Her eyelids fluttered.
“Mom?”
I went to her immediately.
“I’m here.”
Her fingers moved weakly against the sheet until I took them.
For a moment, she simply stared at me.
Then fear sharpened her expression.
“Trevor?”
“He isn’t here.”
“Victoria?”
“Neither of them is coming near you.”
Her shoulders loosened by a fraction.
Then she tried to move and winced.
“Don’t,” I said.
“Just breathe.”
Her eyes filled.
“They wouldn’t stop.”
I wanted to tell her she didn’t need to talk.
I wanted to protect her from having to walk through those memories again.
But Brooke tightened her fingers around mine.
“Mom, you need to know.”
So I listened.
Dinner at the Vance mansion had ended shortly before midnight.
Victoria had inspected the dining room after the guests left and found a faint mark on one piece of silverware.
She summoned Brooke.
Trevor was drinking in the study.
Victoria placed the utensil in front of Brooke and demanded that she polish the entire set again.
Brooke told her she was exhausted and that her doctor had warned her to avoid prolonged standing because she had been cramping.
Victoria called her ungrateful.
Brooke walked away.
That was the moment everything changed.
“She grabbed me by my hair,” Brooke whispered.
“Trevor heard me scream.
I thought he’d stop her.”
Her face twisted.
“He laughed.”
I felt my nails press into my palm.
Brooke said Trevor had accused her of embarrassing his mother.
When Brooke threatened to leave, he took the golf club he kept near the study doors.
“He told me there wasn’t going to be a divorce,” she said.
“He said Vances don’t get humiliated by people like me.”
People like me.
That was how Trevor had always spoken when he thought I wasn’t listening.
Not poor exactly.
Not beneath him in any way he could define without sounding ugly.
Just lesser.
Brooke said she remembered being dragged outside.
She remembered the cold.
She remembered Victoria telling Trevor that if Brooke woke up somewhere far enough from the estate, everyone would assume she had run away after an argument.
Then came the bus stop.
After that, darkness.
“I thought nobody would find me,” she whispered.
“Someone did.”
“Mom…”
Her voice broke.
“The baby was moving when they put me in the car.
