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If I had any chance of things working out, I had to put this behind me.
“Hello?” my mother calls as I walk through her front door, even knowing full well who it was.
“Mother,” I call. Then follow her voice that calls back from the kitchen. When I enter, the vision in front of me is something I’ve never seen before.
My mother… in a bathrobe.
My bag falls to the ground as my grip slackens. “Mom?”
She looks up at me and the shock continues when I see her face devoid of any makeup.
“What?” she asks wearily, sipping a mug. I’m suspicious as to whether the mug holds coffee or something much, much stronger.
“Are you… okay?” I ask tentatively. I’d come in here ready for a fight, ready to take on the villain of my story, to defend my prince.
I shake my head. I have got to stop reading so many fantasy novels.
“I’m just peachy,” she says, her voice sad or… resigned maybe.
“Why are you…” But I don’t really know how to voice the question. In all my years, there’s been a handful of times where I’ve seen my mother without makeup. That I can remember anyway, there may have been other times when I was small, an infant, that she didn’t wear it.
But somehow, I doubt even that.
“What is it, Jane?”
I straighten my shoulders and clear my throat. “I want you to stop this.”
“Stop what? I’m no longer doing anything.” She takes another sip and looks out the back window.
It’s then I notice that there are no other noises in the house, either. No chef preparing her lunch, no housekeeper vacuuming anything, no phone ringing.
“You’ve been trying to get in touch with me.”
She scoffs and sets the mug down with a calmness that scares me. “I have. But don’t worry, I won’t anymore.”
“Won’t anymore?”
“Nope.” She sighs and leans against the table, then she looks at me and I see the sight of a woman who has given up.
I take a step, then another until I sink down in a chair across from her. I sigh when she doesn’t look at me and just say, “Mother, what is going on? What happened?”
“What do you mean?”
I think about what Molly said. “I want to know what Jasper Pierce has on you.”
Her eyes widen slightly, just enough to tell me that she didn’t think I knew anything.
“What do—”
“Enough, Mother,” I interrupt, my voice hard. I’ve never spoken out of turn with her, but I’ve just had it. I’m tired. I just want to run the company, have the love of my life back, and read a fucking book in silence with a steaming mug of hot chocolate. Is that too much to ask?
“Jane—”
“I need you to tell me everything.” I raise a brow and think,I probably look just like her,but quickly chase that thought out of my brain with a mental baseball bat.
“Fine.” She clunks her mug down on the table. “You want to know everything? I’ll tell you. Twenty years ago, Leads Energy was going bankrupt.”
My mouth falls open slightly in shock.
