This Heiress Doesn't Fight Anymore novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Keys on the Table

Fed chowder and adopted by the Tisdales, Charlie hands Arabella her place, the house and her job without a fight, and her father's threat to disown her ends with her cards declined.

The woman on the dock was eighty if she was a day, and she was holding a ladle.

"Seth Tisdale, what did you fish out of the harbor?"

"A Wakefield, Gran."

"Well, don't leave it on the dock. It's dripping."

She took one look at me and pointed the ladle at the shed.

"Inside. Shoes off. You smell like a yacht."

Inside the shed it smelled of cedar, varnish and something with clams in it.

A half-built hull filled the middle of the floor, ribs open to the rafters like a whale skeleton.

Gran put me in a chair by a woodstove and shoved a bowl of chowder into my hands.

"Eat that before you say a word."

I ate it.

It was the best thing I had tasted in two years and one death.

A girl in overalls came crashing in through the side door with varnish to her elbows.

She had a blonde braid and one strap down and she talked before she had fully arrived.

"Is it true? Seth stole a girl off the Wakefield yacht? Is that her? Hi. I'm Bess. I'm his sister. Is that his sweatshirt?"

"It's his sweatshirt," I said.

"He never lends that sweatshirt. He wore it to a funeral."

"Bess," Seth said.

"It was a nice funeral." She dragged a stool over and sat on it backwards, close enough to touch my knee. "What's your name?"

"Charlie."

"Charlie. Okay. You're my best friend now. Do you sand?"

"I've never sanded anything."

"You'll love it. It's like therapy but you can see the results."

Gran smacked the back of her head with a dish towel.

"Let the girl eat, you jackass."

I laughed into my chowder, and all three of them stopped and looked at me.

I wasn't sure why, until I realized I couldn't remember the last time I'd done it.

At six, Seth drove me into town in a truck that rattled.

My phone and my car keys were at my parents' house on Bellevue Avenue, because everything from the yacht went there.

Two old men in canvas aprons watched us go without a word.

"You want me to wait?"

"No. Thank you. For the chowder."

"That was Gran."

"For the sweatshirt, then."

"You can keep it," he said. "Bess will tell everyone it's a love story."

I got out before he could see whether I was smiling.

They were all in the front hall, waiting for me.

My father by the stairs.

My mother on the bench, holding Arabella's hand.

Hugo with his arms crossed, still in damp trousers.

Arabella had changed into a fresh white dress, and Archer's ring flashed on her finger every time she wiped her eyes.

She stood up when I walked in.

"Charlie, I don't want him like this. I don't want anything like this."

"Okay," I said, and went to the side table for my bag.

"Everyone's going to say I stole your place," she sobbed. "Your fiancé. Your place in this family. I know I'm not really one of you."

My mother made a soft noise and pulled her back down onto the bench.

I found my phone in my bag.

It had forty-one missed calls on it, every one from Archer.

"Take it," I said.

Arabella blinked.

"Take what?"

"My place. Whatever it is. You can have it."

"Don't you dare do this," Hugo said. "Don't you play the martyr after what you did today."

"I'm not playing anything, Hugo. I'm tired."

"Then here's something to wake you up." He stepped between me and the door.

"Grandmother's house on Ocean Drive. Arabella's always loved it. After today, she should have it. Call it an apology."

My grandmother had left me that cottage.

In my last life I'd fought him for it for a year, with lawyers.

I'd won, and I'd never once slept there long enough to hear the sea.

I yawned.

I really didn't mean to, but it came up from my feet.

I took the cottage keys off my ring and dropped them on the hall table, next to a vase of white roses.

"Keys are on the table."

Nobody moved.

Then I took off the company car key and put that down too.

I sent one text to the company's lawyer, standing there in the hall.

I resign as Vice President of Operations, effective now. Charlotte Wakefield.

Hugo's phone buzzed in his pocket a minute later.

He read it, and his face went a dark red.

"You can't resign by text."

"I just did."

"Charlotte."

My father finally spoke, in the quiet voice that made board rooms go still.

"If you walk out that door tonight, over a misunderstanding in the water, you are no longer a Wakefield."

"Do you understand me?"

I thought about it, because he deserved that much.

I had been a Wakefield since I was seventeen.

I had spent every one of them trying to earn it.

"Okay," I said.

I walked out the front door with my bag and his sweatshirt.

Nobody followed me down the drive.

A taxi took me across the bridge to a motel on West Main Road, because it was the first sign I saw.

The night clerk took my card and ran it.

She ran it again.

Then she slid it back across the counter with a face that had done this before.

"Declined, hon. You got another one?"

I gave her the black one.

She ran it and shook her head.

My father hadn't waited for me to reach the bottom of the drive.

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