Chapter 2

When I got back to the Pruitt mansion, the James family was already sitting in the living room, waiting for me.

Will James had one of my father's cigars, the ones he'd collected for years, clamped in his mouth, his feet up on the rosewood coffee table my mother had left behind, ash flicked all over the tabletop.

My mother had picked that table out herself, just before she died. She said the grain in the wood looked like a river, and that keeping it in the house would settle people's hearts.

I used to worry that Will's smoking would ruin it, but Joshua always said his father didn't understand these things and told me not to make an issue of it.

Today, though, I suddenly heard Will laughing to himself, deep inside.

【A beat-up table, and she treats it like treasure. Once it's signed over, I wouldn't even want it holding down a corner of the yard.】

Clara James came down the stairs.

She was wearing my mother's pale moon-white silk gown.

It had been my mother's favorite, with a small jade clasp at the collar. I'd kept it locked away in the very back of the master bedroom's closet, never able to bring myself to touch it.

Now Clara had it stretched tight across her body, a grease stain smeared on one cuff.

She saw me and smiled, as if nothing were wrong at all.

"Marty's home? I thought it was a shame to leave this hanging there, so I put it on. You don't mind, do you?"

Something closed off my throat.

For that instant I forgot I might be dying. All I felt was that someone had dragged my mother out of her grave and turned her into a rag for people to walk on.

Clara came over and took my hand, her eyes reddening fast.

"Joshua told me you're sick. It broke my heart to hear it."

【Sick and dying, and she still gets the best clothes and the best house. Bad luck, the whole thing. If I weren't afraid she'd catch on, I'd have cleaned out that closet already.】

My fingers went cold.

This wasn't something I was imagining.

One person's malice could be an act. But two, three, four people speaking the same secret at once couldn't just mean I'd lost my mind.

Christine James was lounging on the sofa scrolling on her phone, a row of shopping bags piled at her feet.

One of them held a limited-edition bag, bought with the money from pawning the jewelry my mother had left me on my birthday.

I looked at her, my voice rough.

"Christine, wasn't this the bag you said you were borrowing last month for a photo shoot?"

She looked up and curled her lip, annoyed.

"Sis, look at the state you're in, and you're still fussing over a bag?"

Joshua snapped at her at once. "Is that any way to talk to your brother's wife?"

【Idiot. Would it kill you to hold out three months? Once she's dead, I can take as much as I want.】

Christine rolled her eyes, but she came over right away and threw her arms around me.

"I just feel bad for you. Don't worry, while you rest and get better, I'll take good care of your father and this house for you."

【Someone who's about to die, hogging a house this big. What a waste. Where does she keep the keys to that sports car?】

I stood there among them, like I'd fallen into a pit of ice.

They lived in my house, spent my money, wore my mother's things, and treated my father as an obstacle they were waiting to see cleared away.

And for the past seven years, I'd been calling this parasitism "family."

At dinner, Clara ladled me a bowl of soup.

She set it down in front of me, her face as tender as a real mother's.

"Marty, I made this just for you. Drink it while it's hot."

【Drink up. The harder you throw up, the more you'll believe you don't have long.】

I stared into the bowl, my stomach churning.

Then I picked it up and went to the window, pretending to cough until I couldn't catch my breath.

While everyone crowded around me, I poured the soup into the sealed bag I'd tucked away.

Clara was still patting my back, her tone urgent.

"Why aren't you drinking it? This is good for you."

I turned to look at her, tears already falling.

She thought it was despair, and inside she was pleased with herself.

But I was crying for myself.

Crying for the Martha Pruitt who had once called them family — a fool this whole time, and I never once saw it.