My Stepbrother's Regret novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Almost Done

Charlene pitches one last score, reveals the savings are gone and threatens to say Hollyn handed her the watch; Hollyn takes it anyway and walks into Roarke in the hall.

I didn't put it back.

I stood there with Roarke's watch in one hand and the pink slip in the other.

My mother tucked the towel tighter under her arm and closed the bedroom door behind me with her heel.

She did it quietly.

She'd always been good at doors.

"Give me the watch, Hollyn."

"You took it."

"I borrowed it."

"From his dresser. The first night. And you let him dump my purse on the table."

"He was always going to blame you." She sat down on the edge of the bed and crossed her legs. "Better you than me, baby. You're the one who's leaving in September."

Downstairs, somebody laughed on the lawn.

A car door shut.

Myles was saying good night to the last of the guests in that warm, slow voice he used for everybody.

My mother listened until the front door closed.

Then she patted the bed beside her.

I didn't move.

"There's a man," she said. "He's my cousin, from Tulsa. He's the money man. He runs a fund up here, a very nice one, and Myles is going to put some money in it."

"We don't have cousins."

"We do now."

She smiled at me.

"One last one, Hollyn. Then we're done. I'll have a house, you'll have your little shop, and nobody ever has to move in the night again."

I heard the words move in the night.

I heard them in her voice, and then I heard all the other times.

Nine towns.

A motel in Amarillo with the car still running in the lot.

A school in Joplin I went to for six weeks.

A man in a blue cardigan in Wichita who taught me chess, and who stood in his driveway in his socks the morning we left.

She'd told me every time that men were bad luck.

She'd cried every time.

I'd believed her every time.

"Mom," I said. "How many?"

She looked at the watch in my hand instead of at me.

"Put it back where you found it and go to bed."

"No."

"Hollyn."

"I'm giving it back to him."

She sighed.

Then she picked her phone up off the nightstand and turned the screen toward me.

It was our savings account. The joint one she opened with me when I was sixteen, so I'd learn to save.

Every paycheck I'd ever had went into it.

Thirty-one thousand dollars.

The balance said $0.00.

"It's safe," she said. "It's working. You'll get it back with interest in the fall."

My hands had gone cold.

I could feel the second hand of the watch ticking against my palm.

"That's my shop," I said. "That's the down payment on my shop."

"And it'll still be there in September."

"My boss sells on Labor Day. To me or to a chain."

"Then you'd better be a good girl till Labor Day."

She stood up and came close and fixed a piece of my hair, the way she did before school pictures.

Her hands smelled like hotel lotion.

"Here's the other thing, baby. If that watch goes back to Roarke with my name on it, I'll cry. You know I will. And I'll tell Myles you took it and handed it to me to hide, because you were scared."

"He saw the door log."

"Doors don't know who handed what to whom."

"Nobody would believe that."

"Myles would." She tilted her head. "Myles believes everything I say. That's why we're here."

I looked at her for a long time.

Her lipstick was still perfect.

Her diamond band caught the lamp when she twisted it.

She was twisting it now.

"No," I said again.

"You don't get to say no to me."

"I just did."

I folded the pink slip into my jeans pocket.

I kept the watch in my fist.

"If you walk out of this room with that, you're on your own," she said. "No money. No mother. Nobody's going to believe the girl who moved nine times."

"Then I guess I'm on my own."

Her face did something I'd never seen.

It didn't crumple. It didn't cry.

It just went still and flat.

"Close the door on your way out," she said.

I walked out.

The hallway was dark except for the keypad lights, a little row of green dots down the wall.

My heart was going faster than the watch.

I turned toward the guest suite.

Roarke was standing three feet away, barefoot, in a gray T-shirt, with his arms folded.

He was looking at my hand.

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