True Heiress vs. Fake Queen Bee novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Maid's Girl

Liv refuses to back down for the housekeeper or her father, the lawn video goes viral, and she meets Brodie on the stairs before an email lands: Brielle wants her expelled.

The officer hung up and looked at me over her reading glasses.

"Well," she said. "That's a no."

"She's lying."

"The family's own housekeeper is lying."

"Yes."

She sighed and slid the plastic tray toward her side of the desk.

"Then here's what happens. The bracelet stays with me as disputed property until somebody shows me a receipt, an insurance record, or a court."

"That's my mother's."

"Then your mother can call me."

I didn't tell her my mother had been dead six years.

I didn't trust my voice to stay level.

She wrote me a property slip with a number on it and told me I was free to go.

Trudy was waiting on the bench outside, chewing her thumbnail.

She jumped up when she saw my face.

"They kept it?"

"They kept it."

"That's insane. You've got a tan line where it sits."

I stepped out into the parking lot, away from the glass doors, and called Lorna's cell.

She picked up on the first ring, which meant she'd been holding the phone.

"Livvy," she said.

Nobody else had called me that since I was ten.

"You told a police officer I was a thief."

"I didn't say that."

"You told her I wasn't me."

I heard her breathe.

I could see her exactly, standing in the pantry with the door shut, one hand on the shelf of jam.

"Please," she said. "She's had one year where people look at her. One. You've had your whole life."

"She took my mother's picture off our wall and told two hundred people it was hers."

"I know."

"You know?"

"Livvy, let her have this. Go to another school. Your father would pay for anywhere."

"Did he tell you to say that?"

She didn't answer.

"I'm not leaving, Lorna. And I'm getting my bracelet back from her hands, in front of the same people."

"Then I can't help you."

"You already didn't."

I hung up first.

Then I saw the voicemail.

My father, from an airport lounge, his voice smooth as a hotel lobby.

"Olivia. Lorna called me. This is exactly what I worried about."

"Come home and I'll deal with the Tullis girl quietly, the way these things get dealt with."

"The jet can be at your little airport by noon."

The way these things get dealt with.

Like a leak in the roof of one of his hotels.

I deleted it.

Trudy was watching me from the curb with her arms folded.

"So who's Lorna?"

"Somebody who used to like me."

"And who was that?"

"My dad."

"Is he also somebody who used to like you?"

"Jury's out."

She nodded, then hooked her arm through mine.

"Okay. Lasagna. Nobody makes big decisions without lasagna."

We walked home down College Avenue in the dark, past bars with their doors open and boys yelling football scores.

She didn't ask me if I'd stolen it.

Not once.

I lay awake most of the night looking at the bare skin on my wrist.

On Sunday morning, I was famous.

Trudy shoved her phone in my face before I'd even found the coffee.

Somebody had cut the lawn video into forty seconds with sad piano music under it.

The caption said, "Maid's Daughter Steals Dead Mom's Bracelet From Heiress. Watch Her REFUSE To Give It Back."

It had eighty thousand views.

Brielle had reposted it.

"Grateful."

The comments were worse.

"Check her room for the rest of the jewelry."

"Imagine being jealous of the girl whose mom your mom works for."

"Someone find her name."

Somebody already had.

My name was under the third comment, spelled right.

Trudy took the phone back before I could scroll further.

"You're not reading those," she said. "Go take out the recycling. Breathe some air that isn't the internet."

So I carried our moving boxes out to the side of the house.

The duplex had one stairway outside, wooden and painted grey, that ran past our door up to the second floor.

A guy was coming down it with a rowing bag over his shoulder and a mug in his hand.

He was very tall and built like he lifted cars for fun.

He looked at me.

Then he looked at his phone.

Then at me again.

"You're the jewel thief," he said.

"Alleged."

"You live in my basement?"

"It's the first floor."

"It's my basement. I live up there." He nodded at the door above us. "Brodie."

"Liv."

"I know. You're trending."

He came the rest of the way down and stopped two steps above me, which made him enormous.

"For what it's worth," he said, "I dated her for three months last spring."

"I'm sorry."

"Me too." He took a sip of coffee. "She told me her mom died. Took me to her grave, even, in Philly. Cried."

"Okay."

"Then I found out she'd spent Christmas at home with her mom."

I stared at him.

He shrugged.

"Not a single photo of that woman on her phone. Not one. You'd think, a dead mom you love that much."

He tipped his mug at me.

"Anyway. Don't let her get that bracelet off you for good."

He went past me down the last steps toward a dented red pickup.

I was still standing there holding a box of packing paper when my own phone buzzed.

An email from the Office of Student Conduct.

"Notice of Honor Code Hearing. Friday, August 28, 2 p.m."

"Complainant: Brielle Haldane."

"Allegation: theft of personal property."

And below that, in bold, the line that made me sit down on the bottom step.

"Sanction sought: expulsion."

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