Chapter 29
Sarah
Miami was supposed to be a break from Key West. From the hotel she couldn’t enter, the apartment that felt too empty, the constant buzz of her phone with another story, another lie, another piece of her life dissected in print.
It wasn’t working.
She pushed pasta around her plate while Carlos and Esmeralda talked about the hotel. Stavros had stepped in, gotten everyone’s hours restored. But the board remained hostile. They were still trying to turn the national board against her.
“Jonathan’s lawyers requested another deposition.” Sarah set down her fork. “Next week.”
Esme looked up. “What are they after?”
“My entire history with Billy. How we met. When I told him I was gay. Every conversation we ever had about the trust.” Sarah reached for her wine glass. “They want to prove I manipulated him. That the whole marriage was a con.”
“It wasn’t,” Carlos said.
“I know. You know. But a jury?” Sarah drank. “They’ll see a young maid who married an old millionaire and walked away with everything when he died.”
Her phone buzzed against the table. Another article. This one about her mother, painting Sarah as the heartless daughter who’d abandoned her struggling family.
She’d tried calling her mother last week. Just to ask if she’d really gone to the newspaper, if she’d really sold the story. Her mother hadn’t answered. Why would she? She’d gotten paid twice now. Once by Sarah, once by the Gazette.
Sarah flipped the phone face down.
Carlos’s phone lit up. He glanced at it, then looked again.
“We need to go back to the hotel.”
“Why?”
“Just trust me.” He was already standing, wallet out.
“Carlos—”
“Please. It’s important.”
They drove back in silence. Sarah watched Miami pass by the window. The hotel was one of the smaller Barnes properties downtown. She’d stayed here years ago with Billy when they were scouting locations. Back when her life made sense.
Carlos pulled up to the entrance. “Go inside.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just go.”
Sarah climbed out. Walked through the glass doors into the lobby.
Lizzie sat on one of the sofas near the windows. A thick folder rested on her lap. She looked nervous and determined and so familiar that Sarah’s forgot to breath for a second.
She turned back toward the door.
Carlos blocked her path. “You need to listen to her.”
“I can’t—”
“Listen to her,” Esmeralda said from behind him. “Please.”
Then they were gone. Back to the car. Leaving Sarah alone in the lobby with Lizzie ten feet away.
Lizzie stood. “Hi.”
Sarah’s throat went tight. “Hi. How did you…”
“Carlos and Jasper arranged it. Can we sit? Please?”
They moved to the small café off the lobby. Found a table in the corner. Sarah couldn’t look at her directly. Couldn’t face the hurt she’d caused.
Lizzie set the folder on the table. A zip drive beside it.
“I don’t need to talk about what happened between us. Not right now. But you need to see this.”
Sarah opened the folder.
An arrest record for her mother. Multiple. Several for her father as well. There were years’ worth of records showing her parents history with drugs.
“Your father was arrested again last week.” Lizzie’s voice stayed quiet. “Meth possession. Going by the picture, your mom was at least not lying when she said he needed teeth. Looks like doing meth for so long left him with quiet a few missing.”
Sarah glanced at the picture of her father looking shriveled and awful with a toothless grin. She kept reading. She couldn’t form words.
She flipped the page and saw a statement from Mr. Patterson. The neighbor from Wisconsin. The man her mother had hit with the car.
I didn’t really see who was driving at the time.
Someone ran away. I knew that. My son later told me he saw Mrs. Fairview running out of the car, around the side, and pushing Sarah into the driver’s seat.
I confronted her about it, and she begged me to keep the story as Sarah being the driver.
She didn’t want to go to jail and leave Sarah along with her husband, whom she claimed was abusing her.
I felt pity. So I lied. Or rather, I didn’t correct the story.
Sarah read it twice. Set it down. Picked it up again.
“How did you find him?”
“Public records. I called him. He remembered you.” Lizzie shifted in her chair. “He’s willing to make a statement to the media if you need him to.”
The next section held different documents. Statements from people who’d known her in San Francisco. The woman who’d managed the motel where Sarah first worked. Character references from Aspen, from Key West. People vouching for her, for the person she’d been before and after Billy.
Then the last section.
Sarah stopped. Jonathan Barnes. Arrest records. Solicitation. Drug possession.
She pushed the folder away. “No. I can’t use this.”
“You knew.” Not a question.
“Yes.” Sarah closed the folder completely.
“Jonathan had a problem for years. Billy tried to help. Paid for rehab twice. But Jonathan kept using. That’s why Billy structured the trust the way he did.
He didn’t want the estate controlled by someone with an active addiction.
” She looked at the closed folder. “It was one of the things Billy and I understood about each other. We both had family lost to drugs.”
“Why haven’t you used it in the lawsuit?”
“Before Billy died, he and Jonathan were getting somewhere. Jonathan had been clean almost two years. They were talking again. Meeting for dinner.” Sarah’s voice broke. “I didn’t want to destroy that. Even after Billy was gone, I couldn’t wreck what they’d been building.”
“You’re letting Jonathan wreck your reputation instead. Your entire life.”
“This might disprove my mother’s lies. But it won’t change what people think about Billy and me. They’ll still believe I manipulated him. That I was a gold digger who conned an old man.”
Lizzie pulled out more papers. “Statements from people who knew you and Billy together.”
Sarah scanned the names. People she trusted. People who’d been there through all of it.
“Stavros too.”
Sarah’s head snapped up. “Stavros?”
“Jasper and I called him. He told us that years ago, right after you and Billy married, he confronted Billy. He thought you were a gold digger. But Billy told him the truth. All of it. About you being gay, about the marriage being an arrangement that worked for both of you. Stavros has known the whole time.”
“That’s why he didn’t react when the story broke. When everyone found out I was a lesbian. He already knew.”
“He said he stayed out of it because it wasn’t his business. But he’s willing to come forward now. To say what Billy told him.”
Sarah stared at the folder.
“What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Fight.” Lizzie’s hand hit the table flat. “Fight for your position. Fight for your reputation. Stop letting them win.”
“I’ve been thinking maybe fighting isn’t worth it anymore. The hotel, the board, all of it. I’ll never be one of them. My connection to Key West was Billy. Without him—”
“This isn’t just about the hotel.” Lizzie leaned forward. “It’s about justice. Your side deserves to be heard.”
Sarah looked at her. Really looked. This woman had spent weeks gathering evidence, tracking down witnesses, building a case.
“Why are you doing this?” The question came out rough. “I blamed you for everything when all you did was make one mistake with a reporter. My house of cards would have fallen eventually. And yet you’re here, trying to help me. Why?”
Lizzie went still for a moment. When she spoke, her voice didn’t waver.
“Because I love you. What happened to you isn’t fair.
Your mother and Cynthia destroyed your life for money and revenge.
You deserve better.” She paused. “And because I’ve spent the last four weeks wishing I could go back and handle that phone call differently.
This is something I can actually do. Something that might help. ”
“I was cruel to you.”
“You were hurt. Your world was ending.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“No. But I understand why it happened.” Lizzie’s hand moved across the table, stopping just short of Sarah’s. “I miss you. I miss us. I know you probably don’t want to hear that right now. But it’s true.”
Sarah looked at Lizzie’s hand hovering near hers. “I miss you too. I convinced myself that pushing you away was protecting you. That you’d be better off without me and this mess.”
“That’s not your choice to make.”
“I know.” Sarah took Lizzie’s hand. “I’m sorry.”
“Your life isn’t falling apart. Some terrible people tried to destroy it.
” Lizzie squeezed her hand. “But we can fight back now. We have evidence. We have witnesses. And Sarah—” She took a breath.
“I found out Derek was already pushing the Gazette to publish a story about you. Before Cynthia got involved.”
Sarah went still. “What?”
Lizzie explained. When she was done, Sarah sat back. “Emma put it all in writing?”
“Yup.”
Sarah looked at everything spread across the table. Real evidence. A way to clear her name. And Lizzie had done this. For her.
“Okay.” She nodded. “Okay. I’ll fight.”
Lizzie’s face transformed. The first real smile Sarah had seen in weeks.
“Come back to my hotel room. We need to talk. Really talk. About everything.”
Lizzie stood. “Lead the way.”
They walked through the lobby hand in hand. Sarah didn’t care who saw. Didn’t care if someone took a photo or wrote another story.
For the first time in weeks, she felt like maybe things would actually be okay.