Chapter 13: Ten Million for Peace

I slept on Bea's couch with my father's box under my arm.

At eight the next morning, someone leaned on the downstairs buzzer.

Bea looked out the window and swore.

"It's Trevor. He brought roses. He brought about forty roses."

"Let him up."

"Joanna, no."

"I want him to talk. Put your phone in the bookcase and hit record."

She stared at me.

Then she grinned, propped her phone against a law textbook, and went to stand in the bedroom doorway.

Trevor came in with an armful of white roses and the face he wore when he wanted something.

His shirt was wrinkled, and he hadn't shaved.

"Jo. Thank God."

He dropped the roses on Bea's table, and I stepped back before he could touch me.

"My mother won't pick up," he said. "My father froze my cards. Everyone has turned on me, and you're the only one who ever understood me."

"Understood what?"

"Whitney. It was never love. She made me feel I owed her my life."

"For three years."

"I'm not proud of it."

I sat on the arm of the couch and let my voice go soft.

"Tell me why the wedding was set for three weeks before my birthday."

He rubbed the back of his neck.

"Dad picked the date."

"Why?"

"So you'd be my wife before the paper matured. Then we'd walk you through some forms."

"What forms?"

"You'd sign the forty percent into the company. Nobody fights, everybody's rich. Jo, I'd have given you a house with a pool."

"Say that again. The part about the forms."

He said it again, slower, and used the same words.

Behind him, Bea's eyebrows went up to her hairline.

"And Whitney?" I asked.

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