The Girl They Forgot to Love novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Guest Room

Locked out of her rented room by her brother's company, Lizzie takes three nights in Anthony Vanderveer's guest room and sees the video of her walk-out online.

Anthony Vanderveer told me to meet him at a diner on Route 65, twenty minutes from the house.

I drove there with the heater on high and my wet coat steaming on the seat.

He was already in a booth at the back.

He was tall, with short dark hair and a pale scar that split his left eyebrow. His gray suit had no rain on it.

A mug of coffee sat on my side of the table.

"Black, two sugars," he said.

I stayed standing. "How do you know how I take my coffee?"

"Your father mentioned it."

"My father didn't know how I took my coffee. He called me for six minutes on Sundays."

Anthony looked at me for a moment.

"Sit down, Miss Brannigan. Please. You've been standing since noon."

I sat, mostly because my knees had decided it.

The coffee was exactly right. I hated that.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"I run Vanderveer Capital. Your father's company owes us money, and your father trusted me with some paperwork." He turned his phone face down on the table. "The will is read Monday at ten, in the house. I can't tell you what's in it before then."

"Can't, or won't?"

"Can't."

"Then why did you call me?"

"Because he told me to, if you left. And because of the next three days."

"What happens in the next three days?"

"Your brothers will find out you left on your own." He said it flatly. "They'll try to make you take something from them. A coat, a check, a room. Don't."

"Why would I take anything from them?"

"Because you have nowhere else to go," he said.

My phone buzzed on the table. I looked at it, and the cold came up through my stomach.

It was a text from the property manager of my building in Millvale.

Your lease has been terminated by the owner. Your belongings are on the sidewalk. Pls collect by 6 pm.

I knew who owned the building.

Brannigan Property Group had a small logo on the lease, in the corner.

Rowan had not even waited for the funeral lunch to end.

"Excuse me," I said, and slid out of the booth.

I drove to Millvale with the wipers going.

It was five o'clock and nearly dark. My two suitcases and four trash bags were piled beside the bakery's back door.

The rain was soaking through all of it.

My secondhand lamp was lying on its side. A box of my textbooks had gone soft at the bottom.

I knelt on the wet pavement and pulled the shoebox out from under a bag of clothes.

It had a small child's rain hat in it, yellow and cracked. I had kept it for twenty years and never known why.

Behind me, a car door shut.

Anthony had followed me. He stood a few feet away holding a black umbrella, and he did not come closer.

"I'll sleep in my Civic," I said, without turning around.

"It's thirty-four degrees tonight."

"Then I'll sleep in my Civic with the heater on."

"I have a guest room," he said. "Three nights. There's a lock on the inside of the door. You'll pay me rent if that's what lets you say yes."

"I'll pay you rent."

"Fine."

"A hundred a night."

"That's too low for the neighborhood," Anthony said. "Two hundred."

I almost smiled. I put the last bag in the trunk and did not let myself.

His building was glass, on the North Shore. The guest room had a bed so big I stood at the door of it for a full minute.

He left me alone, and I sat on the bed with my wet coat on.

My phone had forty-one notifications.

I opened the first. It was a video, and the title said: Daughter Melts Down at Father's Funeral.

It had two million views.

It was me, small and pale in the kitchen doorway. Me saying I'm his daughter, and saying it again because no one heard.

Rowan had posted it himself, at 3:12 that afternoon.

His caption read: Our sister is unwell. We love her and ask for privacy.

The comments were kind to him.

There was a knock on the doorframe. Anthony stood in the hall without coming in.

"Don't read the comments," he said.

"I'm already reading them."

"I know. Lizzie."

It was the first time he'd used my name. My throat went tight.

"Until Monday, you take nothing from them," he said. "Not a coat, not a dollar, not an apology you didn't ask for."

My phone buzzed again in my hand.

It was Pierce. Come home and apologize to the guests tonight, or I'll send someone to collect you. We know a doctor who'll help.

I held the screen up so Anthony could read it.

His face did not change, but the hand on the door frame went white at the knuckles.

"Then let them come here," he said.

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