Survival of the Richest (The Trust Fund Duet 1)

It meant he put his faith in me. There’s a knot in my stomach that says I let him down.

And I let that old library down.

“I didn’t get you into the treatment study.”

“And I didn’t want to do it. I would have, for you, but I didn’t want to.” She would have put herself through the pain of needles and chemicals, because I want her to get better. Does that make me selfish or stupid? Maybe both. Or maybe I’m just a little girl who wants her mother.

“Daddy would have paid for the treatment,” I say, feeling stubborn.

“Yes,” she says, simple and certain. “He would have insisted that I do it, too, even if I didn’t want to. You and he are a lot alike.”

“I don’t know whether that’s a compliment.” On some level I’ve been doing to my mother what Christopher does to me. Using my protection of her as a crutch. She did need me once, the way I needed him to dive in after me and rescue me. But she doesn’t need me to make smoothies or buy butterfly gardens in her name.

“Of course it is. I loved your father.”

“He loved you back.”

“He asked me out, you know. That night at the art gallery. Asked me on a date, like we were young and foolish. I said yes, of course. I could never say no to him.”

My throat burns. No wonder she had thought he wouldn’t leave her out of the will, among many other reasons. And we’ll never get to ask him why he did. Was it a moment of anger toward my mom? Was it a lesson for me? But he didn’t have any answers for me.

“Do you wonder why?” I ask.

“Sometimes. Not much, these days. He was a complicated man. Ambitious. Afraid.”

That makes me look up at her. “Afraid?”

“Afraid that someone was using him for his money. He couldn’t let it go. He never really trusted anyone.” She’s looking into the past now. “He loved me the same way I loved him, without being able to help it. That kind of love, it takes away your control, and he hated that.”

It breaks my heart to think of how different we could have been. If she and Daddy had gone on a date and then another. If they had finally been able to reconcile their love into building a life together. So many possibilities ended the night of that exhibit.

I close my eyes tight. “I think I have to go back.”

It was fear that sent me away from Tanglewood like a scalded cat. But I can’t wait the rest of my life wondering what might have been. Love is outside our control, but we aren’t defined by love. We’re defined by our choices. Our actions. By the willingness to do what’s right even when it’s hard.

I’ve always been hurt that Christopher didn’t fight for us, but how can I walk away without fighting for him? Without fighting for the library? Somehow those two things are the same.

Mom smoothes my hair back. “You always were my warrior. Even in school, with that Medusa painting. Even when it seemed impossible. You never gave up.”

“I gave up this time.” The words are acid in my mouth.

“Nonsense. You came home because you wanted a kale smoothie and a hug. That’s not giving up. That’s taking a break. Everyone needs a break.”

“What if I’m too late?” I’m not thinking of the library crumbling, though I should be. I’m thinking of the look in Sutton’s eyes. I’m thinking of the way he held me like I was something precious, and the way I walked away. He won’t forgive me for that. I don’t blame him.

“Well,” Mom says, her voice half pragmatism, half mystical acceptance of the world and its vagaries. “You might be. But you won’t know unless you try.”

My Uber driver is from Egypt, something he tells me only when he sees the library book I’m reading as we leave the airport. Maybe he thinks I’m getting ready for international travel. “Don’t use a purse,” he says. “Too easy to steal. You want to keep things in your pockets, but deep inside. With buttons or zippers to close them.”

“You seem to know a lot about picking pockets.”

He waves a hand. “Everyone knows a lot. It’s the only way you don’t get robbed. There’s no place on earth with more thieves than Cairo.”

That makes me think of the Thieves Club, the semi-ironic name that four men in Tanglewood gave themselves. Hugo and Sutton. Blue and Christopher. Because every dollar they earn must be taken from somebody else. “Is that why you moved here?”

“It was the killing,” he says frankly. “The stealing I could live with.”

“That seems reasonable.”