Fifty-Four
FOR ONCE, I HAVE NOTHING. NO RECONFIGURATIONS. NO ESCAPE plans. I pull on the desk, more frantic now. The metal chews into my wrist, inscribing pink lines on my skin like marks of failure. I get nowhere. The desk is probably hundreds of pounds. It’s infuriatingly rudimentary. What’s holding me in place won’t yield to negotiation or clever lying or fake smiles. It’s punishingly physical, hopelessly concrete.
Finally, I weaken. The fight leaves my limbs. I return to the floor, entirely empty. I don’t even need to wonder or worry. I know I’ve reached the ending. I stare up, defeat chaining me in place. From the ceiling, the lights glare into my eyes.
Instantly, inexplicably, they remind me—not of growing up here or revisiting my complicated home. They remind me of the overhead lights in the hallway of my mom’s hospital room.
And huddled on the floor of my father’s study, I wonder if I’ve focused on the wrong reminiscences. I’ve spent the day fighting with flashbacks of this house. Of the Olivia who felt at home here, even close to happy. I needed them. They fueled me.
I concentrate on others now.
In hopelessness’s clutches, I remember how horribly familiar the feeling is. I’ve dealt with worse. I’ve wrestled helplessness in Kent County Memorial Hospital.
What do you do when your mother is lying unconscious, the machines surrounding her the only signs she’s clinging to the life she lives for you? You don’t give up. You wait, not even going to the vending machine to eat for fifteen hours on the off chance she’ll need you. You indulge every miserable storybook fantasy saying if you just plead enough, cry enough, hope enough, she’ll wake up.
The hours passed. I felt darkness closing in. In case it would remind her that I was waiting for her, I held her hand, clutching hard enough the nurses had to pull my grip free. White knuckles unclenched from motionless fingers. You’re hurting her, they said.
Don’t you think I know that?
Until she woke up.
No words can ever capture the overwhelming rush I felt the moment she opened her eyes—green, like mine. How I wept with relief under the sterile hospital lights.
It was, ironically, impossibly, the happiest day of my life.
Exhaling slowly, I refocus. I don’t need rage right now. I don’t need vicious mournfulness for memories of idyllic lawn games or illusions of family. I need to remember the joy. The light. The love of what I’m fighting for, not what I’m fighting against. The invincible reminder of how hope waits on the other side of pain.
If I give up now, I would give up everything. Everything. Every chance I want for my mom, free of debt, and for myself. I would give in to the darkness, kneeling next to my father’s emptily formal desk, prone in failure. Defeated.
No. Hell no.
I change my frustration into furious drive. Why was I even imagining giving up? The enormity of Abigail Pierce’s victory isn’t the hardest challenge I’ve ever faced. The hardest hurt I’ve ever suffered.
Not. Even. Close.
Every agony is the proof—the evidence, laid out with the clarity no courtroom file could ever reflect—of how I’ve fought past hopelessness for the joy in my life. How if you hold on, the impossible can become the greatest moment of your life. Strength, I decide, maybe isn’t measured in what you’ve won. Maybe it’s measured in what you’ve lost. How you kept on fighting.
Vigor rages in me. It’s not the ending. It’s never the goddamn ending. They’re going to have to drag me out of here handcuffed if they want Olivia Owens to retreat.
I search the room for something that can help me. Anything. If only I could reach the clutch with my phone, but it’s too far. I have no way of contacting my crew. I have to think fast.
On the desk, nothing. No pens, no clips, no materials for improvised lockpicking. I open drawers, every one I can grasp. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Handcuffed in place, I’m constrained, the rest of the room outside my reach—
The safe.
It’s open behind me. Yes. I surprised my sister when I entered. In our confrontation, she forgot to close the weighty door, leaving the precious contents in the dark cavity exposed. I stretch, contorting myself so my fingertips just barely brush the files inside. With desperate effort, my shoulders searing, I swipe until the papers tumble out onto the floor.
Quickly, I scour the materials surrounding me. The will. Stock certificates for his various companies. Bonds and treasury documents I don’t know how to interpret. I feel my thoughts bouncing distractedly, panic making me lose focus.
I close my eyes. Breathe in. Breathe out. I think of all the threads I’ve collected today. Mitchum’s revelation about the prenup and Dash needing to be exposed for something. Allen’s warning about the debts. Mia’s comment about the trust.
The trust.
I open my eyes, inspiration hurtling into me. With fevered fingers, I sweep papers aside until I find what I need. I read as quickly as I can, my heart pounding in my chest so loudly, I almost don’t hear the door open and Abigail return.
This time, with my—our—father.