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I looked at my watch. My meeting with Logan and his lawyers was in
an hour. Would I be ready after that? I couldn’t promise I’d be able to
function, much less weave a path through her offer. “Look, Bianca, here’s
the deal. Straight up. Daughter to mother.”
She brightened a little. Softened a little more. She’d never be warm and
fuzzy, but she wasn’t ice and steel all the way through. “Go on then.”
“You know about Logan. That the marriage was fake, right?”
The news hadn’t made it to the press, but in circles where people
whispered over cocktails, people knew.
“I suspected as much,” she said. “It’s been talked about. Not by me, of
course.”
“We’re signing divorce papers in a few hours.” I cleared my throat
when the word “divorce” created a lump right where my voice was. “And
it’s complicated. More complicated than I thought it would be.”
“Is he trying to screw you?” She pushed her index finger into the table.
“Because when Janet Bolivar’s husband left her, she got a lawyer who ate
him for breakfast. I can get you the number.”
“No. That’s not it.”
“Well, what is it then?”
“I love him.” My face scrunched, tightening to hold back tears.
“Oh, darling.” She rushed around the table to sit next to me. “Don’t you
dare cry.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
She put her arms around me and I leaned into her, letting the sobs come.
“It’s okay, sweetheart.” She stroked my hair. “If he can’t love you back,
then… well, all his money’s worthless. I mean, what the point of it if he
can’t see what a gift you are? How smart, principled, loyal… your spirit is
so strong. Any man would be lucky to be loved by you.”
“He thinks he loves me.”
“Then what… wait.” She shrugged me off to look in my eyes. “He does
or he doesn’t?”
“He wants, like, this helpmate wife, and I’ve been that just to keep up
appearances. But he doesn’t know me and if he did? I’m not the person he
always wanted. We’ll only break up for real and then I’ll be alone again.”
Again? What did I mean by again?
Mom left me, then Daddy. Left behind like a dinghy on the ocean with
nothing to navigate by but memories. How could I wake up from that pain