Cherie opened her eyes, startled. She was on a couch in what looked like a living room. Candles were lit and the open windows let in the balmy night air. Sitting up, she saw an older woman calmly working on a crossword puzzle. "Oh, you're up already," she said, taking a sip of coffee.
"Who are you? Where am I?" Cherie threw off the blanket covering her and ran to the door. As she glanced back at the couch, she saw the blanket move. To be precise, there were images on the blanket, like a tapestry. A moving freaking tapestry.
While Cherie was distracted, the strange woman made a phone call. "Oh yes, she's fine. She just woke up, actually." Pause. "Okay. We'll see you then."
"Cherie? That was your mama. She'll be here in a minute. Would you like a snack while you wait?"
Cherie's stomach rumbled around the same time she remembered that she didn't know where she was. However, she was a city girl. "How do you know my name? How do you know my mom?"
***
Cherie pushed the strange dreams out of her mind, but the moving pictures on Jewely's blanket haunted her that night. So did Jewely's eyes. They were mesmerizing, the way they danced. She seemed nice enough, but there was something very not normal about her. What bothered her the most about Jewely is that her mother seemed to know her. Seemed to know her well. That in itself wouldn't be so odd. Her mother knew a lot of people. As a hospital administrator, she has to. As a former model, people are naturally drawn to her. They seem to almost recognize her, but Marguerite always plays it cool. Honestly, who would imagine that her quiet, serious mother was the first face of color to grace Elle, Vogue, and Redbook in the same month? When Marguerite first pitched her plan for escape to Cherie, she was skeptical. How was the child of Hollywood's Golden Couple going to slip into anonymity at a public school in the middle of a Florida swamp. But the plan worked. Almost too well. Not one person has asked her for her autograph. Not one! That's understandable. But no one has asked her mother either. How did these backwoods hicks forget the first black face of Covergirl? You'd think that would be memorable. The upside of hiding out here on the Gulf is that no one knows who her dad is either. They avoid watching the news, as a rule, but Cherie knows that news of her dad is going to be on everyone's tongues when school starts in the fall. That is going to be hard to ignore. How is she going to play that? Back to her initial thought, who is Jewely and why does her mother, her mother, trust her? That woman doesn't trust anyone anymore. Not even her own daughter. Which would explain why she was so tight-lipped on the drive back to the condo. She didn't say a word. Like usual.
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