Her Billionaire Father Spoils Her Rotten novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Her Mother's Face

In his townhouse Abby sees her mother's photograph for the first time and learns her adoptive mother is her mother's sister.

"Marla Diekema," I said. "My adoptive mother. Her husband is Dwight."

We were in the back of a black car that smelled of leather and cold coffee, crossing the river.

Dominic sat on the far side of the seat, hands flat on his knees, not touching me.

"Marla," he said.

Something slid across his face.

"Is she small? Blonde? Church cardigans?"

"Yes."

"Her maiden name was Dunning."

I stared at him.

"I spoke to her once, Abby. Twenty years ago, on the phone. I was twenty-nine and out of my mind."

"I asked if Laura had come to see her. She said she hadn't seen her sister in two years."

"Laura," I said.

"Laura Dunning." He said it very gently. "Your mother."

The name went into me like a key.

I had spent my whole life being told she was nobody.

*A girl who left. A girl who didn't want you.*

"Marla is my mother's sister," I said slowly.

"Yes."

"My mother was her sister, and Marla let me scrub her floors."

Jonas shifted in the front seat, his jaw tight.

The townhouse stood on a quiet street near the lake, tall and old and gray.

It had a black door and a lamp already lit, though it was barely seven.

A woman in an apron opened it before we reached the top step.

She looked at me and burst into tears.

"I'm sorry," she said. "He called at five o'clock, and I've been in the shops since. I didn't know what you'd like."

She waved at the stairs.

"I got everything."

The room at the top was yellow and white.

There were three kinds of pillows on the bed.

There was a rack of coats with the tags still on, and a pile of soft sweaters in every colour.

Sixteen pairs of shoes stood in a row along the wall, in sizes from five to eight.

I stood in the doorway and couldn't make myself go in.

"Nobody's ever made me a bed," I said.

He didn't answer.

When I turned around, he was holding his phone out in both hands.

"Do you want to see her?"

I took it.

The photo was of a young woman in a diner apron, laughing at whoever held the camera.

She had dark chestnut curls to her collarbone.

She had my eyes.

She had my mouth, down to the crooked left corner.

I put my hand over my own mouth, and my breath went out of me.

"That's Laura," Dominic said. "She was twenty-five. It was a Tuesday. She'd just told me my coffee order was a crime."

I kept looking.

"What was she like?" I whispered.

"Loud," he said. "Honest. She'd have taken a hairbrush to anyone who laid a hand on you."

I laughed and then I was crying, all at once, hard, folded over his phone in a stranger's hallway.

He did not try to hold me.

He stood there with his arms half out, wanting to, and waited.

I stepped into them myself.

His coat smelled like rain and expensive soap.

His chest shook.

"I've got you," he said, into my hair. "I've got you, I've got you."

When I stopped, I wiped my face with my wrist, and he saw the scar again, and I saw his jaw go hard.

"Tell me what you want to happen," he said. "I can have lawyers on them by noon."

"I can have their house, their jobs, their car. Say the word."

"No."

He blinked.

"No lawyers," I said. "No quiet money. I don't want them to just vanish."

"Abby."

"For thirteen years Marla smiled at the church ladies while Dwight locked me in a pantry."

My voice came out steady, and I was surprised by it.

"If you take it away in a paper at noon, she still gets to tell everybody she was a saint."

I looked at him.

"I want her to say it to my face. In front of the people who think she's good."

Dominic held my gaze for a long moment.

Then he nodded, once, slowly.

"All right," he said. "Your way."

I slept for six hours in the yellow room with the flip-flops still on.

At 3 a.m. I woke in the dark with my heart going and the pantry smell in my nose.

I sat up and could not breathe.

I got to the door and opened it, because I had to see the hall.

Jonas sat in a hard chair across the corridor, in shirtsleeves, with a paperback open on his knee.

He looked up, and his brown eyes went over me once, fast.

"Bad dream?" he said.

"I'm fine."

"You're not breathing right."

"I said I'm fine."

He set the book down.

He didn't stand, and he didn't come closer, and I understood he was doing it on purpose.

"The door stays open," he said. "I'm right here. Nobody gets past me. You can sit in the doorway all night if you want."

"Why?"

"Because I'd want someone to do it for me."

I stood there, barefoot, in a stranger's house, in the dark.

I had never in my life been guarded by anyone.

I sat down on the floor in the doorway with my back against the frame, where I could see his boots.

He didn't say another word.

But I slept there, and I woke up with his jacket over my shoulders, and I did not remember him putting it on me.

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