Chapter 2 : The Price Of The Door

Go with him," Mrs. Perez said, before Ariel could even ask.

"Mom, no..."

"Ariel." Her mother's voice was steady in a way it rarely was anymore, like she had been saving up strength for exactly this sentence. "You have spent years wanting a door like this to open. I won't watch you close it because of me."

"You are the reason, Mom. If I leave, who's going to make sure you take your medication? Who's going to walk you to the clinic when your legs won't..."

"I'll manage." A flicker of the old stubbornness. "I managed for eighteen years before you were old enough to worry about me. I can manage a little longer."

Ariel looked past her mother into the dim apartment, the peeling wallpaper, the secondhand furniture, the taped-up Harvard crest above her bed that she'd stared at every night for two years like a prayer. Then she looked at the black car idling at the curb, and the old man waiting beside it with the patience of someone who had clearly done this exact thing before, for some other lost child of some other rich family.

"I have one condition," she said finally, turning to him.

He inclined his head. "Name it."

"Someone looks after my mother. Properly. Not a promise, an actual person, an actual plan."

"The Dalton family will see to it personally," he said, without hesitation, which should have reassured her and somehow didn't.

Ariel turned back to her mother one last time.

"I'll come back for you," she said. "The second I'm someone who can."

"You already are someone, sweetheart," her mother whispered, cupping her face with a trembling hand. "You always have been."

The car pulled away from the curb, and Ariel watched her mother shrink in the side mirror, one hand raised, unmoving, until the street curved and there was nothing left to watch.

The drive across the city took nearly an hour. Ariel sat with her forehead against the cool window, watching the cracked storefronts and bus stops of her old neighborhood give way to wider avenues, then to gated properties and tree-lined streets she'd only ever seen in magazines left behind in waiting rooms.

"You'll want to know a few things before we arrive," the old man said eventually. His name, she'd learned partway through the drive, was Jim, he'd served the Dalton family for over twenty years. "The Daltons found out about you through a private investigation, reopened last year. Mr. and Mrs. Dalton believe wholeheartedly that you are their biological daughter."

Something in the way he phrased that caught in Ariel's ear like a splinter.

"Believe wholeheartedly," she repeated slowly. "Jim. Is there any doubt?"

Jim's eyes stayed fixed on the road for one beat too long.

"The DNA test was conclusive," he said. Which wasn't, Ariel noticed, actually an answer to her question.

She wanted to press further, but exhaustion pulled at her, and somewhere past that thought she fell asleep against the window, the last thing she saw was the golden gates of an estate too large to be real.

She woke as the car passed through those gates.

The mansion rose in front of her like something built to be photographed rather than lived in, pale stone, towering windows lit gold from inside, a fountain throwing spray into the porch lights. Balloons had been tied along the entrance in clusters, and a banner stretched the full width of the front hall, visible even through the tall glass doors.

They decorated for me, Ariel thought, and something in her chest, tight for eighteen years, loosened just slightly.

She had barely stepped out of the car before hurried footsteps echoed down the marble staircase inside, and a girl came flying down it, mascara streaked, sobbing.

"I'm done!" the girl cried. "I can't stay in this house! I hate it here!"

A man and woman rushed toward her, tall, silver-haired, dressed like they'd stepped out of the same magazines the mansion belonged in. Mr. and Mrs. Dalton. Mrs. Dalton pulled the crying girl into her arms.

"Britney, sweetheart, please..."

"No one is replacing you," Mr. Dalton said firmly. "Not now, not ever. You'll always be our daughter."

Ariel's small, hopeful smile faded by degrees as she looked past them and finally read the banner properly.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRITNEY!

Not for me, she realized. None of this was ever for me.

She stood very still in the driveway for a moment, absorbing it, then quietly reminded herself of the one thing that mattered.

I'm not here for a family. I'm here for a way to Harvard.

She walked past the reunion without announcing herself, found an empty section of couch in the enormous living room, and pulled her dog-eared Medical Biology textbook from her bag. If nobody in this house was going to acknowledge her arrival, she would use the time productively.

A sharp laugh cut through the room a few minutes later.

Britney, dry-eyed now, the tears gone as fast as they'd come, stood over her with her arms crossed. "Seriously? You're studying? We haven't even said hello and you're already doing homework."

"I like to stay ahead," Ariel said simply, not looking up.

"Of course you do." Britney rolled her eyes and turned to her parents with a sigh so theatrical it belonged on a stage. "Fine. I'll stay. But only because Ariel clearly needs supervision."

A new voice, low and amused, came from the hallway. "So this is her." A young man leaned against the doorframe, tie loosened, watch catching the light. Nathan, Ariel would learn, the Dalton's eldest son. He looked her over like she didn't belong in the room. "The girl from nowhere."

"Nathan," Ariel said evenly, closing her book around one finger to hold her place. "I don't believe we've met."

"We don't need to." He crossed the room unhurried, stopping close enough that she had to tilt her head to hold his gaze. "Drop the smart-girl act. Nobody's impressed."

Before she could respond, he plucked the book straight out of her hands.

"That's mine," she said, standing now.

He turned it over, smirking at the cover. "Medical Biology. Cute prop." He flipped it open at random. "Let's test the prop, then. What percentage of an adult's body weight is blood?"

The room went quiet. Even Britney's smirk faltered, curious now.

"Seven to eight percent," Ariel said, without a pause.

Nathan's smile thinned. Britney glanced at her father. "Dad, is that right?"

"...Yes," Mr. Dalton admitted, watching Ariel with new and unreadable attention. "That's correct."

Nathan's jaw tightened. "You did your homework before you came here. Memorize a few facts so you'd look the part."

Ariel reached out and took her book back from his hands, calm as still water. "If you spend so much time around hospitals," she said, "have you ever considered getting your own head examined?"

The room went utterly silent. A maid near the doorway visibly flinched.

Nathan's face darkened in a way that made the temperature of the room drop. "What did you just say to me?"

"I think you heard me."

His hand closed into a fist at his side. He stepped in, close, faster than Ariel expected, and before she could move, his hand was already rising.

"Nathan!"

Mrs. Dalton's voice cracked across the room like a whip, and Nathan froze mid-motion, breathing hard, his hand still raised in the air between them.

In the stunned quiet that followed, Ariel caught a flicker of motion near the doorway, Jim, standing perfectly still, his eyes not on Nathan at all, but on her. When their eyes met, he gave the smallest possible shake of his head. Not a warning about Nathan.

A warning about something else.

Then he looked away and said nothing. Whatever Jim knew about this house, he had no intention of telling her. Not yet.