There are three things Susanne Bradshaw knows for sure: 1) Her mother is dead. 2) She has no living relatives. 3) Her last summer before freshman year of college will be spent alone.
But with her mother's death, Susanne learns her family's deepest...
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The picture frame shattered on the wooden floor, spraying perfect tiny shards across the priceless rug. The broken glass shone like a cracked open geoid, the little crystalline pieces glinting underneath the yellow florescent ceiling lights.
It took me four seconds to realize I dropped the picture of my mother and me. The shock of Leonora's words caused my tense hands to turn useless, allowing the frame to fall out of my grasp.
"Shit!" I cried out and dove down to collect the photograph.
Leonora's hands were already on the picture, her vape balanced between her ring finger and pinkie. She plucked it up and handed it to me. I inspected it immediately, searching for any defects and found one: a thin line of blood dyed the space above my mother's head a dark crimson. My eyes moved to Leonora's hands, where she picked out a glass piece from the pad of her finger.
I shouldn't be mad, but I still growled out my next words. "Thanks a lot."
There was a frown on Leonora's face, a deep line that warped the sharpness of her cheeks. Even like that, she was lovely.
"Elenore didn't tell you anything, did she?"
"Tell me what?" I asked through clenched teeth.
"Can we sit?" Leonora gestured to the wicker couch, where a thick padding of white canvas pillows softened the seat. She didn't wait for me to answer, she just strode to the other side of the room and sat with her legs crossed.
I remained standing, still holding the picture like my mother would come back if only I clutched it hard enough. After a minute of tense silence filling the room, she opened her mouth again.
"When your mother became sick, sick enough that it scared her, she reached out to me," Leonora whispered. She kept her dark eyes steady on me. "She made a deal."
"What kind of deal?" My fingers bent down photograph's edges, dog-earring the memory like the worn pages of my favorite book.
"She made two," Leonora confessed. "If she died after you turned eighteen, you would be in line to receive her entire inheritance of three billion dollars." I forgot how to breathe. That was enough money to buy Lone Pine six times over and then some. "You would gain access to everything our family has— estates, land, attorneys, all of it."
"A-and the second deal?" My lips were numb with the words.
"If she were to die before your eighteenth birthday, you are to live in my custody as my legal child until adulthood. Once you become an adult, you inherit her fortune, and again, reap the same benefits."
"I—" I hesitated; my words were suddenly trapped in the cage of my gritted teeth. "I don't believe you. My mother... she wouldn't do this." She wouldn't lie to me.
"Which part do you not believe?" Leonora asked. It was hard to be angry with the woman, her face was an open book of kindness— wide, doe eyes searching for any kind of pain in my expression, a serious but kind smile on her plush lips, and two gentle hands anxiously petting the black fabric of her trousers. "Your mother was a very, very rich woman. How else could she afford a two-year long treatment at the country's finest cancer care facility?"
