Previously

“I need to tell you something. Something that I had known for awhile and something you need to know.”

Bette removed her hand from the button and sat at Candace’s side.

“Ok, baby, but please keep it short. I can‘t stand to see you this way.”

Candace swallowed hard and blinked away the tears that were now creeping down her face.

“Sweetheart I found her.”

“Found who?” Bette said in a whisper.

Candace felt herself slipping away. Slipping to a place she has gone to many times this week. Slipping to a place with no pain. No hatred. She had to tell Bette what she knew before it was impossible to leave this place she was looking forward to.

“I found Angelica.”

Part 5

TINA

“Thanks,” Tina said and closed the door on Mary and the heat. Mary was Tina’s next door neighbor who brought by a piece of mail that was accidentally put in her mailbox over a week ago.

The envelope was folded in two and wilted, like Mary had had the envelope tucked away against her behind for a week.

Tina didn’t notice the return address, just her name, and she ripped the flap open and pulled out the fine vanilla-colored stationary. She read the letter four times and still didn’t quite understand what was happening.

A man, Marcus Jewel of the Jewel Artist Representatives, had loved the Polaroids of her five collages and had a special fondness for the one titled Sweet Thang, and wondered how many more she had and would she mind showing all of them to him.

He had shared the polariods with a gallery owner and she’d been just as excited about her work, and now they both thought she was an undiscovered talent.

Marcus wrote that he would love to represent her and was sure that she would have a gallery showing arranged before the ink had dried on the dotted line of their contract.

He thought the pieces were phenomenal (a word he used relentlessly throughout the letter) and would Tina please call him as soon as possible at any of the three numbers listed below?

Tina looked at the front of the envelope. It was her name and address typed neatly across it, but why did what was happening feel like it belonged to someone else?