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“Jacob Chambers.”
I blink. “You meanMomis saying you have to marry him.”
“No. Dad. He says I’m being ungrateful.” Tears glint in her honey-brown eyes. “He says that all the money he spent on private school and ballet lessons was for this. So I could be useful to him. That’s the word he used.Useful.But I don’t want to marry Jacob Chambers. I know—I know that he’s notbad.He’s rich, and he’s hot, and he’s not that old. I like him, but I’m not ready. Dad wants us to get married in the spring. It’s too soon.”
Anger burns in my chest. She’s eighteen years old. Only eighteen. “Have you even dated him?”
Catherine rolls her eyes. “He’s been to the house for dinner. Then we get to spend half an hour in the sitting room with the door open, like it’s the Victorian era.”
“Oh my God. While—what? While Dad hovers around and watches?” He’s obviously getting worse. More intense than when I left the house.
“Basically. And Mom isn’t helping. She says I’m going to get married anyway, to a man with money and good standing, so why not Jacob? Why not now? I can go to college later.”
So Mom is going along with Dad’s plan for Catherine. It doesn’t surprise me. It disappoints me, but I can’t exactly blame her. My father is a powerful man. She has to pick her battles.
I had to pick mine.
Was it brave of me to leave? With Catherine sitting next to me, it doesn’t feel like it. She’s out of high school, but she’s still under our dad’s thumb.
The only wayI’mgoing to have any influence with him is if I put myself in that same position. Go right back to the way things were.
There’s a difference, though. I have people to protect now. People who still have hope for a better life. If I join the consortium and work with my father, Catherine and Lydia might have a chance. I thought that’s what I was giving them when I left, and I was wrong.
It’s okay to be wrong. It’s not okay to do nothing about it.
“What is it you want? Do you have an idea in mind?”
“I don’tknow.” Catherine’s voice wobbles. “I’ve been meeting with Mom’s friends. Talking to people I went to school with. But I don’t—I don’t know. I didn’t realize I wouldn’t want to get married. What if I’m just grasping at anything because I’m chicken?”
“That’s not what this is. Not wanting to marry Jacob Chambers doesn’t make you unreasonable.”
That’s how Dad is framing it, though. He doesn’t like willful daughters.Thosedaughters only cause problems for him.
Catherine’s never been willful, and now it’s working against her. She doesn’t have any savings, and her trust fund won’t start paying out until she’s twenty-five. If she ran away, where would she go? Here, to the bakery? Dad would find her.
I reach the same conclusion as before, as clearly as if it were a printed recipe, or a contract.
I can’t move pieces on my Dad’s game board unless I’m in the game.
My father has the rest. He has Catherine and Lydia. He has Gabriel, who isn’t mine.
I care about him anyway. I can’t fall for him, but I care too much to stand by and let this happen.
“What do I do?” Catherine turns her eyes on me, and I see the shadows she’s tried to hide under her makeup. “I’m not stronglike you. I don’t know what to do. If I try to talk to him, he just makes that face.”
I know what she’s talking about. A menacing, frozen expression that sayspush me and see what happens.
“Just stay firm.” It’s a bullshit answer to give my sister, but if I’m going to do anything at all, I need some time. I doubt my father will accept it if I go to the house right now with a sudden change of heart. “Tell Mom you don’t want this wedding.”
“She won’t listen. She doesn’t understand why I changed my mind.”
“You didn’t change your mind, Cath. You haven’t had a chance to decide in the first place. You’re eighteen. You hardly know this man. Just stick to that explanation.”
“For how long?”
“Until I can fix it. I’m going to help you, okay? However I can.”
11
