It takes all my willpower not to leap across the desk and strangle him. “You’ve got some balls bringing Dad into this. I’ve always wondered about something, Liam. At the end, did you help him along to those pearly gates so you could get your inheritance a few days sooner?”
The accusation doesn’t even make him blink. It almost seems like he’s talking to himself. “I have a lot of ideas on how to move the company forward. All it takes is some cash.”
So that’s his plan. He’s going to keep me imprisoned in a different way, using me as a permanent ATM.
And if I stop producing…
“If I refuse, do you intend to go home to your wife and admit you’ve got two kids you forgot to tell her about?”
His lips press into a thin smile. “Now and then Whitney gets the idea that she’d like to be a mother. I could give her that chance. And when the novelty wears off, which it will, we’d have to explore another option for the twins.”
“Jesus, you’re evil.” My face burns and blood roars in my ears. I’ve never been more tempted to commit violence.
Liam would rip the girls from Gretchen and send them away where there would be no one to love them. He wouldn’t lose an hour of sleep over it.
Liam shrugs. “Or they could stay where they are. With their aunt. They wouldn’t even need to learn my name.”
With that suggestion hanging in the air, his phone buzzes on his desk and he answers.
“Hello, gorgeous. Yeah, the place will be all set up for the party tonight. I’ll remind them to string the lights.” He grins at me. “Trent’s here. Yes, it is nice. My brother and I were just discussing our new partnership. Love you too. See you in a few hours, baby.”
Liam wraps up his call with his wife and I swipe my shirt off the floor.
Somehow I feel as trapped as I did at age sixteen when I was shoved into the back of a police car in my underwear.
It doesn’t matter.
I’d be willing to suffer far worse, as long as the twins get to stay with Gretchen.
Liam sees the defeat in my face and his smile broadens.
Fuck him.
He can take every penny I have and keep me running on a treadmill to guarantee I’ll make more. I can deal with it.
“I would invite you to the party tonight,” he calls out as I head for the door with my shirt balled up in one hand. “But I think you’ve got plenty to keep you busy at home. That girl of yours gives off all kinds of slutty little firecracker vibes. Go enjoy a slice of that with your dinner and we’ll talk tomorrow.”
I don’t bother responding. I head for my car so I can go home and break the news to Gretchen.
We’ll get to keep the twins for now.
But until I can think of a way out of this, we belong to Liam.
14
Gretchen
Their project at preschool today was to make bunny rabbits, gluing cotton balls to colorful pieces of construction paper. The girls couldn’t wait to show the finished results to me. When we get home we stick their cotton ball and construction paper creations to the kitchen fridge with magnets.
They are both filled with energy and exuberant chatter as we sit at the kitchen table to a snack of cookies and milk. The wall clock ticks the minutes away in the next room, torturing my ears like a doomsday countdown.
“Aunt Gretch?” Mara pauses with a half-eaten chocolate chip cookie in her hand, her eyes wide. “Are you sad?”
Caitlin’s straw exits her mouth with a pop and now she’s looking at me too.
I haven’t cried in front of them. I’m just a shitty actress. My efforts to appear calm and relaxed are a failure.
On the inside I’m screaming.
“It’s just my spring allergies,” I tell the girls and rub my eyes theatrically.
Mara puts her cookie down. “Where’s Trentcassini?”
“He’ll be back soon. He just went to the grocery store to pick up a few things. Guess what? We’re going to make mini pizzas for dinner tonight.”
“I love mini pizzas,” Caitlin says and resumes drinking her milk.
Mara pushes her finger into the crumbs on her plate and looks at me again. I try to smile at her. She stares into my eyes for a few seconds, then frowns down at her crumbs.
Trent didn’t gloss over the details of his disastrous meeting with Liam. Yet he made a heroic attempt to sound upbeat as he explained that we would be allowed to keep the girls with us. Liam has no interest in being a father and what’s more, he is motivated to keep the girls’ paternity a secret.
Life can proceed in a state of happy bliss and the twins will be safe.
As long as Trent hands over every cent he has and finds a way to keep generating more money.
Since my face is being uncooperative and worrying the girls, I take it away from the table. The breakfast dishes are still in the sink and normally I would use the dishwasher but I feel the urge to occupy myself with something mundane right now. I fill the basin with warm soapy water and slowly wash each dish by hand.
I need to call Danny and get him caught up. Tonight his team plays the last game on the road in a series against the New York Mets and then tomorrow is a travel day. I can wait until tomorrow to call my brother. There’s not a damn thing he can do anyway.
With their snacks finished, the girls ask to go upstairs to play in their bedrooms. This will give me a chance to look through my sister’s room while they are occupied. I have little hope of finding anything. I’ve already sorted through Jules’s important papers, all of which were stored downstairs in a fireproof file storage box. I don’t even have an idea what I’d be looking for. But today the loss of my sister aches as acutely as it did the night I received that phone call.
Jules. Jules. Jules. Why didn’t you tell me?
I don’t believe Liam’s filthy words about the night they spent together.
Yet I also don’t understand.
I would have understood better had he been a stranger, some dashing newcomer who was visiting, maybe someone she reached out to in an impulsive moment of loneliness.
Not Liam Cassini for fuck’s sake.
Though she couldn’t have known about everything he’d done to Trent, Jules was no dummy. She had to be aware that Liam was an unbelievable jackass.
The girls are both in Caitlin’s room. I can hear them laughing together as I sit on their mother’s bed and look helplessly around the room. Most things are exactly as they were the last time Jules touched them. The accordion-style closet door is open and Jules’s clothes are neatly sorted by color on their hangers, her shoes lined up underneath.
I’ll save the clothes. I’ll box them up and store them in the garage in case the girls would like to have them someday.
They are singing now and for once it’s not a tune from Frozen. They are singing You Are My Sunshine. Some of their lyrics are incorrect but they only learned the song today in preschool.
I stand in front of my sister’s open closet and graze my fingertips over the soft sleeves of her sweaters. It’s not fair that I get to hear her girls singing and she doesn’t.
“You’re right. It’s not fair. Now put your seatbelt on.”
The mental echo of words she spoke long ago brings a sentimental smile to my lips. Jules was wiser at eighteen than I am now or might ever be in the future.