“Oh, don’t be dramatic, Scarlett.” The maid enters the room with a tray. Once she sets it on the coffee table, my grandma points at the teapot. “Tea?”
“Why do you want to send him to Virginia?”
She fills the first cup. “It’s just a quick flight away.”
A flight I can’t afford. “Why?”
“Your grandfather and I have enrolled him in a boarding school that only a handful of lucky young men have access to. He’ll get a sublime education and the experience of a lifetime.”
That’s it? She’s sending him to some fancy school? He still has two years of high school left—is that how long he’ll be gone? And she planned to keep it a secret from me?
“Then maybe you should let someone else seize this opportunity,” I say, my frustration boiling over. “Someone who actually wants it, because Ethan doesn’t.”
“The choice is ours to make, and it’s been made.” She sets a teabag into the first cup, then looks up. “I didn’t hear an answer the first time. Would you like some tea?”
I’d like to strangle her, actually, but I force myself to stay calm. Hostility won’t get me anywhere. Rationality might. “Grandma, I think… Ethan feels unwanted. He’s angry about Mom and Dad’s deaths, and he feels like I gave him up. If you send him away at the first sign of trouble—”
“Are you saying I’m abandoning my grandchild?”
“I’m saying that’s howhesees it. He’s filled with anger, and this won’t help. I promise it won’t.”
Her gaze sharpens. “Ethan isn’t fitting in, Scarlett. The way your mother raised him—” I watch her grimace. “And his actions reflect on us, too.”
“So you’re sending him away because you’re… embarrassed.”
“I’m sending him to a prestigious school where he’ll have a new opportunity to fit in with kids his age. Without the influence of that…delinquent.”
Right. So it’s either my mom’s fault or Jace’s. “Someone’sbullyinghim, and your solution is to send him away? To let bad people get away with unacceptable behavior?”
She brings the mug to her lips and takes a slow sip. “Can I know where all this sudden interest came from? You haven’t been a part of Ethan’s life for years, and now you decide you should have a say in his upbringing?”
Angry tears well up in my eyes, blurring the room’s perfect edges. I understand Ethan saying this, but her?She’sthe reason I wasn’t in his life. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
Guilt strangles me, closing my throat up. My eyes burn, but I refuse to let the tears fall, even with the same nagging voice that feels like a splinter lodged inside my brain.
I should have tried harder. Texted one more time. Called more. I gave up. This is all my fault.
She stands, brushing imaginary lint off her skirt. “Scarlett, I’m expected somewhere. So unless there’s anything else…”
I rise slowly, then shake my head. I’m more mad at myself than at her, because I actually thought I could convince her to change her mind. That there was something I could say to make her listen.
She turns and strides toward the entryway, her heels clicking loudly on the polished floor. I follow in silence, my throat tight.
She opens the door, her voice sickeningly sweet. “We’ll plan something soon, all right?”
I take a step outside, then pause, glancing back. My gaze moves upward, catching a shadow on the staircase. Ethan is flat against the wall, his eyes red-rimmed. He looks like he’s about to cry, or maybe like he just stopped.
The disappointment I feel ignites into a fiery inferno of anger as I glare at my grandmother. “This doesn’t end here,” I say, and then I shift my gaze to Ethan. “Andthat’sa promise.”
the betrayal[trope]
the gut-wrenching moment when trust shatters like a cheap wineglass; often delivered by a lover, the betrayal flips alliances, exposes secrets, and occasionally ends with someone bleeding out on the floor
My knuckles tap against the frosted glass of Celeste’s office door, and her voice calls, “Come in,” distracted and clipped.
I push the door open and step inside. She’s hunched over her desk, her sharp black bob glossy under the office light, the pale blue glow of her computer screen reflected in the lenses of her black-framed glasses. Her red-stained lips are parted slightly, like she’s just seen a ghost lurking in the pixels.
