Chapter 9
Rebecca handed him a separate legal notice.
“You will also be required to appear.”
“And I strongly advise you not to move, withdraw, or conceal any money.”
Madison and Lauren stood beside the dining table holding each other and crying, unable to decide whom to blame first.
Their brother.
Brooke.
Their father.
Or themselves, because they had enjoyed cruelty so much when someone else had been suffering.
Emily went upstairs to retrieve her suitcase.
She had packed it that morning.
A change of clothes.
Her legal documents.
Her passport.
A notebook.
And the keys to a small apartment in Sausalito that she had quietly rented.
When she returned downstairs, the house was still filled with broken voices.
The giant photograph remained in the center of the living room.
Brutal.
Illuminated.
Not as cheap revenge.
As a mirror.
And no one in the Davenport family could bear to look at what it reflected.
Emily picked up her coat.
Before she reached the front door, Nathan caught up with her.
“You’re really leaving like this?”
“After five years?”
“You have nothing else to say to me?”
Emily rested her hand on the doorknob.
She remembered every night she had waited for him to defend her.
Every time Brooke made her feel invisible using elegant language.
Every dinner where Charles raised his glass to loyalty while his own family rotted quietly from within.
Then she looked at Nathan one final time.
“Yes,” she said.
“Welcome home.”
“Tonight, everyone finally met the real Davenport family.”
She opened the door.
The cold city air touched her face.
Outside, the night smelled of rain, wet magnolia blossoms, and beginnings.
Emily walked down the front steps without hurrying.
Behind her stood a wealthy, polished family destroyed by the only thing they had never been able to purchase.
The truth.
May you like
And as Emily walked toward the street with her suitcase in her hand, she did not feel as though she had lost everything.
For the first time in years, she felt that she had finally reclaimed herself.
