AllFreeNovel
Share Us
This morning, I woke early to come help the Place of Hope shelter. They had been canvassing and spreading the word over the last couple of weeks and the turnout was better than they expected. I wish I could take credit, but between Molly, Erika, and their organizer Tina, they were the ones who put this all together.
“Yeah,” I sigh and take a seat. We’d been serving for a while and were on a break. But we’d spent the morning connecting with people, listening to their stories and watching the moms’ faces light up at their children’s joy. It sparked something in me. A need to help these women find a job, build a better future. If I could make that gap for them, get a place for them to work while their kids were in a safe place…
The thought turned in my head and I knew that I was going to come back to that thought. Probably a lot.
“You seem… off,” Molly observes, taking a sip of the coffee on the table.
“I’ve got a lot going on,” I reply with a polite smile.
“Yeah. I get that,” Molly responds and looks out at the sea of women, children, and volunteers who came to help. “But…” she continues. “Something is different. Your smiles are less… bright.”
“Uh.” I laugh awkwardly and shake my head. “I’m just kind of going through a rough patch.”
“With who? Your boyfriend?”
“My boyfriend… my mom,” I admit quietly. I don’t want to slander my mother’s name, but over the last few weeks, Molly and I have become a lot closer and I found myself excited for our meetings. I also knew that she wasn’t the conniving, ruthless woman I thought she was, but that it was a front. One I had to put on as well, when dealing with overbearing assholes who thought they knew it all, at work.
“Ah.” She nods. “Well, I’ll be honest, I’m not much for boyfriends. They seem like a lot of work. But… your mom.” She keeps nodding her head. “Your mom I do know.”
I raise a brow and lean in. “That’s true… I guess I never thought about that.”
“Tell me what’s up.” She nudges my arm.
“You know Jasper Pierce,” I start and Molly confirms before I move on. “They’ve got it into their heads that he and I need to be an item, to join forces or something.” I explain that they’ve been pushing this even when I’ve adamantly refused when they both know I’m involved with Warren. Molly nods along as I talk, she knows something about this ordeal since she was one of the hundreds of people who saw the newspaper that announced our engagement. It feels good to have someone listen to me that knows my mother, knows how she operates.
“Hm.” Molly leans in closer and says, “A few years back, I was working with Jasper’s family on an event. One that was supposed to mesh Leads Energy with Pierce Foods.” She waves her hand. “Anyway, when I was working with Mr. Pierce, he said some things that made me… I don’t know, confused, I guess.”
“Like what?”
“Like how Mrs. Leads wouldn’t care about the money they raised because it was all going to him and his charity anyway.”
I blink and shake my head. “What? Why?”
“I don’t know. That wasn’t part of my job. I just got the checks written; I didn’t distribute them.”
“But those events were for both of our charities… right?”
“This one was, but there was something off about the one the Leads picked.” She gives me a look and I shrug, clueless.
“I was a bottom feeder then. I didn’t work on the charities at all, just attended the events I was told to.”
“Right, I remember,” Molly adds and then continues. “Well, it turned out that the charity your mother chose didn’t actually exist. Not in the ‘nonprofit’ kind of way.”
“And?”
“And.” She bites her lip and I rest my hand over hers.
“Anything you tell me is safe, but I need to know what’s going on here.” I implore her with my eyes, on the edge of my seat for this new information.
Nodding, she says, “That charity that your mom picked? It was nothing. Like smoke. I tried to trace it and the people who created the LLC it was under was… nothing.” She shrugs. “Like a ghost.”
I bite my lip and frown. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” She gives me a strained look. “Nothing good.”
Chapter Fifty
“We are writers, my love.
