CHAPTER TWO

Gerald’s question hung in the air, and no one rushed to answer it.

“Don’t be absurd, Gerald.” Vivienne broke the silence first, because she always did. “What’s there to question? Dominic should have made Camille his wife ages ago. He would have, if this scheming little opportunist hadn’t wormed her way in and wrecked everything.”

“My brother deserves someone from his own circle,” Brielle added, examining her manicure. “Not some pity project Grandmother dragged in off the street.”

“None of my friends will invite me anywhere anymore,” sniffed Margaret, Dominic’s aunt, never one to miss a chance. “Do you have any idea how humiliating that is? All because of the woman he chose.”

Through it all, Cordelia said nothing. She did not defend the granddaughter-in-law she had chosen, but she did not join the chorus either. She simply sat, hands folded, eyes lowered, as if she could absent herself from the room by sheer stillness.

Evangeline rose from the floor.

She did it slowly, deliberately, and the very calm of it made the room go quiet. They had braced for screaming. For begging. For her to claw at the papers and refuse. Instead she walked to the staircase and went up without a word, and the silence she left behind was thick with confusion.

When she came back down, she carried a single backpack over one shoulder, the same canvas bag she had walked in with three years ago. She set it on the table beside the petition, picked up the pen, and signed her name in one clean stroke. She did not read a line of it.

The scratch of the pen seemed to echo.

Dominic felt something turn over in his chest, sharp and unexpected, the instant her signature dried on the page. He could not have named it. He did not try.

“That’s all?” he heard himself say. “You won’t even look at what you’re giving up?”

Evangeline wiped her face with the back of her wrist, and then, to his confusion, she smiled. Not bitterly. The smile was almost radiant, dimples and all, and for one disorienting second it made his chest ache worse.

“I walked into this family with nothing but my name and a backpack,” she said. “I never once asked your grandmother for a thing. She’s the one who came looking for me. She wanted to cover my tuition because I’d saved her life, and she wanted a wedding to go along with it, and I was hungry enough and thankful enough to agree. Whatever’s on that paper, cash, property, a settlement, I don’t want any of it. No sum could ever buy back what these three years took from me.”

She unzipped the backpack and turned it over.

Books spilled across the table. Worn textbooks, dog-eared and bristling with notes. A handful of cheap pens. Nothing else. The family stared, baffled, waiting for some trick.

“This is everything I arrived with,” she said. “This is everything I’m walking out with. I knew from day one that people like you would never really accept me, but I gave it a shot regardless. I cooked, I cleaned, I smiled until my jaw hurt, telling myself that eventually it would count for something. It was never going to count for anything. I see that clearly now.”

She reached into the side pocket and drew out a slim notebook and a bank card, and held them out to Dominic.

“Every bit of allowance you ever handed me is logged in here. Date, amount, where it came from. I didn’t touch a cent of it. I put it in an account and let it grow, because I actually believed, God, saying this out loud is mortifying, I believed that someday you’d care for me, and I’d hand it all back as a present, and we’d laugh about how careful I’d been.” Her voice didn’t waver. “Take it. Nobody in this house gets to call me a gold-digger again. I made my own living before you, and I’ll make it after.”

Dominic’s hand closed around the notebook and card without his telling it to.

She turned to Cordelia next and set a second card on the small table beside the old woman’s chair.

“The money you set aside for my schooling is on this one. I didn’t need it, Madam. I said so the day you offered it, and I’m saying it again now. Every bit of it is still there.”

Cordelia’s fingers closed over the card, and to Evangeline’s distant surprise the old woman’s eyes were wet. It moved her not at all. The time for the Voss family’s tears was three years gone.

“Wait just a moment.” Brielle’s voice cut in, sharp with suspicion. “How are we supposed to know those cards actually have anything on them? She could be handing us blank plastic and strolling off looking like a saint.”

Evangeline looked at her for a long moment, and whatever was in that look made Brielle sink back against the cushions.

“Then call the bank,” Evangeline said softly. “You’re the one in this room who’s terrified of ending up poor. I’m not. Losing that money would cost me nothing, it was never mine to lose.”

A ripple went through the family. This was not the girl they knew, the one who flinched and apologized and made herself small. This woman frightened them a little.

Evangeline slung the empty backpack over her shoulder and started for the door. And then her gaze passed over Camille, still cradled in Dominic’s arms, and she stopped.

Because Camille was watching her leave, and at the corner of the woman’s mouth was a smile. Tiny. Triumphant. Gone in an instant, but Evangeline had seen it, and it landed like a key turning in a lock.

The wheelchair. The blanket. The doctors who couldn’t promise. The fall no one had witnessed.

She faked it. All of it. She faked it to drive me out.

The understanding rolled through Evangeline like ice water, and on its heels came a fury so clean and bright it almost felt like relief. She turned around and walked straight back toward the pair on the sofa.

Camille flinched, shrinking into Dominic’s chest.

“Second thoughts already?” Vivienne crowed, jabbing a finger toward her. “Too bad, girl. You already signed. It’s finished.”

But Evangeline wasn’t listening to her. Her eyes were locked on Camille, and her voice when it came was very soft and very cold.

“Just one thing, Camille. Look me in the eye and tell me. Did I shove you in front of that car, or didn’t I?”