Chapter 329 P.M.—The Button Manor
Perdita Button was hiding.
In here it was safe. In here she could speak to the one person who could always silence the storm.
She pressed dial and waited to hear his voice.
“Hello?” it finally came.
“Hi,” she said, and she heard the relief in Thorin’s voice.
“Perdita?”
“Yes,” she said breathlessly. “I’m using the emergency landline. They’ve cut the other lines for now but I don’t think the police know about this one. Anyway, I don’t have long—someone will probably notice my absence soon.”
“Are you all right? It looked pretty intense earlier, with your siblings.”
She closed her eyes, the scene from earlier replaying in her mind over and over. Replaying the moment Mr. Fowley read out their father’s will and all that came with it.
“It was intense, and no, I’m not okay.”
“What happened?”
“My father, he … he left me practically everything, Rin … and they all want to know why. I think they’re going to figure it out.”
“They won’t,” he said sternly, like he truly believed it.
She shook her head, shaking away his optimistic outlook.
“They will, believe me. When I can’t answer their questions, they’ll start digging.
They’re going to work it out eventually, I know it.
Or Fola will, at the very least.” Perdita sniffed, feeling tears weigh heavily on her lashes.
“Even though I know why he did it, I still don’t know why he would.
He left me a fuck ton, Rin. It feels like hush money …
or worse … and now with this murder—I don’t know, I can’t accept it, I just can’t—”
“It’s okay, Dee. Take a deep breath. It’ll be okay. I can come back later, and we can talk more about everything then.”
She felt bad that Thorin felt like he had to return. He’d already helped her so much this year. With everything that had happened in Prague … keeping her secrets.
The only sound was Perdita’s uneven breathing, as she thought about how everything was going to blow up in her face.
“You don’t have to come,” she said at last. She had dragged Thorin into this enough; he didn’t deserve to be implicated in her life like this.
“New Haven is not that far,” he reminded her. “And also, I want to come back,” Thorin said with a note of finality in his tone. “I want to be there for you.”
“Thank you,” she said after a few beats.
“Forever and always, Dee.” It was something they always said to one another for years, even before they got together.
“Forever and always, Rin.” She sniffed again, and a few quiet moments went past before Thorin was speaking once more.
“Are you feeling better?”
“I don’t know … Everything is such a mess.”
“I know,” he replied.
“Fola hates me,” she said. “I think she’ll resent me forever; they all will.”
“They won’t,” he said.
Perdita shook her head again, feeling the release of fresh tears caressing the sides of her face.
For so many years, she had been the one quietly trying to keep the family together the best she could.
She already felt the shift starting when Octavius left, then Billy.
And now their father was dead. Another rip in the fabric that was the Button family.
She was always the one secretly mending wounds, trying her best to make sure everyone was okay.
But she knew that some wounds couldn’t be mended.
Some wounds were permanent. And this one had potential to split them all apart forever.
“You don’t know them like I do, Rin. If they find out the truth, they will hate me. And there’s nothing you or I or anyone else could do about it.”