Chapter 29
Lila has been busy baking for the past couple of hours. Just as she pushes a pan of cookies into the oven, her phone rings, making her jump. She glances at the screen and lets out a quiet groan.
Her lips press into a thin line as she hesitates, thumb hovering over the answer button.
Yesterday’s call ended in disaster after Lila refused to return home and help with the business, prompting her grandmother to lash out.
She had counted on at least a week of punishing silence, not another call so soon.
“Lila! What took you so dang long to answer the phone?” her grandmother’s shrill voice snaps the moment Lila picks up.
Lila flicks a glance toward Max’s home office, wary of him overhearing.
“Nana, my hands were busy. You could’ve texted me,” she says evenly. Her voice is loud enough to keep her grandmother from suspecting anything, yet low enough that Max can’t hear from his office, where he’s working as usual this weekend.
“It’s not something I can talk about over text! Lila, Sean’s in trouble!”
“…How?” Lila asks warily. And when is he ever not in trouble? she scoffs inwardly. “What happened?”
“He went to see his kids, and that bitch, Bethany, wouldn’t let him,” her grandmother explains, her voice tight with tears.
“He turned his life around. I swear it. I don’t even know what happened.
He left a week ago, saying he was going to see his kids, and then last night I got a call from Foxbend County Jail.
He’s been there since the bail hearing because he can’t afford bond. My poor baby! I didn’t even know!”
“Wait… Uncle Sean’s in jail? Again?” Lila squeaks, her voice coming out louder than she intends.
“We need to get him out and hire a lawyer. He said the trial’s set three months from now because of the backlog.
Can you wire me another ten thousand? I’ll pay you back in increments.
The shop’s been falling apart ever since you left, like I told you, and I haven’t been able to scrape together enough to get by. ”
“I don’t have that much! What about the other ten thousand I sent you?”
Lila had wired her grandmother the money Max had deposited into her account.
When her grandmother asked for a loan to fix up the bakery and repair the roof, Lila had sent the entire amount without hesitation.
Though it was framed as a loan, she’d never expected it back and had planned to tell her grandmother so eventually.
“He needed a car to get to his new job.”
Keeping that money had felt like a dirty, grimy weight on her shoulders, something that repulsed her every time she checked her balance. Learning now that it had been spent on her useless uncle makes it worse.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Nana. That money was for you. I lent it to you because you said the roof needed fixing and the shop needed new appliances. I lent it to you—you specifically! You, you, you!” Her body is shaking by the time she finishes, her palm sweaty against her phone.
“And I did,” her grandmother insists. “I gave him whatever was left over so he could fix up his life. Lila, he’s your only uncle. He’s family. He said he was going to pay you back after a few paychecks.”
A wave of nausea rolls through Lila, as if every word from her grandmother’s mouth were a toxic fume leaking from a sewer pipe.
“And all that money I spent on St. Mary so you wouldn’t have to go to that terrible public school!” her grandmother continues. “The teen pregnancy rates, the illiteracy… Good Lord! I spent so much on you so that you could properly read!”
Lila wants nothing more than to hang up and let the old woman figure it out herself.
“Okay. I know,” Lila says through gritted teeth. “That’s why I sent the money.”
“And I did use it!” her grandmother snaps. “Didn’t you hear me the first time? I fixed the darn leak and bought a new oven for the bakery. We need to help our family, Lila, not squabble over money.”
Lila presses a hand to her face, gripping the phone tightly as she fights the urge to hurl it against the wall.
“Lila, we gotta get him out,” her grandmother pleads when Lila doesn’t respond. “My heart breaks for him. I’ll die, Lila. I really will if something happens to him in there. He’s been calling me, crying, telling me how scared he is. He was trying to do right by his kids. Truly.”
Lila wants to point out that her grandmother’s blatant favoritism may be what drove her mother away decades ago, but she swallows the thought.
She also suspects that Sean’s so-called attempt to see his children was nothing more than an excuse to harass his ex-wife, yet she can’t bring herself to say that either.
Despite her deep dislike for her uncle, a drunken deadbeat who was probably up to no good, she still feels pity for the old woman. Her grandmother’s soft sniffling and the way she murmurs Lila’s name like a prayer tug at her heart.
“Lila… Lila… Lila. What am I going to do?”
When Lila first came to live with her grandmother, her uncle would drift in and out of the house, a constant reminder of instability. He had a habit of getting fired for petty theft and blowing his meager earnings on smokes, shitty beer, and hookers.
Even now, she can picture him clearly: a grotesque, portly man with greasy, thinning hair slicked obsessively to the right. He lounged around in stained undershirts and boxers, his musty stench filling every room he occupied. Just remembering the way he used to leer at her makes her skin crawl.
Coming home from college, after a magical year with Jake, had felt like being cast out of heaven and dropped straight into hell.
During that miserable time, she’d confined herself to her bedroom, doing everything she could to avoid him whenever he resurfaced.
She never knew when he would leave again; each stay ranged from days to weeks to months.
The only person in town willing to hire him was her grandmother, but he refused, sneering that baking was for “sissies and women.”
“I’ve already sent you nearly everything I have,” Lila says firmly. “I don’t have anything left to give. New York is expensive.”
“Promise me you’ll figure it out,” her grandmother begs. “Please? He won’t survive jail. Please!”
“Okay,” Lila says. Then, bolstered by a rare surge of courage, she adds, “But I won’t do this again, Nana. You need to wake up and accept that he’s a bum. And I never asked to be sent to St. Mary.”
And that bum deserves worse than three months in jail, she thinks bitterly, wishing the trial would convict him of whatever he’d been arrested for. He can rot in prison for all I care.
“Lila!”
“I’m serious,” she continues. “I never asked for any of it. You chose to take me in after Mama died. You chose my school, my friends, my after-school activities. I came back to help with your shop because you had no one else. I did everything you wanted, but you always made me feel like it was never enough—like I was a burden.”
Her voice shakes, but she presses on.
“This is the last time I’ll let you use taking me in against me after my mom fucking died. If you ever do it again, I’ll cut ties with you completely. Just like your own daughter did.”
She hangs up before her grandmother can respond.
Lila’s heart pounds violently in her chest. She has never spoken to her grandmother like that before. Pride and guilt churn together inside her as she leans back against the kitchen counter, closes her eyes, and draws in a slow, steadying breath. She’s trying to calm the storm she’s just unleashed.
Max will pay her a large amount soon enough, but not for another four days.
She isn’t even sure he can transfer the money on a national holiday, so she might not receive it until the day after.
She could technically wait and send the funds after Thanksgiving, but she knows she has to take care of it as soon as possible.
She already made plans to celebrate Thanksgiving with Jake, and she doesn’t want anything to ruin them.
Her grandmother, who never seems to understand boundaries, will most likely call every day until she gets the money.
There’s another option, though she hates even thinking about it. She could ask Max for the money up front. She can’t imagine what kind of strings would come with that favor.
She forces herself to take a few more deep breaths. Her heart is still pounding, her nerves frayed. Asking the man who already holds so much power over her for yet another favor feels like a terrible idea.
Before entering his home office, she checks her reflection in the hallway mirror, running her fingers through her hair and focusing on her breathing to steady herself.
Slowly, she opens the door. Her eyes settle on Max, who is fully absorbed in whatever is displayed on his monitors. His fingers tap rhythmically against a stack of papers arranged neatly on the surface of his black marble desk.
“Hey, still working?” she calls from the doorway.
He glances her way with a brief smile before shifting his attention back to his work. “Yep,” he says, typing something on his keyboard.
Her eyes scan the spacious office as she quietly steps inside.
It’s a room she has never ventured into before.
It’s bright and sharply lit, with sleek furnishings of black marble, brushed steel, and smooth leather, all arranged with an intentional lack of softness.
The space feels exactly like his cold, perfect public persona.
When she looks toward the far wall near the large windows, she spots her birthday gift to him.
The portrait hangs among larger monochromatic artworks, standing out like a sore thumb.
At the center of the room is a large table cluttered with unfamiliar gadgets, their metallic surfaces gleaming under the overhead lights. Tangled wires spill from various components, giving everything an unfinished, chaotic appearance. Lila approaches cautiously, eyeing the strange devices.