Chapter Three #2
“And you’re using his kindness to your advantage.” She slips designer sunglasses over her eyes. “I’ll have to tell Bethy all isn’t lost with you two. Somewhere, deep down, you and Phoebe know this is the right path.”
I’m not so sure myself anymore. I despise the insinuation that I’m using Jake for his money. All my mom sees is what he can provide us, and I haven’t envisioned him as a pot of gold I’m trying to reach. It’d make me no better than all the ladies scrambling to be the next Mrs. Jake Koning Waterford.
But he is supposed to pay us out at the end.
So am I really any better?
I want off this Jake Waterford merry-go-round, so I begin thinking about my childhood. About the jobs I never questioned because I’d receive little details when I did.
You weren’t a part of those, she’d say. I can’t incriminate you. That time is long gone, Hailey.
I want to know her past. Because it’s mine, too. “I was in Newport when I was little, wasn’t I? Around four?”
“Around then.” She picks up her wine again, her voice incredibly stilted, but the warning look in her eye tells me to drop it.
I won’t. Not anymore. “You said you adopted me so Phoebe would grow up with another girl. Like you and Elizabeth were childhood friends. Well, I remember being at a fancy estate with Oliver, but why was I separated from Phoebe? Why keep me from her when we were little?”
She peers around.
At first, I think it’s to avoid my question, but I realize she’s just calculating how many people could be listening over the music, chatter, and sea.
“We were in Newport for a short time back then.” She speaks in a quieter tone. “A piggyback job.”
I assume they befriended New England socialites, then influenced them to pay their tabs and hotel fees with promises of “I’ll get you next time, of course” only to then disappear. “Did something go south?” I ask.
“Not at all. It went perfect.” She takes a tiny sip, staring more at the liquid than at me. “But it was necessary to have Phoebe be with Brayden.”
Brayden. Rocky’s birth name. “You were trying to pair Phoebe and Rocky together that young?”
“No,” she emphasizes like this is absurd.
“Brayden was…he was a traumatized little boy. He had these screaming fits, and the only way he’d calm down was when he was around Phoebe.
We didn’t know why he felt safe with her, and we didn’t question it.
So when we were in Newport at a family’s estate, we didn’t want a meltdown from my six-year-old to cause attention.
The horrible woman we were deceiving would make comments about ill-mannered children, and she’d cast us aside if she thought mine made a scene. ”
I process this slowly. “You could’ve let me be with Phoebe and Rocky then.”
“You were a shy child. It was better if you were around Oliver. He made you less skittish—darling, stop…” She trails off, and I catch myself picking at my cuticles while she catches herself lecturing me.
Tension builds between us.
My face contorts as mistrust circles through me. “Or…you were attempting to match me with Oliver. To see which pairing would stick—”
“You were four. We cared more about whether you all were fed, bathed, clothed, and if you’d say anything inappropriate to the wrong people.” To their marks, she means. “We were only twenty-seven back then. We weren’t thinking decades ahead.”
I want to believe you.
God, I do.
It hurts that there’s any doubt. But I spent months in tormented, sleepless nights trying to track down the holes she left in her lies.
She can see the pain cross my face. I don’t have to say words. Not when it comes to her. We speak through our eyes. Her carriage rises in a deep, aching breath.
“I’m telling you the truth,” she professes. “I’m honest now. With everything.”
“I’m trying to believe that.” The pieces of our relationship are large fragmented shards, and maybe with time, they’ll be able to be glued back together one day.
But right now, I can’t shake how she spent my entire life making me believe I was her biological daughter. Making me believe Trevor and Rocky were my biological brothers.
In reality, I was adopted from foster care. Trevor is the son of a rich, elitist couple like the ones we scam. My parents, Addison and Everett Tinrock, paid the couple’s surrogate to give the newborn to them instead.
And Rocky…
He’s the only one with murder all over his backstory. While I might never know my birth name, his is Brayden Wolfe.
The Wolfes.
They’re one of only three founding families of Victoria, and Varrick Wolfe conned his way into the Wolfe family, married into their dynasty, and decimated it from the inside out.
It’s hard to think about Rocky’s origins without picturing my mom and dad in their early twenties—younger than I am now—caught up in a con gone horribly wrong with Varrick.
They trusted him until his plans took a sinister turn, so they tailed him one dark night in Connecticut.
They saw him run the Wolfes off a bridge, the car plunging into the watery depths of the river below.
Instead of driving away and dusting off their hands and consciences of this cruel malice, my parents pulled their car over.
My dad jumped off the bridge and into the water, attempting to rescue anyone he could from drowning in that river.
Out of a family of five. He could only save the one-year-old in the backseat.
The one-year-old they would raise as theirs.
The one-year-old that would come to be a vital organ in my life.
My big brother.
I know I shouldn’t offer my love to two people who were complicit in the demise of Rocky’s birth family, but it’s difficult to hate them. My mom didn’t have to stop the car. My dad didn’t have to jump into the river. And they chose to keep Rocky in fear that Varrick would finish off the Wolfe line.
It was to protect him.
In a way, I think most of their decisions—good and bad—have been to protect all of us.
As someone who constantly weighs pros and cons, who thinks about every variable in a job, I can understand when there are no perfect choices. Only ones that come with consequences we can live with, and they chose to live with these horrible lies.
My only wish is that they told us the truth sooner. Trusted us when we became adults and especially when we questioned their stories, but I think this was something they were willing to take to their graves until they realized it was going to cost their relationship with us completely.
Rocky will say they didn’t want to lose their pawns in the game of grifting.
But I’m not so cynical.
I truly believe my parents love me, and I’m not going to torture myself anymore by doubting that. I’ve seen how it’s chipped away at Rocky over the years. That won’t be me. Especially not now. The last thing I need in my life is stress.
Do not lose this baby.