Chapter 4

"Aunt Hildegarde, I know you love me, but compensation, whatever it is, I'll handle it myself."

"You've never worked a day in an office. You don't know how these things go."

Hildegarde only smiled.

She tapped at her phone a few times and placed a call.

"Lloyd Whitney, that matter I mentioned yesterday, how far along are we?"

"Good. One more thing. Get in touch with my niece Trudy Harrington's company and settle her resignation with them."

"I want to make sure that company never harasses my niece again."

"And send over the share transfer documents too."

Hearing the word "shares" come out of my aunt's mouth left me completely lost.

A miner's wife, giving orders to a lawyer over the phone, talking about shares?

What shares?

Hildegarde said a few more words to the lawyer on the other end, then hung up.

Then she pulled up a document and turned the screen so I could see it.

"This is the share transfer agreement. My lawyer's already handling it."

There was a string of numbers on it. I counted them one by one, and froze.

Ten million.

"That's right. Worth ten million."

Hildegarde said,

"They're original shares in the company."

"The dividends pay more than your salary. Just let me spoil you this once."

I went blank.

What movie, what novel had a plot like this?

I could call it absurd out loud, but who hasn't lain awake, worn out, wishing for exactly this kind of dream?

I pinched myself when she wasn't looking. I didn't wake up.

"Aunt Hildegarde, you..."

"Your uncle by marriage hasn't let me want for anything all these years."

"Not long after I married him, they found ore over there. He got in on it, and little by little it grew into something big."

She looked at me, her eyes curving into a smile.

"Trudy, you were the only person in this world who reached out to me the day the whole family threw me out."

"Take this. It's my gift to family."

I was about to speak when my phone chimed.

A news alert.

The instant the screen lit up, every hair on me stood on end.

Top headline:

"Renowned Mining Conglomerate Chairman Mark Chavez Donates Another Fifty Million to Education Scholarship Fund; His Wife Hildegarde Harrington Once Said..."

In the photo, a middle-aged man in a dark gray suit stood on a stage cutting a ribbon, a woman in a beige skirt suit on his arm.

The woman was smiling, poised and elegant, her expression gentle.

That was my aunt.

The same Hildegarde Harrington the whole family had spent twenty years calling a "failure," a "lovesick fool," a "born pauper."

And Mark Chavez.

Mark Chavez was my "poor uncle from the mountains." The man I'd always known as Mark.

"That's the name on his ID. The Mark you knew was just what everyone called him."

I lifted my head and looked at my aunt, the same woman who had stood at my stove cooking me breakfast porridge.

She said, smiling,

"Trudy, I never forgot. When you were little, you sat on the back of my bike and said that one day you'd take care of me."

"I don't need you to take care of me now."

"But you deserve a life where no one gets to push you around."

I looked at the photo in the news, then back at my aunt.

Twenty years.

A poor boy from the mountains had become a mining magnate.

And the daughter her own family had driven out as a bad omen was the woman in the news, on the arm of a billionaire at a charity gala.

Say it out loud. Would anyone believe it?

I hadn't even come out from under that enormous shock when a knock sounded at the door.

"Trudy, your aunt's here with you, isn't she?"

It was my father's voice.