Chapter 26
Sapphire
Morning sunlight was too harsh on my senses, streaming in through the window and falling like knives in my head as I sat in Andrew’s living room prepping my bags for the millionth time, as if I didn’t already know the precise location of everything I had in each bag, all catalogued in the back of my mind, but I didn’t have anything else to do. No other way to occupy my mind and take it away from the dark, drifting thoughts like sick black clouds streaking from one side of my brain to the next, never raining but just casting cold and darkness.
Footsteps on the carpet pulled me out of the haze, and I looked up to where Andrew walked out of the kitchen with two mugs of coffee, setting one down on the low coffee table next to where I sat on the floor. “You’re tormenting yourself,” he said softly. “Best to take a break for your mind.”
“It’s not like I can help it,” I said, but I still took the coffee, sinking back against the front of the couch, pulling my knees up into my chest, cupping the coffee close to my nose. Andrew moved towards the armchair, but he hesitated there, and after a second, he sat on the floor with me, his back against the front of the chair. I felt impossibly like I’d cry at it—me and my family sitting on the floor, or at least the closest I had to family, together in a small moment where it didn’t matter what the rest of the world thought.
I sipped the coffee. A little shallow, a bit tart. Drip machine coffee. Funny how Andrew helped make sure other people had the best luxury money could buy while he was sitting at home drinking generic coffee.
“Thanks,” I said, my voice low. “Today’s, uh… well. Today’s not very easy.”
“It’s going to be better on the other side. But for right now… just let me know what I can do to help.”
“Have you never wanted something more than… just being the family manager?” I said. “A family of your own?”
He shrugged. “If I got married, I’d never really be able to show up for my family. Felt like you and your siblings, your parents—that all felt like my family more than anything else.”
I shook my head, gripping my coffee tighter. “And you had to get rid of all of it for me. Aren’t you upset?”
He smiled softly. “Not really.”
“All those books on Stoicism.”
He gave me a quiet laugh, sipping his coffee. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s not that I’m not upset, just… upset with your parents. Upset with your siblings. Upset that nobody stood up for you.”
I squeezed my mug tighter, staring down into the coffee. No matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did, I couldn’t get Haley’s words out of my mind—just the fact that she’d shown up there, that she’d heard tangentially about what was happening and had gone through so much to track me down. And she had every reason not to bother… she wasn’t even the closest to me. I’d have described her as a friend, but not like Madeleine or Britt… never to the point where I figured she’d come track me down, coming to the rescue.
But I knew I’d have done the same for her, if she needed it and I was in a place where I could help. Maybe Andrew was right about how that was just human nature.
The sight of that silky pink scarf Madeleine had gifted me, poking up out of the bag in front of me, was the only thing in the room.
“Haley was here last night,” I said quietly, and Andrew gave me a look.
“Who? What are you talking about?”
“Oh, so you don’t know everything.”
“I try to, but it turns out I too am mortal. Who’s Haley?” He turned to me, frowning. “What happened?”
“A friend… Madeleine’s coworker. She just, uh… just broke up with Madeleine’s roommate, so she’s a little bit of a persona non grata around the friend group, but she heard secondhand… thirdhand… very indirectly about how I’d ended up here, and she came around trying to rescue me. Even though we weren’t that close, and even though she was also going through some stuff.”
He stared at me for a second before he pursed his lips. “How exactly did she even find this place?”
“Oh, uh.” I scratched my head. “Apparently she found you have a personal website and used some kind of… domain registration tracking, something, and dug through it to get to your address. Showed up and hid in the bushes waiting until it seemed like you were asleep, and she, uh… tapped my window with a stick.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. I shrugged.
“Haley’s a little bit… out there.”
“Maybe I need to take my personal information security more seriously. Register it under a PO box…” He shook it off. “I’m sure you’ll find friends who are there for you in just the same way in Baltimore. But I know that doesn’t take the sting out of leaving this right now.”
I shook my head, staring down into my coffee for the longest time, before I said, “I can’t do it.”
He frowned at me. I set down the coffee.
“I can’t do it,” I said again. “I… no. I can. But I don’t want to. Not like this.”
“Sapphire, tell me clearly what you’re talking about right now.”
I stood, slowly, shakily. “Running isn’t going to make me feel better. If I run away from this, then I’ll run away from anything. I need to at least try.”
“Try what?” Andrew said, standing up with me, worry flaring up over his expression—not much of it, always with the controlled reactions, but I’d known him my whole life. I knew his reactions.
“I’m going to talk to them. My parents.”
“Sapphire—”
“One more time. Haley was right—I don’t want to leave it like this. What I want —I want to stay with Madeleine. I don’t want to leave her. I love her—I know it probably just seems like silly, youthful feelings and not knowing what love really is, but I love her.” I turned to him in a rush, exhilarated, my body prickling with awareness out to my fingertips, the room around me suddenly seeming like it was miles and miles away. “I don’t care what things are supposed to be like, what I want it to be like is me and Madeleine. And everybody else. And this place—it’s my home.”
“Sapphire, what exactly are you planning on saying?” he said, his brow furrowed, hands up like he was soothing a wild animal. I guess that felt right for me. “Even if you get them to sit down and listen patiently…”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. What I say doesn’t matter, what matters is that I’m there saying it.” I shook my head. “I’m not na?ve enough to think I can just fix it all with some nice words. I know it might not do anything and I’ll still have to leave. But I have to try. All I’ve ever done with them is run away. If I have to go, then I at least want to go knowing that I tried—just one time—to face them directly. Please, Andrew.”
He studied me, carefully, eyes narrowed, for the longest time, before his expression cracked—a small smile, still just as worried as before, but the corners of his lips tugging up. “You really can be a fiery one when you commit to it.”
I hunched my shoulders. “When there’s a girl on the line, yeah, maybe.”
He stood up taller. “At your order, Sapphire. I’ll take you once you’re ready to go.”
“Thank you…” I took a long breath, and I let it out sharply, nodding. “Thank you. I really… thank you.”
∞∞∞
Madeleine
Guess it was no surprise Sapphire’s family’s house was tastelessly huge. Off in their gated community where every house was like an island separated from everything else—I didn’t really want to know how Haley got us inside the gates. I wasn’t looking a gift horse in the mouth.
The place stood tall at the end of a long driveway with an over-the-top gallery at the front, and the thing that greeted visitors through the wide curved windows at the entrance was a mannequin, wearing a puffy, dramatic dress. Did rich people use mannequins as decoration? Or was that just a Sapphire’s-parents thing?
I didn’t know, and I kind of didn’t want to.
Megan—the group’s designated driver, as the one who had a car and drove for Uber—parked the car in front of the house, craning back over her shoulder to look at where Britt and I sat in the back with Ellen. “Thank god they’re down a butler right now,” she said, “or I feel like they’d send a butler with a baseball bat right now to chase us off the property. This is a nice car, but I feel like I’m driving a beat-up junker parking in front of this place.”
I turned with my hand on the door handle, pausing mid-pull. “Thanks, Meg. If they send someone to harass you, you have my permission to just drive away. I’m sure they’d hire me a limo to remove me from the premises without even batting an eye.”
Megan scowled. “Yeah, if they don’t get you arrested first. Seriously, are you sure this is a good idea?”
Haley laughed from the passenger seat next to her. “If they arrest her, they’re gonna have to arrest me too. And no one puts me away without paying the price.”
Ellen, squeezed into the corner, sighed pointedly. “Haley, you’re not a mob boss. Please just everybody don’t get yourselves into stupid situations.”
“I’m going to do what needs to be done,” I said, and I pushed open the door, stepping out, Britt hot on my heels. Haley lingered further back—she fancied herself the reinforcements . I liked to think this wasn’t a military maneuver, but I guess I’d take what I could get.
I stepped up onto the front stoop, pushing the button for the doorbell, suddenly feeling woefully underdressed in a neat blazer and slacks—it seemed like a nice outfit at the time, but anything that wasn’t an artisanal crafted Italian wool suit felt like a burlap sack now that I was here.
Of course, Britt was making me look better by comparison, wearing a bright-red jacket over a shirt with rainbow suspenders. Nothing would ever get that girl to dress like a professional anyway.
When the door opened, it was a woman who probably wasn’t related to Sapphire by anything other than the loving connection of an employment contract—an older woman with dark skin and a sleek, polished outfit, who gave me a wary smile.
“Good afternoon,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have you on the schedule. If you’re here for contracting matters, please use the staff entrance. Will you need help finding it?”
“No, I’m here to see Mr. and Mrs. Stanton.”
“I’m sorry, but—”
“Tell them I’m the one who’s been working with Sapphire, and I’m sure they’ll adjust their schedule to see me.”
The woman stood up taller, eyes narrowing. “I’m… sorry, but Miss Sapphire isn’t here right now—”
“I know.” Words spilled from my mouth without me even thinking about it, settling into a kind of calm in the adrenaline rush that I didn’t know how to describe. “I know exactly where she is. And I’m not moving from this spot until I get to talk to her parents about her.”
The woman looked between the two of us for a second before, cautiously, she said, “May I ask your names?”
“I’m the one who’s been working with Sapphire,” I said, at the same time Britt puffed out her chest and said, “Britt.”
I shot Britt a look. She shrugged helplessly. The woman at the door sighed, a small and pointed thing, before she stepped back.
“I will let Mrs. Stanton know,” she said, shutting the door. I wrinkled my nose.
“Mr. Stanton is too busy for an audience, I suppose,” I muttered.
“You could have mentioned we were going incognito,” Britt said.
“Forget it.” I waved her off, bouncing anxiously on the balls of my feet before footsteps approached the door again, and it swung open to where the woman regarded the two of us cautiously.
“Mrs. Stanton will see you now,” she said, stepping back. “Please, allow me to show you to the meeting room.”
The house was cold and sterile, tall ceilings and clean white stylings making it feel more like a hospital waiting room than a house. Britt’s and my shoes probably tracked grime through the house, but I think it felt right—the two of us an infection for them to deal with, ruining the unnatural polished floors and clean lines of the place. Britt stuck close to my side as we made it up to the second floor and through a door into a smaller room, not quite as sanitary-bright, thin windows in a horizontal bar through the upper half of the wall. I knew enough about these kinds of over-the-top designs to know this was when you didn’t want the space overwhelming the presence of a person and making them appear small—a trick of the light used to make a person drowning in money not look like they were a simple human swept away in the long shadow of a house too big for a person.
But it was just a trick. And a trick disappeared when you knew what you were looking for. A woman sitting at the other side of an ornate table, with long dark hair and with Sapphire’s eyes, might have been dressed in the finest clothes money could buy, but she was just a human being. And a righteously indignant one at that, and righteously indignant usually meant scared under a thin veneer.
“Please, sit down,” Mrs. Stanton said, gesturing me and Britt to the chairs at the table across from her. Britt sat down. I pushed the chair to the side and leaned on the table, and Mrs. Stanton glared at me. “Whatever you’re trying to get at, you’re not having the effect you want. Stop embarrassing yourself and sit down.”
“Think I’ll be all right. Won’t be here too long,” I said. “Don’t need to, when you already know why I’m here.”
She narrowed her eyes, taking a long breath, letting it out slowly, and she folded her hands on the table, leaning towards me. “Madeleine, was it? You know you could get yourself in some… hot water, doing this. This could easily be construed as a threat. Stalking and harassment—”
“You’d have told your staff to send me away instead if you didn’t want to see me. You’ve already had to deal with your household manager walking out on you. You’re not going to embarrass yourself in front of everyone by then trying a case against your daughter’s girlfriend for showing up to talk about her, not when you know it’ll signal to everyone that your daughter walked out. And why.”
She pursed her lips, a tight expression on her face. She didn’t say anything, and I filled the silence.
“I’m sure you want me out of here soon enough, so I’ll get to the point,” I said. “What is it going to take, Mrs. Stanton? For you to let Sapphire live her life?”
She stood, slowly, planting her hands firmly on the tabletop. “If you’re asking what it will take for me to give up on my daughter and ignore her in danger—”
“You know you’re lying. You know I know you’re lying. So why are you even saying that?” I gestured to the staff member, waiting quietly by the door with her hands folded. “Are you trying to fool her?”
“Miss—” Mrs. Stanton started, and I cut her off, treatment she clearly wasn’t accustomed to.
“You’re threatening, harassing and sabotaging Sapphire’s entire existence to try to get her to come back before you lose face. You’re willing to put her, and everyone around her, through anything it takes to pressure her to do what you want. How long is it going to take for you to realize this is a losing game for you?”
“You wouldn’t know anything about my relationship with my daughter—”
“I know it doesn’t exist until it’s convenient for you,” I snapped, feeling my face heat up—I probably needed to rein it in, stay quiet, but now that I was here, I found I wasn’t physically able to hold back anymore. Mrs. Stanton squeezed her fists on the table.
“You come into my home after taking my daughter away from me—”
“I kept your daughter safe when you abandoned her—”
“I could have you tried for kidnapping,” she said lightly, a glint in her eyes—a gleam of excitement at the thought of inventing nakedly false charges to ruin a young woman’s life. Open glee at the power of it. “Taking a woman under duress… wouldn’t that look good on your record?”
I stood up taller, a cold feeling tightening in my throat as I exchanged a knowing look with Britt—that same cold acknowledgement, resolve, there in her eyes too. “You know something, Mrs. Stanton?” I said. “Go ahead and try. That’s what I’m here to tell you, is that I’m not afraid of what you try. Feel free to do whatever you like. Eventually, you’ll realize none of it will ever bring Sapphire back to you.”
Mrs. Stanton narrowed her eyes, studying us coldly. Britt spoke up.
“It’s true,” she said. “There’s a whole group of us. Are you planning on inventing false charges against all of us? A criminal gang of broke twenty-somethings leading your daughter astray by going out for sandwiches with her?”
Mrs. Stanton kept her eyes coolly on us for a long time before she said, her voice more measured now, “Tell me what you’re after. Are you looking for me to pay you? Because if it will get Sapphire back, we’ll pay.”
I laughed—a short, sharp barked laugh that pulled itself spontaneously up out of my throat. “Ma’am, you can’t buy me off. I love her. Not to be corny, but money can’t buy that.”
Britt stood up with me, planting her hands on the table. “All of us are going to say the same thing. We’ve got integrity, you know.”
“You know what I want,” I said. “I want you to let go. Let Sapphire have the dignity of starting her own life.”
Mrs. Stanton stood up, her face flushed with frustration, squeezing her hands on the table. “Sapphire doesn’t know how. She’s throwing her life away—”
“She’s starting her life. For the first time. And you know that—and you’re scared of that. You waited because you wanted to believe she didn’t know how to live life on her own terms and you thought she’d come back, but you went after her because you realized she didn’t need you—”
“After everything we did for her, everything we invested—”
“She’s not an investment. She’s a human being. What you did for her was give her the tools to be a strong, confident woman ready to spread her own wings—”
“She’s wasting her time mooching off other people and working some pointless dead-end job. Spreading her own wings?” She scoffed, eyes darkened. “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Sapphire doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into.”
“Sapphire,” I said, squeezing my fists tighter, my blood pumping loudly in my ears, the rest of the room fading into the distance as I leaned over the table, “knows a lot more than you’ve ever— ever —given her credit for.”
A knock rang from the door—cool, polite, but firm. The staffer by the door shot it a strange look, and Mrs. Stanton pushed out a short, sharp rasp.
“Come back later,” she called, her voice clipped. Whoever it was, though, didn’t care much what she had to say—the door opened, and nothing could have prepared me for the stomach-dropping sensation seeing the butler Andrew Vaughn walk through the doorway, and then right behind him, dressed in her sleek pantsuit outfit, Sapphire.
A hundred thoughts exploded into my head at once seeing her—that Andrew had brought her back after all, that I’d never seen her look so resolved, and of course above it all, that she looked so beautifully perfect like this, when I thought I’d never see her again.
“Sapphire—” Mrs. Stanton said, her voice wavering, breath short, standing up on shaky legs. “What are you—you’re back,” she said. Astute observation. Sapphire swept her eyes over to me, and my stomach dropped when her gaze met mine, a slight smile playing on her lips before she looked back at her mother.
“I do know what I’ve gotten myself into,” she said. “I came here to negotiate—whatever it takes for you to leave my friends out of this. For you to leave Madeleine out of this. But… I guess I underestimated them if I didn’t think they’d come to you themselves.”
She was like some kind of angel of vengeance, of justice, sweeping in with a proclamation like that. Not to mention—she was hot when she talked that assertively.
Mrs. Stanton looked between her and me, back to her again, before she said, “Sapphire—I’m sorry. I overreacted with you. I was just worried about your future, but I shouldn’t have treated you the way I did. But we can put that—we should put that behind us now. You came back because you know this is your home.”
Sapphire shook her head. “I came to put an end to this.”
“She did,” Andrew said, those unnaturally cool blue eyes of his fixed squarely on Mrs. Stanton. “You’ve been a good employer, Sarah, you and your husband. I hate to have to end things like this. But I’ve made my stance clear. Sapphire is a lot stronger than you’ve given her credit for.”
I didn’t care about anything else anymore—didn’t care about what I was supposed to do, about if I might have been getting myself in trouble, about what I was allowed to do. I stepped up next to Sapphire, and I exchanged a quick look with her, a hundred loaded thoughts flying in that instant where she met my gaze—the confidence, the resolution she had with her, but also the miles-deep ocean of doubt under the surface, the quivering nerves facing this.
She wasn’t going to face it alone, though. That much, I knew.
“Sapphire is a lot stronger than you’ve given her credit for,” I said, echoing Andrew, something I never thought I’d find myself doing. “She has a lot more people on her side than you have on yours. You know where the chips are falling.”
Sapphire gave me the sweetest little smile, a quick thing before she slipped a hand to my back and looked back at her mother, who swallowed hard, her expression changing—all self-pity now, brows furrowed, shoulders shrunk.
“You’re going to gang up on me to try to keep me away from my own daughter,” she said. I felt a spike of frustration driving up in my stomach at the sudden pity play, but Sapphire cut in before I could snap.
“You know what you have to do if you want to repair our relationship. I’m not telling you it’s impossible. But… if nothing else, you taught me not to let someone walk over me. If you want to fix this, you’ll have to make the effort. And at this point, it’s going to be a lot of effort. And… if you try to force me back—by hurting me or by hurting anyone I care about—you’ll lose that chance forever. If you refuse to accept who I am… that I care about Madeleine… then everything else is just window dressing. That’s my piece. Do you have anything to add to this conversation?”
This woman cared about me? This was a person from a different plane of being. And she wanted to be with me?
I was never selling myself short again.
Mrs. Stanton welled up, squeezing her hands tighter as she sank back into her seat. “Sapphire, please, don’t do this to me and your father. At the very least, don’t do it to your father. You can feel however you like about me, but—”
Sapphire put a hand up. “Every word of what I just said applies to him, too. At least you had the dignity to see me. We’re leaving now. I expect you not to come to me again unless it’s with a very, very serious apology.”
Mrs. Stanton, eyes wide, didn’t say anything—just watching, her fists squeezed tight. Andrew looked at Sapphire with a small, approving smile.
“I think we’ve spent enough time here. You did incredibly.”
“You did,” I said, and Sapphire took a long breath, nodding, before she turned on her heel.
“Let’s go, everybody,” she said, and when she went out saying something like that?
I was pretty sure I’d follow Sapphire anywhere.