Miranda: staying at Mother’s tonight. Sophie too. See you tomorrow.
The message sat on the screen like a closed door.
He typed back, thumbs stiff.
Okay. Tell Sophie I love her.
Three dots appeared, then vanished.
No response came.
Drew set the phone down and stared at the kitchen wall as if it might offer a way out. The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere outside, a car passed, tires hissing on the damp road.
He walked to his home office, the converted bedroom lined with books and paper stacks. His laptop was open to a document he’d been nursing for three years. A manuscript about ordinary people who changed history through small acts of defiance.
His agent had called it promising. Needing work. The advance had been modest, and Margaret Turner had laughed when she heard the number.
“Forty thousand? Darling, we spend that on a weekend in Aspen.”
Drew tried to write anyway. He sat. He placed his hands on the keyboard. He stared at the blinking cursor until it felt like it was blinking inside his skull.
Nothing came.
Instead, he pulled open his desk drawer and took out the papers he kept meaning to organize and never did. Credit card statements. All in Miranda’s name. Charges at restaurants he’d never been to. Shopping trips to boutiques that made his stomach twist. Spa visits that appeared weekly, as regular as his paycheck.
When he’d asked about it a month ago, Miranda had snapped, eyes flashing.
“My parents give me an allowance. It’s family money. You wouldn’t understand.”
It wasn’t just the money. It was the way they wielded it.
Margaret Turner could make you feel small while smiling. Carl could erase you with a glance, his attention sliding away as if your existence was an interruption. At family gatherings he rarely got Drew’s name right. Dean. Dave. Something close enough to be insulting.
Austin Turner, Miranda’s younger brother, did it with a grin and a casual cruelty.
“So when are you getting a real job?”
Drew had endured it because Sophie was there. Because Sophie would press her warm hand into his and whisper, Daddy, can we go soon? Because she still looked at him like he was safe.
He had told himself love could outlast contempt.
Now he wasn’t sure.
The next afternoon, Drew drove to Blackwood Hills to pick Sophie up from the Turner estate. The houses up there didn’t have numbers. They had names etched into stone at the end of winding drives.
The gate code had been changed again. He sat in his car in the drizzle, staring at the keypad like it had personally rejected him. He pressed the intercom.
“It’s Drew. I’m here for Sophie.”
A pause. Then Margaret’s voice, cool and unhurried, like she had all the time in the world.
“She’s not ready yet.”
“I’m fifteen minutes early,” Drew said. “I can wait.”
Another pause. The gate buzzed, and the wrought iron swung open.
He drove up the drive and parked by the fountain where water trickled over sculpted stone. The air smelled like wet cedar. The house was huge, lights glowing softly behind tall windows. Drew stepped out and stood by the car, hands shoved into his pockets, feeling like he was waiting outside a club he wasn’t dressed for.
Twenty minutes later, Sophie burst through the front door. Her backpack bounced against her shoulders. She ran down the steps and slammed into him with all the force of a child who hasn’t learned to ration love.
“Daddy!” she squealed, arms wrapping his waist.
Drew lifted her, kissed the top of her head. She smelled like lavender soap and something sweet, maybe the expensive lotion Margaret kept in guest bathrooms.
“Hi, hurricane,” he murmured.
Sophie pulled back, face serious for a moment.
“Grandma bought me new shoes,” she said, lowering her voice as if it were a confession. “But they pinch. And Mom says I have to wear them anyway. And I told them I wanted my sneakers, but Grandma said my sneakers are…” She searched for the word. “Embarrassing.”
Drew’s jaw tightened.
“Do your toes hurt?”
Sophie nodded. “A little.”
“Then we’ll take them off in the car,” he promised. “You can wear what feels good.”
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