Page 111 of The False Flat

“I want you to come back home.” She sat, folded her hands on the table, used her business posture, her professional tone, the tone she used to make things happen, control her environment, bend the world to her will.

“I am home.”

She shook her head. “This isn’t your home. Look at this place. Look at you. You’re confused. You need to be grounded, with solid people like Chad.”

I stared at her. This was a repeat of the proposal. Instead of getting angry, I felt sorry for her. After Brandon, she’d decided who I’d needed to be, and she ignored what didn’t fit her mold, tucking it out of her mind so she could go on pretending. Like I had.

But I couldn’t pretend anymore. I didn’t have the energy for it or her.

I snapped. “Last night, the greatest man I’ve ever known, the greatest human I’ve ever known, told me he had cancer, and I don’t know what I said to him! I need to call him. I need to make sure he’s okay, that we’re okay.”

For several seconds, my mother looked like a scared, paralyzed animal, not the statuesque woman she’d made herself into. In those seconds, I thought she might understand; for those brief ticks of the clock, I thought we’d reached some kind of breakthrough.

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, there was Aurora Auberge, cold, withdrawn, determined.

“I will not let you make this mistake. Cancer? God knows you don’t need that. You shouldn’t do this. I won’t let you do this.”

I stood.

“You owe him nothing,” she went on. “Chad is healthy, strong, willing to—”

“I can’t go back there.”

“You don’t have to worry about Houston anymore. He’s discredited. He’s been seducing wealthy women, drugging them, and then threatening exposure if they didn’t heavily invest in TCF.”

“Extortion?” I looked into my mother’s face. Then, she pulled a folded newspaper seemingly out of nowhere and spread it on the table in front of me. Houston’s picture was on the front, in handcuffs.

Houston McGregor is an extortionist.

Then it hit me: he was also a rapist.

“They want you to take his place at TCF.” A look of utter pride brightened my mother’s face.

“What? Who wants me to take his place?”

“The higher-ups. They didn’t agree with what Houston did to you. They didn’t realize it until I made them aware.”

I stared at her.

“We’re both trying to make this right.” Was she, too, admitting some kind of wrong? Had I entered an alternate reality where people realize their flaws and actually try to fix them?

They want me to take Houston McGregor’s place. Me.

I reveled in the thought. I saw the newspaper headline, the hypothetical one that would be placed right across from Houston in an orange jumpsuit.

Penelope Auberge saves Twin Cities Financial from corrupt extortionist and rapist, Houston McGregor, the same man who, months ago, tried to slander her.

A woman. A mixed woman. In charge. I saw my picture, a smiling, confident portrait. I saw justice. I saw hope in my mother’s face.

Aurora took my hand in hers. She’s holding my hand. It was weird, but also, kind of nice. “Come home. Start over. You don’t have to do this. Moving back would be the right thing to do, for your career and future. There’s no question.”

She was giving me a way out.

As the clock ticked from one number to the next, I let the past and present wash over me: what had happened, what hadn’t happened, what was happening now, what would happen. Everything converged.

“Thank you for coming here.” I knew it hadn’t been easy. “Thank you for all you’ve done to help clear my name. But I am home, and I—”

I grabbed my purse. I couldn’t afford to say anything else. I needed to find Grant. I walked out my back door, leaving my mother standing in my kitchen.