Chapter One
ONE
I’m pacing the tiny apartment I shared with my mother, as if another piece of furniture I can sell will magically appear.
I started with the easy stuff. Like Mom’s bed, which I sold five days after her death and then spent two days sobbing about it, torn between being glad not to see the reminder and wanting to curl up under the covers and let the fading scent of her shampoo lull me to sleep.
I just need to cover the rent until May. Four more months and then I’ll be eighteen and no one can call Child Services. I’ve researched summer jobs that include boarding, and in September I’ll be off to college with a full scholarship.
I’m not going to make it to May.
My mother died in November, and it’s a miracle I’ve gotten through the past three months, working two part-time jobs while making sure my grades don’t drop enough to lose the scholarship.
I’ve scraped out the savings account Dad left when he died in a work accident four years ago.
His modest life insurance payout was already long gone.
Mom had kept planning to start her own policy, but there’d seemed no rush because, really, what were the chances of her dying just as young and as unexpectedly?
I look around again, but there’s nothing left to sell.
I’m already sleeping, eating, and studying on an air mattress.
I wander into the kitchen and eye the appliances.
Then I snort under my breath. They came with the apartment, and even if I could bring myself to steal them, someone was sure to notice the buyer wheeling it off down the hall.
When a knock comes at the door, I freeze and my heart races like a rabbit smelling a fox. That’s my default mode these days, where every knock could be someone who’s finally realized there’s a seventeen-year-old living here alone.
“Miss Green?” a woman’s voice says. “Liliana Green?”
Another knock, brisk and efficient. A government-official sort of knock.
My heart’s in full hammer as I peer through the peephole.
On the other side is an older woman with a briefcase, her hair pulled back tight, dark circles under her eyes, worry lines permanently etched around her mouth. Beside her stands the landlord.
“I saw her go in there,” the landlord says. “And like I told you, I haven’t seen her mother in months. I’m worried about the kid.”
No. He’s worried about getting caught with an underage tenant. Or he found someone willing to pay more than the reduced rent Mom charmed him into.
Another knock, harder now. “Miss Green. I really need to speak to you about your living situation.”
“Do you want me to unlock the door?” the landlord asks her.
My gaze flies to the chain, which is engaged. While they can’t get in, that chain will tell them I’m here.
As the landlord jangles his keys, the woman gives a weary nod. Then her phone rings. She lifts a hand, telling the landlord to wait while she answers.
“Delores Hoffman, DCFS,” she says.
DCFS. The Illinois Department of Child and Family Services. My stomach clenches.
I keep telling myself DCFS isn’t the bogeyman. But I have plans and dreams, and they start with that college scholarship, which the upheaval of foster care would endanger.
Please, I just need a few months.
“Who gave you this number?” Ms. Hoffman says into her phone.
A pause.
“Yes, I’m trying to speak to her right now but—”
Another pause. “I don’t know who this is—”
Pause. “Fine,” Ms. Hoffman snaps. “But I will be following up with the director on that.”
A moment later, I hear another woman’s voice, distant, as if through a cellphone speaker.
“Liliana.” Her Southern accent reminds me of Mom and makes my heart ache. “My name is Cecilia Robbins. I’m your grandparents’ lawyer.”
My breath catches. She must mean my mom’s parents. My dad was raised by a single mom who died when I was little. My mother had been estranged from her family since before my birth, and I’d never even considered tracking them down after she died. If Mom cut off all contact, she had a reason.
Ms. Robbins continues, “I’m sorry I didn’t get there before Ms. Hoffman arrived. I am on my way. Where are you now?”
“She’s in the apartment,” Ms. Hoffman says. “Refusing to answer the door.”
A soft chuckle. “Good. You stay right there, Liliana.”
Ms. Hoffman huffs. “I’m here to help her, not kidnap her.”
“Are you familiar with Chamberlain Enterprises, Ms. Hoffman?” Ms. Robbins says. “You may not recognize the name, but please check your text messages and you’ll see a link to the company’s standing on the Fortune 500 list. It’s number twenty-three.”
“I don’t—”
“Liliana’s grandparents own Chamberlain Enterprises.”
My head jerks up. I’m a business major. I know Chamberlain Enterprises—one of those massive multinational consumer corporations whose name the average person doesn’t recognize…but they will recognize the brands the company owns.
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Ms. Hoffman says.
A soft laugh. “Oh, yes, you do, Ms. Hoffman. You understand perfectly.”
“I—”
“Liliana is the only child of their only child. Heiress to a billion-dollar fortune.”
A what? My breath catches, and my brain reels, unable to process those words.
Ms. Robbins continues, “Liliana, just stay where you are. I’m entering the building now.”
“It’s controlled entry,” the landlord says. “Someone will have to admit you.”
“Someone already did. They even held the door for me. Amazing where Ben Franklin can take you.”
I swear Ms. Hoffman grinds her teeth as the landlord blusters about security.
Part of me thrills at the thought of this stranger coming to wrest me from the jaws of the DCFS.
And another part screams that maybe I should just go with Ms. Hoffman, because I have no idea what would ever compel my mother to walk away from a family that owns a Fortune 500 company.
When heels click in the hall, I look into the peephole again as someone appears.
She’s a Black woman in her mid-thirties, with model-worthy cheekbones and a tapered cut with loose curls on top.
Expertly applied makeup. A gold choker. And a suit that would cover six-months’ rent in this place.
Mom might never have worn anything that didn’t come from a consignment shop, but she had an eye for fashion, and she could tell a Dior pantsuit from a knockoff in two seconds flat.
If Ms. Robbins is telling the truth, then I know exactly where my mother came by her fashion sense.
Ms. Robbins turns to the door. “Liliana?”
When I don’t answer, she nods. “All right. This is a lot, and it absolutely isn’t what I intended for our first meeting. You go sit down and try to relax. This is going to take a few minutes.”
“A few minutes?” Ms. Hoffman says. “You cannot expect me to turn over a vulnerable child to you because you claim to work for her alleged grandparents.”
“Liliana, hon?” Ms. Robbins says. “I’d like to email you a few things. I know Ms. Hoffman won’t be the only one who will require significantly more proof. Do you have a phone?”
I pause. Then I say, “I sold it,” and something almost like pain ripples across Ms. Robbins’s composure.
Her voice softens. “All right. I’m going to pass a phone through the mail slot on your door. Just give me a minute to transfer some files.”
When the phone appears, it’s not some “burner phone” like I see in movies. It’s a brand-new smartphone.
“It’s unlocked,” she says. “Just check the file folder. You can look at the documents I transferred while Ms. Hoffman and I sort this out.”
“This is ridiculous,” Ms. Hoffman says. “Tell the girl to come out—”
“She is a Chamberlain,” Ms. Robbins replies, her voice lilting with amusement. “I don’t tell her to do anything. And I’d suggest you don’t either.”
—
I’m sitting on the floor in my apartment, going through what Ms. Robbins sent me. It’s mostly internet links, and I appreciate that she’s letting me look it up on my own, but I also know websites can be faked. I take what I need from them and then confirm through secondary sources.
Chamberlain Enterprises is owned by the Chamberlain family. That seems obvious, but it’s not always the case, and what throws me here is the thought that I never knew Mom’s maiden name. I knew her full name was Rosalyn, but she’d always gone by Rose. Rose Green.
There’s a DNA test report that supposedly proves Mom was the daughter of the Chamberlains.
That could be faked, but one look at my grandparents tells me it’s not.
My grandmother has the tiny build and oversized eyes I share with Mom, and an old photo of my grandfather shows the platinum blond hair Mom and I must have inherited from him.
I also look up Ms. Robbins herself. Cecilia Robbins.
Graduated from Stanford. Also from someplace called Westdale Academy, which must be a fancy private school if it’s listed right beside Stanford.
Immediately upon graduating, Ms. Robbins went to work for Chamberlain Enterprises, where her father is lead counsel.
There’s a photograph, and it’s definitely the woman outside my door.
She also sent me another photo, one I can’t stop looking at. A picture of two teenage girls with their arms around each other’s shoulders. One is my mother and the other looks like Ms. Robbins.
I want to tell myself this is Photoshop or AI, and be furious at such a cheap shot, pretending she was friends with my mother, but there are other photos, too, of both of them, from toddlers to teens.
Not just friends.
Good friends.
The age works. Mom and Dad had me young—teenage pregnancy—and my research shows that Ms. Robbins is thirty-six, the same age as my mother.
One of the links she sent brings me to an old Savannah newspaper’s society pages. The photo is of a girl dressed in fancy riding gear, hoisting a trophy beside a gray horse.
Rosalyn Chamberlain, 12, Takes Home Gold in Dressage
I stare at the photo. It’s my mother, her smile unmistakable, with one corner of her mouth lifting higher than the other. It’s also like looking at a photo of myself at that age…if I could ride a horse or knew what “dressage” even was.
This is my mother.
In a world I can’t even imagine my mother inhabiting.
No, actually, I can totally picture her in that world. My funny, elegant mother, who charmed everyone she met. My mother fashioned a utopia in our home, and yet she never quite fit the world outside of it—the very average one of people struggling to make ends meet.
I can wonder what made her leave her world, but the answer comes when I turn to a photo sitting on the floor, the table that once held it long sold.
A portrait of my parents—Rose and Will—beaming at each other, renewing their vows in a cheap Vegas chapel, like they did every five years.
I have all those photos, and they’re all like this, portraits of two people ridiculously in love.
A teenage pregnancy.
A Southern high-society family.
Did Mom leave?
Or was she pushed out?
And do I want to connect with grandparents who’d do that to their child? Their only child?
I think of Ms. Hoffman at the door, and I’m not sure I have a choice. But I’m about to find out.
—
By the time I let Ms. Hoffman and Ms. Robbins—“call me Cecilia”—into the apartment, my fate has been decided.
Ms. Hoffman’s superiors have already been contacted, all the appropriate proof given, and I’m in the custody of Cecilia Robbins.
I don’t think it normally happens at that speed, but it does for my grandparents.
Do I accept this at face value? Of course not.
My father taught me to conduct research and check my facts and trust no one.
I’d never thought that was strange. It’s not like Dad was some weird conspiracist. He was laid-back and chill, always ready with a bad joke and an easy laugh.
But when it came to protecting us, he was as cagey as anyone with a tinfoil hat.
And maybe now I know why.
Why Dad had been so careful. Why we’d moved around so much. Why we’d lived practically everywhere except the South.
Did the Chamberlains try to get Mom back? Had my parents decided they didn’t want that—the bridge long burned—and kept two steps ahead of people who could afford to hire the best private detectives?
Well, there’s a reason Cecilia Robbins showed up at my door, isn’t there? It’s not as if I reached out. Not as if she could have come across Mom’s obituary, when I’d never written one or held a service.
I don’t just trustingly toddle along after Ms. Robbins. I look up Ms. Hoffman on the DCFS website. I insist on speaking to her superior by video, and that might be very irregular, but again, it takes only a few words from my new lawyer to arrange it.
Ms. Hoffman showed up at my door at four-thirty this afternoon.
By eight, I’m on a flight to Savannah, with all my worldly possessions in a backpack.