Chapter 2

My mother rushed up in a few strides and jabbed a finger at my face.

"Lucinda Henson, did you hear me? Bianca's already backed down this far. What more do you want? If you hadn't hounded people into the ground back when you were a lawyer, offending everyone left and right, would our whole family have been driven to this?"

Damon was frowning too, staring at me with a face full of disappointment.

"Lucinda, are you only satisfied when you've made every single person miserable?"

Even my own brother, Cornelius Henson, who should have died in that fire, stepped up and ordered me around.

"Go over there and apologize to Bianca and Mark. If you weren't so ruthless, pushing them at every turn, they wouldn't have had to hide away for a whole year, unable to sleep at night."

I looked at their faces, all so familiar and so strange, and suddenly it struck me as almost funny.

I took out my phone and sent a message to the Paris law firm headquarters.

"That offer to join. I accept. I'll report in three days. As my condition, please prepare a 'gift' for me."

As I put my phone away, Bianca stepped forward and took my hand.

"Lucinda, honestly, I've always thought of you as my closest friend. On the day Mark and I get married, will you be my flower girl?"

"Having you there to witness our happiness with your own eyes is the only thing that would set my heart at ease. If you won't forgive me, then this wedding... I just won't go through with it."

Mark's arm was around her at once, all doting tenderness.

"Silly girl, don't say things you don't mean."

He turned to me, like someone coaxing a child who didn't know any better.

"Lucinda, it's time you grew up. I'll have the dress sent over tomorrow. Be good."

Maybe afraid I'd start saying wild things, Bianca reluctantly let my mother agree to take me home.

The car came to a smooth stop in front of that familiar courtyard gate.

I remembered how, less than two weeks after they "died," a pack of vicious creditors had shown up at the door.

They waved IOUs, saying Mark and my brother owed more than three million from a business deal.

A wife pays her husband's debts, a brother pays his sister's. They pressed me for the money.

I emptied every last cent of my savings and still couldn't fill the hole, and in the end I had no choice but to sign away the house I'd lived in since I was a child.

Not one cent of the sale was left. It came out just enough to "clear the debt."

To buy them a shared burial plot, and to pay off what remained of the funeral loan.

I bused tables, I swept streets, I delivered takeout, until I'd worn my body down into sickness.

But I couldn't bring myself to spend money on a doctor, so at midnight I curled up in front of Mark's headstone in the cemetery, holding the cold stone.

Over and over, I thought, if only he were still here, if only he could hold me.

If only none of this were real.

My thoughts snapped back to the present. And none of it was real.

Yet all they wanted now was to drive me out of this home for good.

To clear it out clean, to make a safe, settled home for Bianca and her child.

The moment I opened the door, my heart dropped hard.

A pair of matching couple's slippers sat in the entryway, and on the most prominent stretch of the living room wall hung an enormous wedding photo of Mark and Bianca.

The two of them leaned into each other, smiling, and it was blinding to look at.

I gripped the handle of my suitcase, had no interest in looking any longer, and turned to head for my old bedroom.

I'd just reached the foot of the stairs when Bianca hurried up and stepped sideways to block my way.

"Sorry, Lucinda. Mark insisted on tearing down your room to make me a dressing room, and it's packed full of things now."

She smiled gently.

"But don't worry, I've got you an even better room. You'll settle right in."

Then she pointed toward the basement.

I lifted my eyes to her.

"That's what you call a better room?"

Bianca fussed at my collar with feigned affection, laughing under her breath.

"Lucinda, I'm only thinking of you. You've got this whole shabby, hard-up air about you now, and the way you're dressed is so..."

She looked me up and down and clicked her tongue.

"If you tracked dirt onto the floors, that would be terrible. Mark's a clean freak, you know. He can't stand trash."

My hand shot up and knocked hers away, my voice going cold.

"Who are you calling trash?"