Pride and Papercuts

by Staci Hart

  “I know,” she said to her shoes.

  We were silent for a beat.

  “Why did you come here today?”

  Her gaze lifted to meet mine. “Because I love you. Because I was wrong, and I want to make it right. How can I earn your trust again? How can I beg your forgiveness? How can I say that I’m sorry when words aren’t enough?” A shake of her head, a glance at the floor. “Of all the things I’ve walked away from, of all the things I’ve lost, you’re the one I will never forgive myself for. So I had to try.”

  The fissure in my heart cracked wider, drove deeper.

  “Is there anything I can say?” she asked. “Is there anything I can do? Tell me, and I’ll do it. Just don’t say it’s over. Please, don’t say that.” Her voice broke, her eyes shining with tears.

  Emotion gripped my throat, my heart whispering acceptance and my mind screaming defense. But when her tears spilled over, my heart won.

  Slowly, I pulled her into my arms, held her to my chest, warred with myself. Because this felt right—she felt right. But what she’d done was wrong, and my mind held fast to that violation, wielding it like a mace.

  “You asked me what you could do,” I said.

  “Anything, just ask.”

  “Give me time.” I rested my chin on her crown, unable to look at her. “I believe you, every word. But somewhere deep down, you don’t trust me. And after yesterday, I’ve lost trust in you. If we don’t have trust, the whole thing falls apart.”

  I felt every shallow rise and fall of her breath.

  “Is it over?” she asked.

  No, my heart answered. But it was all too fresh, too soon to know what to do without question. Until I had an irrefutable answer, I had no answer at all.

  “I don’t know.”

  She broke from my arms, taking a step back. Hurt etched her face, edged with a new sort of betrayal. “I don’t think I realized you’d be willing to walk away because I made a mistake. Because I overreacted.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “But it’s a possibility?”

  I said nothing.

  Now her tears were proud and pained, and she swiped hastily at her cheeks to dash them away. “My father said love isn’t just about trust—it’s about forgiveness and hope. It’s true, if we don’t have trust, the whole thing falls apart. But if you can’t forgive, then what we have won’t last anyway. So while you take your time, consider that too.”

  I should have stopped her. I should have argued. I should have told her what she wanted to hear in the hopes I’d come around to that forgiveness.

  Instead, I watched her back as she opened the door. A sliver of golden sunlight spilled in for the briefest of moments before it was cut off again.

  And once more, I was left in the dark.

  28

  Queen of Ashes

  MAISIE

  It took the entire cab ride to Midtown to compose myself.

  My life had become defined by treachery. Mother’s I’d expected. Mine had cut me off at the knees.

  But what I’d done to Marcus might be the one to drag me under once and for all.

  Stupidly, I’d convinced myself that he’d forgive me. That he’d understand. That together, we’d find a way for me to regain that trust I’d broken. But of course it wouldn’t be so easy. Of course he would need time. Of course he would need to consider it all. Marcus did nothing until he was absolutely certain. He wouldn’t tell me it was all right if there were even the slightest chance that it wasn’t.

  I reached into my bag for my phone, opening my messages. Touching his name.

  I’m sorry. And I understand. Take whatever time you need. I’ll be waiting.

  And then I turned off my phone, shoving it to the depths of the bag where I wouldn’t be tempted to wait for word.

  As the cab pulled up to the curb, I did my best to shove my feelings in too, because I was about to walk into Bower for a legal meeting.

  With every step away from the taxi and into the building, my blood pressure rose.

  Roland had been released late yesterday, as had Shelby, and this morning I’d woken to a call requesting a meeting with Roland and the head of the company’s legal department. Even if I’d wanted to refuse or postpone, I wanted to know what they had to say, how bad things were. I had not expected the meeting to be at Bower, assuming the floors we occupied would be a crime scene or something.

  When I exited the elevator of the executive floor, it didn’t look like a crime scene.

  It looked like a robbery.

  The floor had been gutted of everything but furniture and harmless electronics. The carpet was littered with scraps of paper and a flotsam and jetsam of everything from loose staples to pens, sticky notes and paperclips. Drawers of every desk and cabinet hung open like gaping mouths, emptied of anything that could have held even a trace of evidence.

  All that was left was trash and unused office supplies.

  The sight was reminiscent of the remains of my life.

  There wasn’t a single soul in the bullpen, the space so quiet, I could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights. The sound of my footsteps on the industrial carpet almost echoed in the wreckage of my family’s company.

  It was so quiet, in fact, that when I opened the boardroom door and found Roland and the lawyer there, it very nearly startled me.

  They stood when I entered, their faces grim and seemingly sleepless. And after cursory greetings, we sat across from each other.

  Roland pulled his baffling handkerchief out of his pocket and swiped at his glistening forehead.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you after yesterday, but I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “I’m sure you can imagine that we need to get Bower back up and running as quickly as possible, and we could use your help.”

  “Thank you for the consideration, but I would just really like to know what is going on and what happened. I’d like to help, if I can. But I’m not sure if you’re aware that my mother fired me a few days ago.”

  Roland paled, sharing a look with the lawyer before speaking. “Yes. Well, in light of your mother’s arrest, I think it’s safe to say whatever she might have said is moot.” He squirmed through a pause.

  The lawyer, whom I didn’t know, gave him a look. “Start with the charges.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course,” Roland started, relieved to have a thread to pull. “You see, I first discovered the misappropriation of funds a few years ago, shortly after you opened Harvest Center.” He handed me the folder on the top of the stack in front of him. I opened it as he continued, “At first I thought it was a clerical error, but when I went to Evelyn with it, she explained it away. But I don’t deal in excuses, I deal in math. Math doesn’t lie. Your mother does.”

  My mouth went dry. I reached for the water pitcher and poured a glass with shaking hands.

  “I watched the accounts over the course of a few months—you had left for England by that time—and when the missing money accumulated, I went to her again. But that time, she was ready for me. Her counter was the threat to make sure I took some, if not all, of the blame. She had orchestrated a setup, one designed to implicate me. And so she left me with no choice.” He straightened up, lifting his chin though his eyes were heavy with apology. “I approached the FBI that afternoon.”

  Blank. I was as blank as a fresh sheet of paper.

  “For the last eighteen months, we have been building a case against her. There was so much data to process, so many patterns to find. Too much research for anything to move quickly. So I let her believe she had the upper hand while they gathered what they needed to arrest and indict her. I’m sorry, Margaret. I’m sorry to have done this to you and your family. But there was nothing I could do or say to change her mind.”

  “Maisie,” I heard myself say. “Please, call me Maisie.”

  A small fatherly smile touched his lips. “When you came back, our new worry was you. I don’t know why she lured you here with the charity—I told
her not to put you in charge of the front for her theft, but she thought she knew better. I really did try to turn it around, which likely only made the case against her stronger. If she had only restructured, closed ranks, saved money instead of stealing it, everything would have been fine, or at least better than this. But to Evelyn Bower, that would be admitting defeat, publicly and openly. Convincing her—I’m sure you’d agree—is a fool’s errand.”

  I couldn’t answer, so I nodded.

  “I told her not to involve you—the chance of you looking like an accomplice was too high—but when you asked for the charity as a contingency for returning … well, there was no talking her out of it. She tried to tell me—her accountant, for Pete’s sake—that she would fix it all.” He scoffed. “But I thought you should know that her attempts to keep you away from the charity wasn’t strictly for her purposes. It was to protect you. Even firing you, I believe, was to try to separate you from the company and her mess. The pressure had mounted, and we all knew it was coming. Only difference is, she didn’t know what was coming, nor did she know how bad it would be.”

  Protect me. She was trying to protect me. The words were unbelievable, even in thought. Unfathomable.

  But they didn’t shock me in that disbelief. Because if ever my mother did protect me, it would be through abuse.

  The lawyer slid another folder in Roland’s direction, perhaps to get him on track.

  “Oh, yes.” He opened it up and rifled through the papers inside. “And so the state of the company. As of this morning, your mother has given you the entirety of her shares of Bower Bouquets, fifty-one percent.”

  Shock bolted me to the chair. “What?”

  “Had she not, the board would have insisted. They might have bought her out, broken up the shares, taken the control from a Bower, and your mother would never allow that. So she has gifted them to you. Franklin here is drawing up the paperwork.”

  At his introduction, Franklin spoke, though his words came from what felt like a very great distance, “Miss Bower, the shares are yours to do with as you wish. The board has already requested a meeting, and if you’d like, I can accompany you. I suspect there will be quite a lot of talk on what’s going to be sold and how the company will be turned around …”

  I heard nothing else, my horizon shifting, weighted on one end by surprise as the dogma of my upbringing shot into the air and away. Everything I knew. Everything this company was.

  Everything it could someday be.

  I could not parse it. The information tumbled and jumbled around in my brain like laundry in a dryer set too hot.

  “… I’m sure you can imagine everyone is anxious to get things moving again,” Franklin was saying. “This company needs a head, a leader. We can limp along while it’s sorted out, but the sooner we get you into that boardroom, the better.”

  “And what about Mother?” My voice was rough, unrecognizable. “How will she survive?”

  “Well,” Franklin said, “she’s home now, and she’ll stay there for some time. Your mother isn’t without investments. She’ll have to call those in—her houses, her retirement funds and stocks, anything we can liquidate—to pay back what she embezzled from the shareholders.”

  “What’s the total?”

  A pause. “Just shy of twenty million.”

  My lungs filled, my gasp audible. But I was suffocating.

  “Try not to worry yourself with that,” Roland attempted to comfort me. “This was her choice. She had many, so many opportunities to set things right, but she didn’t. She put herself here. And now you have a chance to save the company.”

  But I didn’t know how. I didn’t know how to speak, let alone save our crippled and overextended company. But I sat and listened as they rolled through lingering details. When it was all done, we stood and shook hands, and I left that boardroom a shell.

  I stepped into the silent remains of the company. It was our kingdom in ruin, laid to waste by my mother.

  And I was queen of the ashes.

  29

  Legacy

  MAISIE

  I didn’t know how long I had been standing on the stoop of my mother’s house.

  When I’d left Bower, I’d walked, so lost in thought that I looked up and found myself on the subway, nearly at Christopher Street. In a haze, I exited when the doors opened and wandered up Hudson and toward her house. And I hadn’t stopped, not until I was standing here, in front of her door, without a plan or a purpose or a thought.

  James didn’t open the door on my approach, which struck me as odd in itself until I realized he’d likely quit or been let go. I wondered if I should knock or ring the bell, having never come to the house when I didn’t reside here. The key was in my purse, but it somehow felt criminal to enter a house where I wasn’t welcome with a key I shouldn’t have.

  Without expecting a result, I reached for the doorknob and turned, shocked when met with no resistance. Instead, the door creaked open, casting a long rectangle of light in the otherwise dark room.

  I stepped in, confused and on alert.

  It was too dark for daytime, unnaturally dim for a cloudless day.

  It was too quiet, and my mind ran away with thoughts of finding her hurt, finding she’d hurt herself. Or worse.

  But I closed the door, the sound of my heels echoing too loud.

  “Mother?” I called, moving through the entryway and toward her office.

  Things were untidy—a pair of toppled-over shoes next to the writing desk, which was littered with letters. Her designer bag lay on the floor on its side, the contents spilling onto the parquet.

  “Hello?” My pulse picked up as I approached her office doors, which were cracked only a sliver.

  I laid my damp palm on the unlatched doors and pushed.

  The curtains were drawn, so heavy that only splinters of light came through. But the small, round window in the pointed eave cast a column of light into the room, just enough to see the visage of my mother, sitting in a chair in front of her grand desk, glass of scotch hanging delicately from her hand and the bottle at her bare feet.

  “So you’ve come to gloat.” Her voice cut through the silence like an arrow.

  I would have been hurt had I not been so relieved to find her alive. Though on inspection, I couldn’t imagine Evelyn Bower’s ego ever consenting to take her own life.

  “No. I’ve come to ask why.”

  She brought the crystal glass to her lips, tipping it until it was empty. And then she stood, moving to the stand where more glasses waited. “Why what, exactly?”

  When she turned, a second glass was in her hand. And she made her way to sit once more before pouring a finger of scotch into both, extending one to me.

  Dumbfounded, I accepted it. She nodded to the chair next to her, and I sat.

  For a moment, we sat in silence, facing that opulent desk and the history of our family on the wall and mantel behind it.

  The grand Victorian mantel held a dozen gilded picture frames marking Bowers through the generations. Faded wedding pictures in black-and-white vignette. My great-grandmother and her sister at a farm in the forties, cheeks high and smiling. A formal portrait of my grandmother, grandfather, and my mother and aunt as babies. A wedding photo of my parents. A baby picture of me.

  But on the wall hung a massive painting of my grandmother, the portrait grand and stern and commanding. She sat in a stately chair surrounded by bouquets in shocks of color—every color in the world, I’d thought when I was a little girl. But the thing that always struck me was the ghost of a smile she wore like a crack in her mask. It was the only warmth, the only humanity in the imposing painting, and I always wondered where the rest of that smile was. Who had seen it and who had wiped it away.

  “She was a terrible old bitch,” my mother said from my side. “For twenty years, I’ve sat at this desk under that look on her face. Under her shadow. Funny that I didn’t want to be her since I became her.”

  I took a sip of my dr
ink, which was all the answer I had to give.

  “You want to know why? A vague question with too many possible answers. If you want to know why I stole from my own company, it was because I believed I could put it all back. The reason I needed it was my own vanity—to keep this house and all the others we own. To keep up appearances as our profits waned. To pretend it was fine so as not to be strong-armed by the board into retreat. I didn’t want to face humiliation.” She laughed humorlessly. “I was too sure of myself to even consider this a real consequence. And look at me now.” She held up a hand in display.

  Still, I had nothing to say, and she seemed to require no response as she continued, “I think you’ve sorted out why I didn’t want you to have the charity and even why I fired you—had I not, it was very likely I’d have taken you down with me. And despite popular belief, I do want you to succeed. I do want you to thrive. I just didn’t think you were capable on your own. Although I will say that your sleeping with a Bennet is the deepest wound you could have inflicted. I should be thanking you. You made it very easy to fire you. I didn’t have to act at all. And I meant it when I said they would ruin us. They always would have, if given the opportunity.”

  We stared up at Grandmother. I tried to ignore the flicker of warmth from her admission—she wanted what was best for me and had tried to give it to me in her own twisted way.

  She took a sip of her drink as if to fortify herself.

  “And if you want to know why I gave you the shares, it’s because I can’t keep them. If Bower is to go on, it has to be with you. I’ve tainted it, and even had I not, it cannot be seized. It will not be dissolved. And somehow, you are the only one who can save it from that fate.”

  “I’m surprised.”

  Her face turned to me, but I kept my eyes on Grandmother. “By what part?”

  “All of it. I was convinced you’d gladly disinherit me if I didn’t do what you asked.”

  “This company has been passed down through generations. It was going to be yours regardless of what I threatened. I had to protect you, or the company would go to God knows who. It was the only way.”