Wicked Forest (DeBeers 2)

She laughed.

"I have no doubt." she said.

"I'm sure they just can't stand the fact that you

no longer need them." I said. Ever since her stepfather had run her mother's finances into the ground, my mother had been forced to lease out the main building and live in the beach house, which also housed some of the Eatons' servants. Now that I had inherited my father's estate and sold our property in South Carolina. I had money that would free her from the financial shackles that made both her and Linden outcasts in their own home.

"Well. I suppose you're right. It doesn't take much to get them upset. You know Bunny Eaton." my mother said. "Just running out of caviar can put her into a deep enough depression to require a doctor's care."

We both laughed again, and then she looked at me with that soft smile around her eyes I quickly had come to cherish, the motherly smile every child basks in and from which he or she draws confidence and security. Pity the orphans who live in a world without such smiles raining down upon them, I thought, for I very nearly had been such a person.

"What?" I asked, already knowing her yell enough to realize that behind that smile there was a thought itching to be voiced through those soft, loving lips.

"Thatcher is, of course, a different story altogether. He was very interested in your arrival and peppered me with questions about you."

"Really," I said dryly, unable to prevent a skeptical smirk. He hasn't called me since I left for home."

I had hurried home to help arrange and attend the funeral of my father's closest servant. Miles, who had been looking after the house and grounds since my father's passing. Now that he, too, was gone. I needed to see to the sale of the property as well. I then arranged for my transfer from the University of North Carolina. where I had begun my sophomore year, to a college in Florida. All that time I had expected to hear from Thatcher. He had promised to call, and I truly believed he would, despite his mother's disapproval of our relationship and me.

"He will call now," my mother assured me. "I might not want to speak with him if he does," I said petulantly.

"Maybe not, and maybe yes," she teased, . My

eyes surely betrayed my hope that she was right. "I

can see it in your small smile, Willow. You reveal your true thoughts with the same tiny tug in the

corners of your lips that I have"

I shrugged, and then she and I both laughed,

giggling like two schoolgirls. How wonderful it was

finally to have a mother who could be as close as a

sister or be a best friend. My adoptive mother could

barely stand the sight of me and had never failed to

remind me what a great favor she was doing for me to

let me live in her home. She never knew I was living

in my real father's home; she never knew the whole

truth. Such a woman was better off buried with lies. I

thought, I wasn't being vindictive. I was just rendering

unto Caesar what was Caesar's. When she was alive,

she had cherished deception, fabrication, and

falsehood almost as much as she had cherished

diamonds. She had a closet full of untruths to pluck

out and put to use at a moment's notice, even lies to