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A lot had happened in the three months that passed since Taraji and Fantasia broke off their affair. After Danielle and Fantasia brought forth the evidence they had gathered to the police, a full investigation was launched. Stephanie Miller's body was found and Kelvin Hayden was arrested on charges of harassment and conspiring to kidnap. Luckily for Taraji, the case went quietly and quickly. The filming of The Color Purple was pushed back to accommodate both Fantasia and Taraji's time away, but there was no love lost, at least not for Blitz. As a matter of fact, he had worked with the cast to throw them a huge party to welcome them back to the set. So far the ladies had managed to work together professionally without allowing their deeply personal past with each other to get in the way. It was like they never had anything behind closed doors with each other to begin with. It was as if they had always been just costars and nothing else.
Fantasia was 3 months along in her pregnancy at the end of her first trimester and was still barely showing. Her stomach was still relatively small, but her hips were spreading and her breasts were growing fuller. She had revealed her affair with Taraji to her husband, and instead of going their separate ways, they decided to try marriage counseling for the sake of their family and their baby that was on the way. Couple's therapy was doing wonders for them, and Kendall was taking some much needed anger management classes. Their family was thriving like never before, and that should have been enough for Fantasia. Sadly, it wasn't. She should have been happy, but she didn't know happiness without Taraji. She would just have to fake it for the sake of having as smooth a pregnancy as possible, but she wasn't a fake person, and she wouldn't be able to keep up the act for long.
As for Taraji, she was in the best place she had ever been mentally in a long time. She had found herself a new therapist with an actual license and she hadn't missed one appointment. Over time, she was able to wean herself off of her antidepressants, and she was back to journaling consistently. She was no longer drinking alcohol, and she found that she wished she would have stopped drinking sooner. Every weekend that she wasn't booked up, she would fly to D.C. to visit her son at Howard and visit her father's grave. After being discharged from the hospital, she had stayed in close contact with her nurse, Brandee Evans. The two women were becoming fast friends with the more they learned about each other. They hung out together as often as they could with their busy work schedules, and on the days that they couldn't, they found time to FaceTime one another. Their conversations would last for hours and hours, even when they talked about absolutely nothing. Taraji was finally happy, and she acquired her happiness all on her own. She didn't look to anyone else to give it to her. She went out and got it.
Taraji was coming back from a day in the dog park with Brandee. The two women had met up so that Taraji's French bulldog could meet and play with Brandee's Maltese-Poodle mix puppy. Before going into the house, she stopped to check her mailbox. Inside was a blue envelope stamped with a golden seal shaped like a teddy bear. She furrowed her eyebrows, wondering what it could be. She tucked the envelope under her arm, proceeding to continue her trek up the hill to her house. Once inside, she tore the envelope open. It was an invitation to a baby shower. From Fantasia.
