“To be fair, Gran just didn’t come home.” Piper grimaces as we watch the social carnage on the screen.
Gran’s face is right up in the camera. “This is a scam! This girl is a liar! She’s trying to slander my granddaughter. No one was trying to blackmail anyone.”
Piper puts a pillow over her face.
“This is awful. I’m never going to recover!” I scream.
“Don’t listen to her, the crazy old bat. There is no proof that Dani was with Graham prior to the evening of the kidnapping!” Colette rages on the screen.
“Of course there ain’t. That’s because I asked Graham to kidnap her.” Gran dodges the security guards who are trying to chase her down.
“How is this better than what Colette is accusing me of?” I sit up.
“I’m sorry…” The morning-show host is speechless for a moment. “You paid to have your own granddaughter kidnapped?”
“‘Kidnapped’ is in quotation marks. It was a sex thing. And no money changed hands,” Gran emphasizes.
“No one believes that!” Colette screams.
“I had to! It was a last act of desperation. Dani’s almost thirty and still a virgin,” Gran tells the entire world.
“That’s it. I’m moving somewhere where they don’t speak English.” I haul myself up.
“Dani was scared of sex. This was the only way,” Gran tells the cameras. “She sits at home alone. She knits. She claims she wants kids and a big family, but Santa Claus doesn’t bring babies. She needed to lose that V-card—like pulling a tooth. Then she could start on her new life. How was I to know that the two of them would fall in love!”
“No one”—Colette screeches as the camera follows her, as she and Gran circle each other— “believes that. No one believes that a billionaire fake-kidnapped Dani in her shitty Costco clothes to have sex with her.”
“You can’t say that on morning TV!”
The morning-show hosts don’t seem too mad. I’m sure the producers see dollar signs in a viral video at my expense.
“Dani’s got big titties, and they’re real.” Gran picks up a chair and brandishes it.
“I hate this family.”
“I actually asked around!” Gran hollers. “There’s a lot of billionaires, and there was a list of guys who wanted to be the one to pop that cherry pie.”
“Oh, really?” the host asks. “Would you share which ones you talked to, by any chance?”
“None! She didn’t talk to—”
“Don’t listen to them—please!”
“Mom!?” I stand up and stare open-mouthed at the screen. “Dad?”
My father is there, wandering around the set, admiring the furniture.
“There was no kidnapping plot. These people are making it up for attention. And to try and pull the wool over my eyes.” Mom glares at Gran. “I know that Dani and Graham met”—Mom shudders—“online.”
“How do you know they met online?” Gran demands.
“Stop making it worse!” I shout at the TV.
“Because my niece told me.” Mom sniffs.
“Dani knows how I feel about relationships that start with online dating, and these girls concocted this whole kidnapping story to try and hoodwink me. But I’m going to have to put a stop to this nonsense—it’s gone on long enough.” My mother waves her hands. “Even though now everyone knows that my daughter is dating a man she met online.”
“Piper!” I turn open-mouthed to my cousin.
