My Sister's Tears Stole My First Life, Not My Second novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Horse

Winnie lays out every promise her brother broke, her sister offers her a fiance she doesn't want, and Quentin takes her phone and ID and has her locked in their dead mother's suite.

Quentin found his voice first.

"That money was a family asset," he said. "I reallocated it. That's my job."

"It was in my name."

"It was in an account Father set up before anyone knew if you were alive."

The lawyer was very busy with his cuff links.

I looked at my brother, and I saw him on the porch in Liberty three years ago.

He'd stood on Mama's narrow porch in a suit that cost more than our truck.

He told me I wasn't some girl nobody wanted.

I was a Talcott, and he'd come to take me home.

I didn't say yes right away.

I looked back through the screen door at Gage, who was pretending to fix the toaster so he could listen.

"If I go with you," I said, "can I still see them?"

"Of course."

"Gage quit nursing school in his last year to pay my tuition. Can you help him go back?"

Quentin had put his hand on my head.

"You're my sister. That makes him family too. I'll take care of everyone you love."

I believed him.

That first summer, Grandmother's sapphire bracelet went missing from the study.

Tinsley's maid said I was the last one in there.

Quentin didn't ask why I'd gone in.

He'd sent me in himself, for a file.

"Give it back, Winnie. That's not something you pawn for gas money."

He took my keycard, kept me inside the hotel all summer, and cut my allowance to four hundred dollars a month.

The same as the housekeeping staff.

In August I found the bracelet at the bottom of Tinsley's jewelry box.

I carried the whole box to Quentin's office.

Tinsley's eyes filled before I finished the sentence.

"I knew you'd punish her," she said to him. "So I found the pawnshop and bought it back myself. I didn't want you two fighting again."

There was no receipt. No pawnshop.

Quentin looked at me.

"She cleaned up after you, and you dug through her room to blame her?"

It didn't matter where the bracelet turned up.

He was never going to believe me.

And Gage's tuition never came.

Every time I asked, the accounts were complicated, and I had to wait.

So I stopped asking.

I took French translation jobs online at night, and I worked Saturdays at a café in the North End, and I saved every dollar.

Gage found out and called me yelling.

"Who cares if I finish a couple years late? Don't you let them push you around on my account."

The more he yelled, the more I wanted to send it.

I went to the bank to wire him the money.

The teller found a second account in my name.

Father had opened it before he died, "for Winifred, if she is ever found." The first deposit was one hundred eighty-three thousand, four hundred dollars.

The statement showed money going out.

Ninety-eight thousand six hundred dollars, to an equestrian center in Hamilton.

The day before Tinsley bought her show horse.

I found her at her saddle fitting and held up the statement.

She smiled while the fitter knelt at her stirrup.

"I needed him for qualifiers. Quentin said it was fine."

"That was my fund."

"But you're home now." She looked honestly puzzled. "What do you need a settlement for? Why would you keep your money separate from the family's?"

When Quentin heard, he didn't explain.

He snatched the statement out of my hand.

"Where did you get this? Did you hire someone to investigate your own family?"

"I went to my own bank to wire Gage money I earned."

"Earned how?"

I told him.

He threw the paper on the floor.

"A Talcott carrying lattes? Doing piecework for strangers on the internet? Haven't you embarrassed us enough?"

He froze my cards and kept me in for another month.

He never asked Tinsley one question.

He never mentioned Gage again.

And now he sat across from me telling me I reeked of money.

"I didn't come here to fight you for your fortune," I said. "You promised me a home. You promised to help Gage. And you let her spend what Father left me on a horse."

I held his eyes.

"You broke every promise you made on that porch."

Quentin stood so fast his chair screeched on the floor.

"Who do you think you are? Without this family, you'd be pouring coffee in a truck stop for the rest of your life!"

Tinsley caught his sleeve.

"Please don't," she said, already crying. "This is all my fault."

She worked Easton's ring off her finger and set it on the table in front of me.

"If it matters so much to her, she can have Easton."

She gave a brave little smile.

"I'll explain to the other one myself. I don't care what people say about me, as long as my sister's happy."

Quentin's whole face softened for her.

"You don't have to explain anything to anyone."

Then he turned on me.

"There hasn't been a day of peace in this family since you came back. First the money, now her engagement. Are you happy now?"

I was too tired to argue.

"Give me my phone and my ID. I'm leaving."

My phone was face up on the table beside my bag.

Quentin picked up both.

"You're not well," he said. "You'll go upstairs and rest until after the brunch. I won't have you making another scene in front of the Lathrops."

He pressed a button by the door.

Two women from the family's household staff came in and stood on either side of me.

They walked me to the private elevator and up to the thirty-first floor.

Mother's old suite.

The door shut behind me.

Then the lock clicked from the outside.

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