Rose sat very still. She had not expected the accountability. She had wanted honesty. She had not quite believed she would get it.
Her mother’s hand was still on her knee.
“She means it,” her mother said.
Quinn said nothing. Kayla said nothing. From down the hall, Daisy and Priya and Alfredo were still negotiating the dinosaur-queen situation, entirely unaware that the world had shifted slightly on its axis.
Rose opened her mouth and then closed it again. Before she could find the words, a car pulled up outside and a familiar figure was visible through the window.
“Interviews are pre-recorded,” he said.
Rose got up. Her heart was going at a pace entirely disproportionate to the four steps between the sofa and the frontdoor, but she crossed them anyway, put her hand on the door handle, and opened it.
Chapter 34
Rose
Lizanne stood on the doorstep in her dark wool coat. She looked tired in the way that came from having spent herself completely and not yet knowing whether it had been worth it.
“I saw it,” Rose said.
“I know. Quinn texted me.” A pause. “Can I come in?”
Rose stepped back.
Lizanne came into the hallway and looked toward the living room, where Quinn had appeared in the doorway. She raised a hand. He raised one back. From further inside the house, Daisy conducted her kingdom at considerable volume.
“Your family helped me set it up,” Lizanne said.
Rose looked toward the living room, where her mother sat very studiously looking at anything else. “Of course they did.”
They went to the room Rose had been staying in—her old teenage bedroom, still carrying faint traces of who she’d been at seventeen. Lizanne sat on the edge of the bed. Rose sat beside her.
“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about Trina,” Rose said. “That’s on me. I should have come to you when Jeremy first made contact instead of handling it quietly and hoping it would go away. I was doing exactly what I accused you of doing.”
“We can learn from it,” Lizanne said. “If there’s a future to learn it in.”
Rose looked at her. “Is it really true? About Jeremy—all of it?”
Lizanne reached into her coat pocket and produced a folded set of papers. “I tracked him down. Called him.” She held Rose’s gaze. “When he sent that Christmas card, he meant it. He’s married now. A daughter, eighteen months old. He said the guilt had been building for years—he felt he’d deprived Daisy of a father and wanted to make it right. When he didn’t hear back, he decided to let it go. He said there’d been too much upheaval already.”
“Then Trina found him,” Rose said.
“I made a stupid comment in the car. Somehow, she found him. She told him the marriage was fake. That we were using Daisy for the cameras, that Daisy hated being filmed, that she was frightened every time the crew arrived.” Lizanne’s voice stayed level, but only just. “She told him you were saying terrible things about him to Daisy. That’s what made him file. She paid for the lawyer.”
Rose’s ears rang. She pressed her hands together in her lap. “He believed her.”
“He did. But your lawyer’s letters started arriving and he began to have doubts. By the time I reached out to him, he was already having second thoughts.” Lizanne unfolded the papers—an email exchange. Jeremy’s old address, the same one Rose had blocked years ago. Underneath it was the paper trail he’d kept — enough to lead back to Trina — the same documents Lizanne had handed the producers to verify before she ever sat down for that interview. “His wife found out what he’d done. She made him return the money.”
Rose looked at the last page—the bank transfer confirmation. He had returned it. Every last bit of it.
“I’m not telling you he’s reformed,” Lizanne said. “I’m telling you he did the right thing at the end, and I wanted to be certain before I brought it to you. I didn’t want to give you something half-finished.”
“I understand,” Rose said.
Lizanne’s composure shifted then.
“I need you to forgive me,” she said. “Not just for Jeremy, not just for Trina—for all of it. For how it started. For every time I decided I knew what was best.” Her voice dropped. “I have spent these last few days in that house understanding what it feels like to have everything that matters absent. It’s the way it used to be, and I didn’t know how much I hated the way it used to be until I had something different.” A pause. “Come home.”
