Chương 1
""The silver ribbon slipped loose beneath my fingers, and for the first time that evening, my mother stopped smiling.
Richard was still standing beside her chair with one hand braced on the table, wearing the expression he used to wear when I was seventeen and had left a cereal bowl in the sink.
Around us, fifty guests had gone so quiet that I could hear the quartet's cellist shifting his chair near the ballroom doors.
I lifted the lid.
Inside the navy box lay a brass key on a simple leather tag and a cream envelope bearing my mother's full name.
Linda stared at the key as if I had put a dead insect in front of her.
Derek gave a short laugh.
"That's it?"
A few people smiled because they apparently thought they were supposed to.
I took the envelope out and placed it beside the box.
"Read the address."
My mother didn't touch it.
Richard did.
His face changed before hers did.
The change was small, just a tightening around his mouth, but I had spent enough of my childhood studying adults from doorways to notice.
"What is this?" he asked.
"The property address is on the front."
Mom finally looked down.
Her fingers went still against the stem of her champagne glass.
"That can't be right."
"It is."
The address belonged to a commercial building in Montclair, a narrow brick property with two storefronts downstairs and offices above them.
More importantly, it belonged to me.
Three months earlier, Aunt Patty had mentioned that Richard's company was losing its lease.
She hadn't known much more than that.
I had learned the rest accidentally when my studio's commercial broker sent me a portfolio of small New Jersey properties and I recognized Thornton Home & Millwork among the tenants in one of them.
The coincidence had almost made me delete the email.
Instead, I bought the building.
Not because Richard was there.
I bought it because the numbers worked, the location was improving, and my accountant had been nagging me for two years to stop keeping so much of the studio's retained earnings in cash.
Richard's business occupied the largest unit.
I hadn't told him.
I hadn't told my mother.
I had spent six weeks trying to decide what to do with that fact.
The envelope contained my answer.
Mom looked up at me.
"You bought a building?"
There was no pride in her voice.
There wasn't even disbelief anymore.
There was suspicion.
"I bought that building."
Richard dropped the envelope onto the table.
"With whose money?"
Something old and ugly moved through me.
For half a second, I wanted to hurt him.
I wanted to say every cruel thing I had rehearsed in showers, elevators, taxis, and sleepless hotel rooms over the previous decade.
Instead, I closed the box.
"Mine."
Derek snorted.
"Come on."
I looked at him.
He had changed more than I expected.
His hair was thinner, and the expensive-looking tuxedo pulled slightly at his waist, but the little sideways smile was exactly the same.
"You think I stole a building?"
"I think there's obviously more to this."
"There is."
I nodded toward the envelope.
"That's why she should read it."
One of my mother's friends leaned toward another woman and whispered something behind her hand.
Mom noticed.
That mattered to her more than anything I had said.
She snatched up the envelope.
"What are you trying to do, Thea?"
"I brought you an anniversary gift."
"You show up after ten years with some ridiculous stunt and expect everyone to believe—"
"Linda."
Richard said her name quietly.
She stopped.
He was staring at the address again.
"What exactly is in there?"
"A proposed five-year lease for your company."
Richard's jaw shifted.
I continued before he could interrupt.
"The current lease expires in November."
His eyes snapped to mine.
"The new owner was planning to renovate the entire first floor when the existing leases ended."
A man near the back murmured, "Jesus."
I recognized him vaguely from photographs on Richard's company website.
Richard heard him too.
"This is private business."
"It was private until you shoved the gift into my chest in front of everyone."
That landed harder than I intended.
My mother's face reddened.
I almost regretted saying it.
Almost.
Richard reached for the envelope, but Mom pulled it away from him.
"What kind of lease?"
I could hear something different in her voice now.
Fear.
Not fear of me.
Fear of what Richard hadn't told her.
I glanced at him.
"You didn't tell her?"
"Don't."
His voice was low.
Mom turned toward him.
"Tell me what?"
Derek stepped closer.
"Dad?"
Richard straightened his jacket.
The movement was absurdly familiar.
He used to do the same thing before correcting me, as though authority required smooth lapels.
"Our landlord sold the property."
"You said the lease was being renegotiated."
"It is."
"No," I said.
Three heads turned toward me.
"It isn't."
Richard's stare sharpened.
I wished my fiancé, Jonah, were there.
He had offered to come, but I had refused because some stubborn part of me needed to walk into this room without anyone holding my hand.
At that moment, I hated that stubborn part.
I picked up the leather tag attached to the key.
"The lease in that envelope cuts your current rent by twenty percent for the first eighteen months."
Nobody spoke.
"After that, it returns gradually to market rate."
Richard stared at me.
"Why?"
"Because according to the financial disclosures your company provided during the ownership transfer, eighteen months should give you enough time to restructure without laying off the rest of your staff."
Mom's champagne glass tipped.
A little spilled onto the white tablecloth.
"The rest?"
Richard closed his eyes.
Only for a second.
It was enough.
She put the glass down.
"You told me business was slow."
"It is slow."
"How many people?"
"Linda, not here."
"How many?"
"Eleven."
Her mouth opened.
Derek looked between them.
May you like
"You laid off eleven people?"
Richard rubbed his forehead.
