I might not have been thinking very straight when I decided to drive what looks like a creeper-van-extraordinaire past the Richmond Estate guard tower and park it in the circular drive. There’s a service entrance for stuff like this, and I might’ve been able to sneak up on their conversation had I used it.
Only, I’m not really thinking very clearly. Not at all.
My grandmother’s a difficult woman. Actually, that may be putting it a little mildly. She’s a terrifying snob who also happens to be a bully. I really didn’t want to subject Seren to her. Ever.
Probably because for basically my entire life, I’ve been disappointing poor Dave and Seren, starting with the day we met. Seren’s first impression of me was trying to save me from the police after I robbed a hardware store.
A few months later, she asked to adopt me and I turned her down.
Or rather, her husband Dave asked, but either way, I said no. In all the years in between, I’ve regretted that a dozen times at least, but at first I was too proud to say anything, and then I was too old to do much about it.
It’s not like people adopt twenty-year-old kids.
So here I am, standing at the front door, staring at a butler with a big white van behind me and Elizabeth at my side, unsure what in the world I can do to stand up for the parents I don’t deserve when they’ve invaded my grandmother’s army camp.
Unarmed.
Because Seren is always unarmed.
That’s just who she is—vulnerable right down to the ground.
Most people, in the wake of a terrible tragedy, armor up. Most people protect themselves from being hurt again. Most people shut themselves off. They become insatiable shoppers. They drink. They do drugs. They steal. They become cold and hard.
Seren asks little thieves to become her kids.
She invites con artists into her home and then she loves them utterly and entirely without reservation.
When the mayor has abandoned his own granddaughter, when her parents don’t care about her either, when the state is offering exactly zero dollars for her care, and the little girl spits in her face, Seren opens her arms and says, “Come here, you tiny little angel.”
What in the world is going to happen to my darling mother in the lair of the Richmond Steel dragon herself? She’s going to be reduced to a pile of ash.
That’s what.
Unless I can get there with a shield in time.
So I finally square my shoulders, and I stop shaking in my non-boots, and I force myself to wade into the fray to try and keep her from being roasted.
Only, I’m too late.
When I get closer to the dining room, Elizabeth on my heels, I already hear shouting. I should speed up, but instead I find myself slowing down. . .
Because something very, very strange is happening. It’s not Catherine Richmond who’s yelling. No, it’s the voice of an angel. An avenging angel.
“That little boy has been through hell and back, because of you, so how dare you—after abandoning him and his mother—not even listen to his ideas? How dare you make him audition to be part of your stupid, greedy, ugly, and frankly, lonely family? You don’t deserve someone half as good as Emerson, and I think you already know it.”
Holy cats in high heels.
Mom’s furious.
“Well. If you’re quite done.” Now that is the dragon I expected.
“Thank you for asking,” Mom says, her tone entirely flat. “I’m not.” She huffs. “I’m just getting started.”
“I think I’ve listened to about all I plan to hear.” I can imagine my grandmother sharpening her finest, most withering glare. “And until you’ve dealt with the sort of tragedy that I’m currently enduring, I’ll continue to ignore your blunt-tipped accusations.”
“Until she’s dealt with tragedy?” Dad says. “Let me tell you what my wife knows about tragedy.”
“It’s alright,” Mom says. “She doesn’t know who I am or what I’ve been through. The relevant part is this. When I was much younger, I lost a lot of people. I blamed myself when it happened, but that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t my fault they died.” Her voice softens. “I didn’t cause the death of any of the people in my life that I loved. But you? You almost did. I’m not sure how much it hurts for you to look at that darling little boy and know that he almost didn’t exist because of you, but that pain must be pretty sharp.”
She’s not railing now. Mom’s so quiet that I can barely hear her.
“That’s why I’m not yanking that stupid decorative sword off the wall to carve your tiny, shriveled heart out of your chest for hurting my darling, perfect, shining little boy. Because I think you’re in more pain than he is, and I’ve always cared about people who are hurting.”
“I’m not hurting over anything that happened twenty-seven years ago,” Catherine says.
“Lying to yourself may be the worst sort of lie,” Mom says. “Believe me when I say that I know the truth of that. But in life, you reap what you sow, and that means you can’t plant brambles and expect a harvest of delicious fruit. You didn’t earn a kid like Emerson. The fact that you want to change him, when he’s already such a startlingly beautiful soul, that’s the real tragedy.” Mom quiets for a moment, and I wonder what’s happening. “Let me make you a final promise,” she says.
I wish I could see her. I imagine she looks magnificent.
“If you can’t stop trying to change my boy, if you can’t let him shine like the star that he is, then I will ensure that you can’t hurt him ever again. If that means I need to have a nice long talk with Emerson, I’ll do it, and so help me, if it means I need a sword and a shovel, well, I’m stronger than I look, and you’re pretty old. I doubt many people will miss you.”
Ten seconds later, Mom almost runs right into my chest.
“Oh.” She startles. “Emerson.”
She’s brighter than the sun at midday. She’s stronger than a team of Clydesdales. I love her more than I’ve ever loved anyone, even my first mom. I feel horrible thinking that, but I realize that it’s true.
“Did you just threaten to kill my grandmother?”
“She did,” Catherine says from a few steps behind Mom. She’s standing in the doorway of the dining room.
I wrap my arms around Mom and I hug her, and then I say, “I love you. More than you know.” And then I release her, because I realize that I’ve been scared. This entire time, I’ve been afraid, and not that I wouldn’t inherit Richmond Steel and Grandmother’s money. That was the obvious thing at risk, but it’s not really the scary part. Since meeting Mom and Dad, I’ve never gone hungry. I’ve never had to move because rent was due.
But my entire life, I’ve known my biological father didn’t love me.
Ever since my mother died and I had no father to turn to, I’ve been afraid that it meant that I wasn’t really lovable. But in the face of what Mom just did, of what Mom just said, I realize that although I wanted Catherine Richmond’s approval. . .I don’t need it.
I know I’m loved.
Deeply. Unequivocally. By someone who knows how to love. By someone who won’t change their mind. By someone who would risk going to jail to make sure I know how special I am.
I thought Mom had no armor, and that meant she was at risk of being injured. I guess the truly brave warriors just don’t need it like the rest of us do.
But now it’s time for me to face Grandmother. The woman who loves me. . .if I become what she wants. The woman who has strings attached to all her gifts and armor covering every part of her soul.
“I appreciate the offer you made me,” I say. “It was really generous of you to invite me into your life. It was great that you were willing to teach me, to train me, and to help me repair all my flaws. But the thing is, I’ve realized today that I don’t want any of that. I don’t need Richmond Steel, and I don’t need billions of dollars, and I don’t need love that comes with clauses and contingencies. I already have the kind of love that comes with no strings at all.”
“You don’t even have a job,” Grandmother says. “You’re not afraid about that?”
“I’ll call Uncle Bentley,” I say. “I bet he can help me find one, and I bet he’ll do it without making me promise to change my wardrobe, my girlfriend, or my educational background.”
Of course, after I spin around on my heel and follow Dad and Mom out the door, I realize how brash that was. Three billion plus dollars, and I just threw it all away. I’ve lost my ever-loving mind.
Bea is going to kill me.
Lisa may not even like me.
But it’s fine.
I was right when I said I don’t need it.
Any of it.
“Are you really going to call Bentley and ask for a job?” Dad asks.
“Probably not,” I say. “I have a little pride left.”
“So you don’t practice what you preach?” Mom asks.
I roll my eyes. “Telling her what she should do doesn’t mean that I need to get help. I have a degree and a great resume.”
“You’re as stubborn as your mother.” Dad picks up his phone and presses a button.
“Wait.”
I freeze, realizing that I came here in Elizabeth’s white van. She came inside too, but somehow, during either my monologue or Mom’s she must have left. She’s sitting inside the van now, staring at the steering wheel. She looks a little shell-shocked, and I feel like a legitimate jerk.
“Hey, Bentley,” Dad says. “Well, Emerson just told off that grandmother of his, and now he’s out on his ear. Before he gets snatched up by another snooty accounting firm, I thought I’d give you a chance to make him an excellent offer.”
It’s like two trains are barreling down the line, both of which I need to deal with, and I’m not sure what to do with either. I should be stopping Dad, and I should be apologizing to Elizabeth. I was just telling her that I’d help her, but then I burned down the bridge I would have needed to take to get her help.
I suck.
It was a selfish thing to do. I should have bitten my tongue, at least until she had a couple decent donors. I know I’m only a fake boyfriend, but I’m still a terrible one.
“He wants to talk to you.” Dad shoves his phone at me.
“Emerson,” Uncle Bentley says. “I offered you a job right out of school, and you turned me down.”
“You said yourself at that party that you don’t hire the children of people you know.”
“Society fops,” Uncle Bentley says. “Not my nephew.”
“Still, I can find a job,” I say, but it sounds half-hearted, even to me.
“You’re not listening. After that catch you made for your grandma—the one she didn’t even listen to—I really want you on my team. That’s exactly what we do. We find redundancies and eliminate them. We streamline. We repair and improve. I bet you’d be great at carving out the salvageable parts of companies, too.”
I grunt.
“Look. You didn’t listen to me the last time, but I mean it this time. I’d love to double your salary, and I’ll even include a performance bonus. Come work for me.”
Is it a bad idea to work for family? It didn’t work out well for me the last time, that’s for sure. But maybe what I said was true. Bentley’s real family, even if we’re not related. He’s more of an uncle than anyone else has ever been to me. “Okay,” I say. “But I want my bonus to go to Elizabeth’s shelter.”
“Done,” he says.
“Text me where to come Monday. And Uncle Bentley—thanks.” I hand the phone back to Dad.
“It’s going to be okay.” Mom hugs me tightly, and then she shoves me toward the van. Before I can even wave goodbye, she and Dad are briskly walking toward their car.
Elizabeth’s still staring at the steering wheel.
Even when I open the creaky passenger door, she doesn’t move.
“It was pretty heated in there,” I say.
She’s still staring. I’m beginning to worry that she might be in shock.
“But listen, Uncle Bentley actually did hire me, and I told him I want my bonus to go to the shelter.” I wince as I say it. As if some year-end bonus will somehow help her right now, in her time of ultimate crisis. “But, like, I know that’s not really what you need,” I say lamely, closing my eyes and trying to figure out how to fix this.
She inhales sharply.
I open my eyes and watch.
Her hands tighten around the steering wheel. “You told her just exactly what you should have, and now you’re free.” She turns toward me, a smile plastered on her face. It’s clearly fake.
“It was selfish, and I’m sorry.”
She frowns, the fake smile thankfully melting away. “It was actually the opposite of selfish.” This time her kind smile is real. “It was a pretty moving monologue. You and your parents know more about family than she does, that’s for sure.”
“I walked away from all that money, and I told off a grieving mother.”
“I’m not sure Catherine Richmond has a heart under there to grieve with,” Elizabeth says. “If you opened her up, they might just find an account ledger.”
That image makes me laugh. “I think her heart has just been unused for a while.”
“Well, either way, you’re free now.” She isn’t smiling, but she looks resolved. “Which means. . .”
“I can’t really help you.” I feel awful. “I’m so sorry. I swear I didn’t think about that.”
“Emerson,” she says. “That’s not what I’m saying. My problems are my problems. What I mean is, you don’t need to fake date me anymore. You can call Lisa and you guys can get back together. Finally.” Her smile’s forced again, but her words sound real. “I wish you all the best.”
Because there’s no reason for she and I to date any more. Obviously.
“Right. Of course you do.” I nod woodenly. “And of course I wish you the best, too.”
“You don’t need to give your bonus to the shelter.” She starts the van, and she pulls into the drive, headed out. “It’s such a nice gesture, but it’s not really practical. You’ll probably need that money.”
“I will?”
“For the wedding.” Her lip’s twisted in humor. “I doubt Lisa will be satisfied with a small, low-key wedding.”
“I guess not.” I hadn’t even thought about a wedding. Geez. Thinking about that gives me major anxiety, but I’m not sure why. I doubt it’ll be that expensive. Doesn’t the bride usually pay for that?
Elizabeth keeps talking about the wedding, all the way back to the shelter where my car’s parked. She asks me if we have a lot of friends in common. She asks if any of my siblings have gotten married—no way—and whether I’d want them to be in the wedding party. What the heck is a wedding party? The more she talks, the more panicked I feel. Probably because I haven’t even talked to Lisa yet. That’s surely why.
Only, when Elizabeth parks, I get this terrible feeling in my stomach. I feel. . .sick. Like maybe we ate something bad. Maybe it’s that I’m hungry. We skipped dinner.
“Did you want to grab something to eat?” I ask. “I’ll pay.”
She shakes her head slowly. “Nah, you don’t have to do that.”
“I want to,” I say.
When she whips her head toward me, her eyes look resolved. Like she’s come to some kind of conclusion. “Emerson, you were great. And the idea we had, well, it wasn’t a bad one.”
“I didn’t really help—”
“Pshaw,” she says. “You got me not one, but two ten thousand dollar donations I’d never have gotten otherwise.”
“But you need—”
“Emerson.”
“Yeah.”
“Get out of this car and go talk to that girl you’re crazy about.”
Lisa. She’s talking about Lisa.
“You’ve had to hold off, but now you don’t. Okay?” Why does she look so weird?
“How much more would you need—”
“I have most of a downpayment, thanks to Hottie,” she says. “And I have two more cash donations that will pay for the rest. I have a job now, and that will be enough to look like a steady prospect to a bank. As long as I’m smart and wait for a good place, I’ll be just fine.”
Waiting for a good place means all those animals we just took. . .
“Emerson, I know what you’re thinking, and you can stop. Your conscience is clear, I swear, okay? You were right. I can’t be responsible for the world. I do what I can, and the rest is what it is.” She tosses her head at the door. “Go already.”
I finally listen, but I’m preoccupied the whole way home. Elizabeth sold her horse—the one she loves. She has no one to ride. Some rich lady has him. She lost her shelter. She’s working half the day so she can get a loan to buy a new one that no one can just take away, but she has no real plan for funding it beyond that. Is she just going to be stuck paying for it out of pocket?
I’m still worrying when I get back to my apartment. When I walk up the sidewalk leading to our door, I slow down. Because the strident voices up ahead are ones I’m very familiar with.
Bea isn’t shouting, but she’s not happy. “I told you. I have the same cell phone number for him that you do. I don’t know the address of his grandmother’s house, and it’s not listed. So unless you’re planning to pay rent and sublet his room—”
“You’re saying that you’re his sister, but you can’t even reach him?” Lisa sounds pretty miffed.
“I’m saying that when I call my brother, he calls me back. Presumably that’s because he wants to talk to me. If he’s not calling you back, maybe take the hint.” Wow, Bea is always nice. She must be royally ticked.
“Hey, guys,” I say. “No need to worry about my address—I’m moving back in here today.”
“You are?” Jake’s head pops up behind Bea. “So does that mean I have to move all my crap out of your room?”
I hope he’s kidding.
“Hey.” Lisa looks nervous when she turns around to face me. I wonder why she would be. “You haven’t been answering your phone.”
I smack my forehead. “It didn’t charge last night for some reason. It must have died. It’s been a long day.”
“It has?” Lisa steps toward me. “Have you eaten? We can talk about it over dinner.”
“I guess,” I say, suddenly not feeling very hungry.
“But, like, are you really moving back in?” Jake’s still hanging on the side of the doorframe.
“Yes,” I say.
He swears under his breath and disappears. Sometimes he really makes me angry. Was he actually using my room as a storage space? I don’t even want to think about what kind of stuff he’s slung in there. Or worse, which of my things he’s rummaged through. I should have bought a lock for the door.
Actually, he’d probably just have picked it. The guy’s actually a criminal.
“Make sure it’s clean when I get back,” I tell Bea.
She’s laughing as she closes the door. I’m not sure whether that means she won’t be able to, or whether she won’t need to do much and I’m worrying over a joke. . .
“Em?”
In the two years we’ve known each other, Lisa has never once called me Em. “Yeah.”
“You ready?”
She’s being really strange. Usually she kind of orders me around. Now that I think about it, it’s a little odd that I liked that. But she’s never been nervous or tentative like this. Maybe it was the confidence that I liked and that’s what’s bugging me right now. “Let’s go.”
We’re nearly to my car when she says, “Why are you moving back in?”
“Oh.” I take a few steps to the car and turn, leaning against it. “It’s been a really weird day.” I exhale. “It feels almost like I’ve been running all day.”
“What happened?” She rearranges her purse strap so it lies flat and tilts her head.
“I spent the morning helping Elizabeth.”
Her entire body stiffens.
“The shelter’s closing, and she had to surrender all the animals to a bigger shelter in the city. It wasn’t very fun.”
“Distasteful,” she says.
“I mean, it wasn’t that.” I’m not being very clear. “She loves those animals. She calls them all by names, and she wanted to find them homes. So surrendering them all. . .it was really depressing.”
“Why did you have to go?” Her frown bugs me for some reason. “It’s not your shelter.”
“I didn’t have to go, but I felt like I ought to lend a hand.”
“Meanwhile, I haven’t heard from you at all.”
“Elizabeth’s my girlfriend, though.” Although, technically, she never really was, and now she isn’t at all. Still. “Then, after that, I heard from Uncle Bentley, and he said Mom and Dad were going to talk to Grandmother, and I rushed over to avert a disaster, and. . .” I sigh. “I was too late.”
Her eyes widen. “Oh, no. What happened?”
“Actually it was really good.” I nod slowly. “It was what needed to happen. I realized that Grandmother was using her money as a way to order me around. I mean, I knew that? But I guess. . .she wasn’t even listening to me. I’m not sure she ever would have.”
“But Richmond Steel is a really massive company,” Lisa says. “It might be worth letting her order you around a little to learn how to manage it.”
“Sure, but she was telling me who I could date, and what I had to do every day, and when I found a way to save the company money, she didn’t even listen.”
“You found a way to manage her company better?” Lisa arches one eyebrow. “Really? Because that sounds kind of. . .condescending. I can see why she didn’t want to hear that from you.”
“But I was right,” I say. “Uncle Bentley thought it was great, too, and he would know—that’s literally his job.”
“You talked to someone else about her company?” Lisa cringes.
It feels like I’m being audited or something. “Yes, about my family’s company, before going to her about it, to make sure I wasn’t wasting her time.”
“Emerson. You just haven’t ever really had a family, so you don’t know, but that was really disloyal.”
“I’ve never had a real family?”
“Not until now,” she says. “I can talk to her if you want. I can explain.”
“I don’t need you to explain,” I say. “Actually, I just straight up think you’re wrong.”
“So your grandmother was fine with all this, then? With you telling her what to change about the company?”
“No. She was really upset.” I fold my arms.
“Forget dinner. We need to go over there right now. You can introduce me to her, and we can apologize.”
“I’m not going to do that,” I say. “She doesn’t need to meet you.”
“Okay, that’s fair. She doesn’t have to meet me yet—no reason to upset her further on the same day. But you need to tell her that you were sorry and convince her that you’re learning.”
I shake my head.
“Emerson.” She steps closer, her arm outstretched. “Look, this is confusing and it feels suffocating too, maybe, but that’s what family is.”
“No.” I knock her outstretched hand away. “That’s not what family is. Dave and Seren have never suffocated me. They’ve never tried to tell me what to do or who to date.” If they had, I’m guessing they’d have had their opinions on Lisa, who hid that we were even dating from her parents.
“Well, when you have a real family, it’s different. Trust me.”
A real family. That word again. “I have a real family,” I say. “I have a healthy family, and I have a strong one.”
“Your so-called brother just co-opted your room and doesn’t want to give it back.” She snorts.
“That may be the most real thing any family member can do,” I say. “That’s what siblings do. They get all up in your face and they bug you and they badger you.” I realize, as I say it, that it’s true. I get really frustrated with Jake—but he is my brother.
“What you have is a cobbled-together band of misfits, and it was really nice of Dave and Seren to take you all in, but with your grandmother, you have a shot at a real, stable family.”
“My family is stable,” I say. “And my grandmother isn’t really much of a grandmother. I feel like I’m being recruited for a sports team, and if I don’t do what they say, they won’t sign the commitment letter.”
“That’s not how that works,” Lisa says.
“Whatever,” I say. “The point is that I told Grandmother I was done with her ultimatums. I said I’m not a performing monkey, and then I quit.”
Lisa grabs my arm and tries to turn me toward the car. “We can still fix this.”
“No.” I shake her arm off. “And I’m just now realizing that I can’t fix us either.” I can’t help my dry bark of a laugh. “Actually, there hasn’t really ever been an us, has there? You wouldn’t tell anyone about me, and you weren’t too excited to date me until you found out I could be rich.”
“That’s not at all—”
I shrug. “The ironic part is that I just ended my real relationship.” Because I thought it was the fake one.
I’m monumentally stupid.
“If you don’t go with me over to your grandmother’s right now, then we’re through.” Lisa glares.
“Oh, good,” I say. “You promise?”
Her face is priceless.
But when I finally get her to leave—she does not storm off like she said she would—and I go inside, Jake isn’t even close to having his crap out of my room. “Teddy bears?” I ask. “Really? And what are these weird t-shirts?”
Bea tackles me from behind with a huge hug. “Thank goodness you’re back. Jake’s fans keep sending him crap, and some of it is really, really weird.”
Oh, good. Someone with a stranger life than mine.
“She kept threatening to kick me out if you moved back in,” Jake says.
“You and I can split the rent,” Bea says. “Then we can share that extra room.” She points at Jake’s room, and then she turns to face him. “Once we get it disinfected.”
We both laugh.
“And I wasn’t kidding,” Bea says, turning toward Jake. “You need to go find some place with a guard or something at the front of the building. I can’t keep dealing with your crazy fans.”
Jake immediately starts complaining about her never-finished laundry. Bea launches into a diatribe about his inability to ever wash a dish. And within two minutes, they’ve forgotten about cleaning his crap out of my room, and they’re practically coming to blows about leaving the windows in the family room open or closed.
I start shoving boxes out of my room and into the hall, and I can’t help my goofy grin. Yes, they’re annoying. Yes, when Jake’s not filming, we bicker all the time.
And that’s what real family is. It’s the love behind the bickering.
Lisa never got that at all, but I think maybe Elizabeth does.
And I’m going to do my very best to find out.