The Dragon Mother Returns: Taking Back Everything That Belongs to My Daughter novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Paisley

Paisley came in barefoot and let the door swing shut behind her.

A friend's car had dropped her on the beach road. No headlights up the drive.

She lifted her phone.

"Hi, everyone," she said brightly to the screen. "So I just got home, and guess who's in my kitchen."

"Go ahead," I said. "Record."

She paused.

"Record all of it." I pulled out a chair for her. "Sit down. Get my good side."

Clara reached into the back of her sketchbook and took out a fold of paper.

She opened it on the table under the light.

She smoothed the practice pages flat, one after another, until they covered the table.

Paisley's phone came down an inch.

"Show them," Clara said. "Your followers love your process."

Paisley stopped recording.

She put the phone face down on the island and looked at the card on the table.

She moved for it.

Clara's hand came down flat on top of it first.

They stayed like that, Paisley's nails an inch from Clara's knuckles.

"Take your hand off it," Paisley said.

"No," Clara said. "You take yours."

Paisley pulled her hand back.

She turned on me.

"You think you're the only one who lost a mother?" Her voice had gone high and thin. "Mine left when I was nine. He dragged me through four houses in six years. Four. Every time, some woman decided she was done with us."

"And this was the first one where nobody could make you leave."

"Yes!"

"So you made Clara leave her room."

Paisley's mouth opened.

"You put her on a cot by the kitchen and wrote her a schedule with a smiley face," I said. "You wore my grandmother's pearls to watch her serve you champagne."

"She was going to get everything."

"She was nineteen and her mother was dead."

The housekeeper hadn't moved from the hall door. She still had the rolling pin.

"On Friday," I said, "you can stand next to your father or not. That's yours to decide. But you'll decide it in front of everyone."

Paisley grabbed her phone and her shoes.

She was dialing before she reached the stairs.

"Daddy," I heard her say, crying for real now. "Daddy, she's here. Clara's with her. They have papers."

Her bedroom door slammed. Clara's old bedroom door.

Then, a few minutes later, a car started in the garage and spun out down the drive.

Matthias called from the cottage. "A white car. Very fast. Only her inside."

"She's gone to him."

"Then you come now."

I turned to Clara.

"Come with me. Tonight."

"No." She already had her chin up. "If I'm gone too, he knows for sure. He'll call the judge, the police, all of it. Friday morning I walk in with him, like he wants."

"Clara."

"It's my choice. You said it's always my choice."

I had said that.

"Then I'm not going far," I said. "I'll be in the boathouse. Two hundred yards. If you call, I'll be at that door in a minute."

"I know you will."

She hugged me at the garden door.

"Go," she said. "You look terrible. Both of you."

Matthias met me on the dark lawn.

He put his red jacket around my shoulders, and we walked down to the water.

The boathouse was cedar, older than the house. My grandmother's wooden sailboat sat up on its cradle inside, under a canvas cover.

A ladder went up to the loft, where I used to hide from my mother as a girl.

I climbed it first.

There was an old wide daybed under the eaves, piled with wool blankets, and a round window over the Sound.

Moonlight on the water. Nothing else.

Matthias came up the ladder behind me and had to bend his head under the roof.

← Chapter 15 · All chapters · Chapter 17 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend