The instant I heard the key in the lock, I was off like a shot in her direction, whipping the door open to scoop her up. To hold her to my chest, to slip my fingers into her hair. To promise her it would be all right as she cried, to cradle her face in my hands and kiss her.
It was a long moment before we parted. She set down her bag and wiped her cheeks as I brought in her suitcase and closed the door.
“Drink?” I offered.
But she shook her head. “Bed.”
With a kiss to the top of her head, I grabbed her suitcase and followed her up the stairs. The air around her was still and solemn, something about her resigned but not small. And it left me aching to know exactly what had happened so I could wash it away. So we could leave it behind us and start over.
We could see that dream of ours come true. I could bring her into my family, make her one of us. We could run Longbourne together, if there was anything left to run after this.
My stomach turned at the fear that there wouldn’t be. Future Marcus’s problems, I told myself.
She climbed into my bed, kicking her shoes off on the way, and I left her suitcase near my dresser before joining her.
Maisie lifted her chin, a silent request for a kiss. And so I wrapped her in my arms and obeyed.
For a long moment, that was all there was. A long and languid kiss, its purpose to be only that. A kiss with no intention, no directive, only a meeting of lips and tongues solely to be together, nothing more.
I held her until she broke away, until she’d gotten what she needed, and it left her slack and soft against me.
She settled into the pillow beneath her head, tracing the line of my jaw with her fingertips as I gazed down at her.
“It’s done,” she said simply.
“Are you all right?”
“It’s strange, how I feel. The things she said to me …” Through a beat, she recounted those things but didn’t relay them. “It was awful. I should be torn apart, devastated, and in some ways, I am. But more about the death of one dream and the birth of another. I still thought that deep down, she loved me. But she doesn’t. And now my dream is you.”
I turned my face to kiss her fingertips, my heart aching with sadness and joy for her mother and me. “I’m sorry.”
“I just …” She paused. “I’ve been so worried I’d become my mother, but after today, I’m convinced I couldn’t be. But I wonder. If I believed, really believed in something, could I forsake what’s right? Because when I think about you and me … I’d forsake anything.”
“You are nothing like her,” I promised again. I’d remind her forever.
The smallest of smiles touched her lips, but she didn’t look convinced. “Well, at least it’s done. At least it’s over. And now that I’m here, it’s hard to feel bad about much of anything.”
“I can’t pretend I’m mad about that.”
“Me either,” she said on a chuckle. “Dad is going to manage getting the rest of my things moved from Mom’s house to his apartment, and then he’s leaving too.”
“For good?”
She nodded, her smile still in place. “He stayed back to talk to her before he left.”
“Talk.” I scoffed. “I’d love to hear that conversation firsthand.”
“Oh God.” She laughed. “I bet he’s been saving up names to call her on this day for years. We should declare it a family holiday.”
“Emancipation day.”
“For all of us. Although I don’t know what she’ll do about you. She was so angry, Marcus. The things she said …” A shudder trembled through her. “The things she’s done for her own designs, for power. For money.”
Something about the way she’d said it gave me pause. “What do you mean?”
But she shook her head, her brows ticking together and eyes drifting down. “Nothing.”
“Maisie,” I urged. “Did something else happen?”
“No, everything’s fine.”
And that was how I knew it was patently not fine. “You don’t want to tell me.”
“It’s not that. I just—” Her guilty gaze snapped to mine.
I didn’t speak for a moment, and neither did she. Instead, I smoothed her hair, cupped her jaw, tracing her lips with my gaze as I considered what to say.
“Tell me when you’re ready,” I finally answered.
“No, Marcus—I do want to tell you, but it’s … I can’t.”
“You can’t? Is she stopping you even now?”
“No, not exactly …” She huffed. “It’s complicated, and … I don’t know what it will mean if I tell you.”
“For us?”
“Not for us. For you.”
I scrambled to find some reasonable explanation, to try to guess what she could need to keep from me. “Nothing you could say could change how I feel and what I want. You can tell me anything.”
“Even if it incriminated you?”
I stilled. “If it would incriminate me, I can only assume the knowledge incriminates you. And if that’s the case, you absolutely have to tell me.”
Her worry didn’t ease, but her sigh was one of concession. “I … I don’t even know where to start.”
“It’s all right,” I soothed. “We’ll figure it out together.”
Her eyes tracked her hand as it fiddled with my collar, finally smoothing my shirt over my chest with a sigh. And then she lifted her gaze to mine.
“My mother is embezzling money from Bower.”
My shock was total, marked by a tingling numbness that crawled down my spine like ants.
Maisie launched into her explanation, her eyes cast down as she spoke. She told me about the assistant and her mother’s crime, about Evelyn using the charity as a front. About the exit speech Maisie had planned to give her mother before discovering confession wasn’t what Evelyn had intended.
And Maisie told me the most pressing part of all—she didn’t know what to do.
But I did.
Her eyes were so full of hurt and hope that I hesitated to say it plainly, but there was no other way.
“You have to go to the authorities.”
Within a breath, her cheeks were smudged with color. “It’s not that simple, Marcus. Think of all the people who rely on Bower and what will happen to them. Think of all the people at Harvest, all her employees … we don’t know what will happen to them. Aside from the fact that she’s my mother—she’s evil and cruel, but she has been the strongest authority in my life, and betraying that is … it’s …” Frustrated tears filled her eyes. “It’s just not that simple.”
“She’s a criminal. I won’t try to convince you with a recount of what she’s done to you, because that doesn’t matter. She has committed a crime, and now you know. And because you know, you’re legally obligated to act.”
Her chin quivered, her eyes searching mine.
“I know it seems impossible, but you have to. It’s accomplice liability—you could be charged with aiding and abetting. Failure to report a crime.”
“Could you be liable too?” she asked quietly. “Now that you know, have I put you in danger?”