallowing what’s left.
“You left the door unlocked. Everything alright?”
“Status quo,” she says.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, sitting beside her. “You’re drinking alone without even the TV on. Your laptop is nowhere in sight, and you’re ignoring texts.” I coil one of her curls around my finger. “What’s the matter, baby?”
She looks at me for the first time since I entered the room. “Have you been following me?”
“What?” I loosen my tie and unbutton my collar.
Wifey says she had her brother, Grant, pick up our son the other day. She was supposed to do it for me but hadn’t finished her workout in time. Now she’s accusing me of showing up in the parking lot not long after she made that call. I chuckle.
“I’m not the only man with a silver Hummer, babe. Besides, if I had idle time I would’ve picked Dre up myself.”
She looks away. “You were gone by the time I left the gym, but I’m pretty sure that was you.”
“Why would I need to check on you?”
“Why were you at Chino Latino this afternoon?” she says, setting her glass on the table and shifting her body into a cross-legged position facing me.
“Chino Latino? I was . . . getting a late lunch. Take-out. How’d you know I was there? Were you?”
Wifey cocks a brow and tenses her upper lip—the look she gives our son when he insults her intelligence. She stares directly in my eyes and says her friend, Tasha, even waved at me but I ignored her.
“Oh, that reminds me.” I pull my phone from my pocket. “Grant left me a message to call him about some trouble with Tasha. Know anything about it?”
“Huh,” Wifey chuckles. “He’ll tell you.”
She collects her bottle and glass then traipses across the room into the kitchen as I call Grant.
He answers on the first ring. “S’up man?”
“Ay Grant. You tell me. What’s going on?”
“Tasha’s pregnant.”
I shrug. “Okay.”
“She says it’s mine.”
“Oh.” I sigh in despair for my newlywed brother-in-law who, despite being a klutz around women, found himself in a whirlwind relationship with my wife’s bestie—an avid swimmer in the dating pool—before he reconnected with the love of his life, our new sister-in-law. “Could it be yours?”
“Possibly. I never used a condom. Tasha said she had it covered.”
“And you fell for that? Damn, Grant. You’re forty-three years old. You know better.”
“I fucked up,” he says.
“Yeah. But you don’t know if it’s yours yet.”
“And we’re not dealing with it until she gets a DNA test to prove it,” my sister-in-law says in the background.
“Grant, why do you have me on speakerphone?”
“It’s a family matter, man. I got nothing to hide.”
“Well, your wife is right. There’s no reason to clog your marriage with that mess unless you have to. How soon can you get a paternity test?” I ask.
“August, when the baby’s born,” he says.
“Then don’t bother with Tasha for the next six months. In the meantime, focus on your family. Your daughter and pregnant wife deserve that, not this sideshow with Tasha.”
Wifey comes back in the room with a stern look on her face. “The numbers add up. It’s his baby.”
“You can’t be certain. You’re not a doctor,” I say.
“They had a relationship, honey. And I know my friend. Ask your sister-in-law if she’d like Grant questioning whether the twins she’s carrying are his?” my wife says.
I set my phone down and turn it on speaker mode. “You ask her.”
“I heard her,” our sister-in-law says. “Are you serious? I’m not the jilted ex trying to carve a place in this family.”
“Not anymore, sis. You won,” Wifey says with disdain for her brother’s bride, who emerged from obscurity and reestablished motherhood with her and Grant’s daughter once they reunited—stripping my wife of her status. For fifteen years, Grant was a single father and Wifey joyfully filled the role of surrogate mother to her niece.
“Damn, babe. That’s rude,” I say.
Grant agrees. “Yeah, that’s way out of line, sis.”
“Grant, I wouldn’t be in the pecking order had you kept your promise to stop pursuing my friends on your search for Ms. Right! Regardless of your regrets, before you married your estranged baby-mama, you and Tasha were a couple. And now you have two baby-mamas, so deal with it. Tasha and the child you made deserve that.”
“God, who’s side are you on?” our sister-in-law yells.
“The truth’s!” Wifey snaps.
“Alright, Grant. I’m gon’ let you go. This conversation is out of hand.”
“Yeah,” he says.
We disconnect and I turn to Wifey, raising my hands in disbelief.
She glares at me. “I didn’t start this mess.”
“But why are attacking her?”
“Don’t defend her. I’m your wife!”
“I know that. And I understand the anger you feel ‘cause you’ve lost the connection with your niece—”
“I’m not angry,” Wifey says.
“You’re a lousy liar, babe. I see it welling in your eyes. It’s alright.”
I try to hug her, but she pushes me away. Her phone chimes.
“Don’t make them our problem,” she says as she responds to a text message.
“I won’t. We’ve got our own problems.”
She dries her eyes. “Anyway, you hungry? What did you have for lunch?”
“Pizza. You’re gon’ cook this late? It’s almost ten o’clock,” I say.
“No. And you’re a lousy liar. Chino Latino doesn’t serve pizza.” She stomps upstairs and slams the bedroom door.