Chapter 12
By New Year’s Eve, Grant and Audrey had stopped pretending the rental felt like home.
The heater worked in fits. Every time it clicked off, Audrey found herself listening for the bedroom window that wasn’t there, the stubborn door handle that wasn’t there, the next thing Lenora might have arranged without asking. Caleb slept in his bassinet beneath a wool blanket Tessa had brought, his breath soft and even.
Grant’s cousin had offered them a small apartment across town for the night. It was warm, crowded with unpacked boxes, and blessedly ordinary. Audrey sat on the edge of the couch with a mug cooling between her hands while Grant checked the time again.
“You’re wearing a path in the floor,” she said.
He stopped near the kitchen doorway. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize for being worried.”
“I’m not worried about getting there.” He glanced toward Caleb. “I’m worried about what she’ll say if we don’t.”
Audrey watched the baby’s blanket rise and fall. “That’s the part I can’t keep doing.”
Grant didn’t answer too quickly. The pause mattered more than a promise delivered on instinct.
“I can’t live with every decision being measured against whether your mother will punish you for it,” Audrey said. “I can’t make Caleb’s safety compete with her approval. And I can’t keep explaining that to you when something happens.”
His shoulders lowered, as if he’d been bracing for a blow and finally understood it wasn’t coming.
“You’re right,” he said.
“I need more than you agreeing while we’re alone.”
“I know.” Grant sat opposite her, leaving the space between them open. “I learned early that if I disappointed her, she could make the whole house feel like I’d been sent away. She didn’t have to yell. She’d just stop looking at me. I spent years trying to become the version of me who got that look back.”
Audrey set down her mug. “And when she turned that on me, you tried to make it smaller.”
“Yes.” His voice tightened. “I told myself keeping things calm was the same as protecting you. It wasn’t. It protected me from having to risk losing her.”
The words landed without excuse. Audrey felt her throat constrict, not with relief, exactly, but with the ache of something finally named.
“I don’t want you to hate your mother,” she said. “I want you to stop asking me to absorb what she does so you can keep believing she’ll change.”
“I won’t ask that again.”
“Don’t promise what you’ll feel. Tell me what you’ll do.”
Grant looked down at his hands. “I’ll leave when you say you don’t feel safe. I’ll correct her lies, even if she’s standing right there. And I won’t make you negotiate with her for our family.”
Audrey searched his face. It wasn’t the first apology he’d offered. But this time he hadn’t asked her to reassure him that he was still a good son.
“I can work with actions,” she said.
A knock sounded at the apartment door. Grant rose, but Audrey’s eyes went first to Caleb. The baby stirred, then settled again.
Tessa came in carrying her coat over one arm and her phone in the other. Cold clung to her cheeks. “The reporter’s there,” she said. “Lenora started early. Guests are arriving now.”
Grant’s expression hardened. “How many?”
“Enough that she’ll have an audience.” Tessa glanced at Audrey. “She’s standing in the front room, welcoming people. She’s telling them the family is coming.”
Audrey felt the last of the warmth drain from her mug. “She knows we haven’t left.”
“She knows what she needs the room to believe.” Tessa looked ashamed, though none of this was hers to carry alone. “I’m sorry. I thought you had more time.”
Grant reached for his coat. “We’re going.”
Audrey stood, then stopped beside Caleb’s bassinet. For one quiet second, the only sound was the heater and the baby’s breathing. She could leave him here, safe with Grant’s cousin. That had been the plan. No baby for Lenora to frame as proof of forgiveness, no audience allowed to turn his presence into consent.
She brushed two fingers across Caleb’s small hand.
“We go in together,” she said. “We speak for ourselves. If she tries to pull us apart, we leave.”
“Together,” Grant said.
Tessa held out her phone. “Before you do, I need you to see this.”
A live video filled the screen. The camera wobbled as someone moved through the Whitmore house, its polished floors crowded with guests in dark coats and bright holiday clothes. Gold lights glimmered against the windows. The familiar front room looked arranged for a photograph, every chair placed, every garland fluffed.
Then Lenora appeared in the center of the room, one hand around a champagne glass. She wore the poised smile she used when she wanted a room to trust her before it knew what she was asking.
“Thank you all for coming,” she said. “And thank you for giving our family the chance to begin again.”
Grant leaned closer to the screen. Audrey’s hand tightened around the back of the chair.
Lenora lifted her glass.
“Most of all, thank you to Audrey for agreeing to return.”
May you like
For a moment, the apartment went utterly quiet.
Audrey was still across town. Tessa’s phone kept recording. On its screen, Lenora smiled as if Audrey had already walked through the door.
