up to her mouth, SUSPECTED DRUG KINGPIN BUSTED , the headline read. She could hardly believe it.
“Isn’t that something?” Anne asked. There was something in the sound of her voice that gave Jada the feeling Anne was enjoying the excitement of this.
Jada grabbed the newspaper and crumpled it. “That headline is outrageous. Why don’t they just write ‘guilty’? This man has only been accused, not convicted,” she reminded Anne. “The press has already gone too far.” She looked up at Anne as she flung the newspaper into the garbage. “When Michelle comes back to work, I hope you will all remember that she hasn’t even been accused of anything. Now, don’t you have something better to do?”
After Anne left, Jada walked out onto the floor, spoke to a few of her staff as naturally as possible, and greeted an important customer. She returned to her office, trying to look casual, closed the door, and retrieved the newspaper from the trash. Smoothing it out as best she could, she gobbled up the dearth of information. Despite the bad underwriting, it didn’t seem as if any drugs had been discovered, thank God, and it did seem as if the police had been incredibly harsh both to Frank’s face and to the house. Jada knew that since the RICO Act had been passed, police had been gung-ho about busting for profit. She also knew that success bred resentment, and Frank, cocky as he was, probably had a lot of envious enemies in the county.
The intercom rang. “It’s Michelle,” Anne announced in a breathless voice, as if Al Capone were back from the dead and calling bankers. Jada picked up the phone, watching to make sure that Anne hung up.
“Have you heard?” Michelle’s voice asked.
Jada wondered if Anne, not visible now, was still listening on some other extension. “Honey, everybody’s heard,” Jada said. “Where are you?”
“I’m at home,” Michelle managed and then she gasped, making an awful sound that Jada didn’t like to hear and hoped that Anne wasn’t hearing. She lifted the phone base off her desk and pulled it as far as she could. Then, setting it on the floor next to the credenza, she stretched the handset as far as she could and just managed to get to the door and look out. Anne and several of the other women had their heads turned toward her but immediately telescoped around, avoiding her. None of them was on the phone.
“Oh God, Jada this is terrible. This place…it’s…” Michelle began to cry. “I have to go. I have to go pick up the kids. They were fostered out last night. Can you imagine?” She started to choke up; Jada could barely understand what she was saying. Something about Frank and making a list and the mirror and something else.
“Be cool, Michelle,” Jada said. “All the shit you’re looking at, all the broken stuff, isn’t important. The babies are important and they’re all right. You can come to my house tonight. We can clean up your place tomorrow.” The poor girl. Kneeling there in the wreckage, she probably did look like Cinderella but it wasn’t the time for Jada to make a “Cindy” joke.
“Oh, Jada.” Michelle made another horrible noise and then said something else about Frank.
“Is he home?” Jada said. She didn’t want to be too inquisitive. She’d known a lot of people who’d been in trouble and now wasn’t the time for twenty questions. “Is he there with you?” she asked.
“No,” Michelle answered, sobbing. “They wouldn’t let me talk to him, but a lawyer came and said he would be home tonight or tomorrow. Jada,” Michelle whispered, “it’s a nightmare. Frank didn’t do anything. How could the police do this to us?” She lost it then, and tears rose in Jada’s own eyes.
“Michelle? Michelle? You cry, but then wash your face and fix your hair and pull yourself together for Jenna and Frankie. You want me to come with you to pick them up? I know how Child Welfare can be.”
“I can do it,” Michelle whispered,
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