“Who gave you money?”
“A detective.”
The fuck?“How much?”
“A hundred thousand.” She puffed her chest.
“That’s a lot of money.” More than she’d ever seen, I knew.
“I thought so, at first…” She looked over at the gate guard and up at the house. “But he offered it to me like it was nothing. He paid me in cash, a big wad of bills.”
My heart sank. “I see.” My mother could sniff out a grift from a mile away. She’d been doing it her whole life.
“He said he was trying to help the family out. He said I was doing the right thing if I went away quiet, but quiet’s not really my thing. You can’t take my kids, Rory.” Her beady gaze raked over me. “You don’t have the right—and I can tell by this place, the money they offered me is shit. I knew it.”
I took a deep breath, even as my heart thudded in my chest. She’d come back to ruin everything. She, who had left my brother and sister without a backward glance, without any money, without any food in the cupboards. She, who had never cared about anyone other than herself, had turned up like a bad penny once again. Her timing couldn’t be any worse. There were twelve board members and a Miranda inside Barrington Manor, all of whom would be transfixed by the truth about my background.
I needed to diffuse her. But I wanted to scream in my mother’s face, to scratch her, to roll her down the driveway straight into a ditch.
“Why don’t you tell me how you really got here, huh?” she asked. “Grammy said you’d been locked up in your room on theinternet for weeks before you left. But you never had a boyfriend over the house, she never saw you on the phone. You just up and left out of the blue.”
“It happened fast,” I said. But the words were hollow.
“Something’s fishy. They wouldn’t have given me all that money without batting an eye unless they wanted to keep me quiet.” Mom smirked at me, triumphant. “There’s gotta be a reason.”
I fought myself. My mother brought out the worst in me—panic, anxiety, hysteria. I found myself fighting with her even when I knew there was no upside, no winning. Sheinfuriatedme. Her refusal to take responsibility for anything, her constant lashing out and blaming, made me crazy.
But fighting with my mother was purposeless, and there was more at stake at the moment than my own sanity. If I sank to her level, if I gave into my emotions—which made me want to shriek at her, to try and make her see that she’d hurt my brother and sister, over and over again, that she’d abandoned them and that she waswrong—I was going to lose, and I was going to lose Josie and Bo.
I couldn’t let that happen.
I stared out at the grounds, mind racing.
“I could just start yelling again,” Mom threatened, interrupting my reverie. “Eventually, somebody up in that house is bound to hear me.”
“Don’t do that. Just let me think.” My head was pounding.
“Did you say they offered you a hundred thousand?”
“Theygaveme a hundred thousand. I took it, but I never said I wouldn’t ask for more.” She jutted her chin. “And I never said I’d sign those papers. You’re not getting the kids that easy.”
I nodded, listening carefully to her words. There had to be a way. I could not let my mother take everything from me. Not again.
“The thing is, Mom…”
I raised my eyes and met her gaze. “If I get married to Rhodes, I’ll have plenty of money. More money than I can even comprehend.”
She watched me, brow furrowed.
Do something, Rory. I had to stop this, stopher…
Having never had more than a hundred dollars in my bank account, the idea of being wealthy was completely foreign to me. After paying off Grammy’s debts, I hadn’t really thought about all the money I’d earn from this arrangement. But it was millions.
Five million.
In the back of my mind, I’d pictured being able to fix up the farm, buying Josie and Bo new clothes and backpacks for school, and getting Grammy a new Subaru. My imagination really hadn’t wandered beyond that.
I had no experience with having the agency and autonomy that came with money. But now, faced my mother’s threats, I realized that it gave me power—something I’d never had before in my whole life.
