Maya’s smile didn’t waver. “Busy. Work trip.”
—the youngest, the wild card, the one their father had called “a beautiful accident”—arrived last, smelling of airport whiskey and defiance. He’d been living in Berlin, running a gallery that may or may not have been a money-laundering front. No one asked. No one wanted the answer.
“Dad was a drunk who thought affection was a zero-sum game.” Sam finally turned, and Maya saw something she hadn’t seen in years: her little brother, scared. “I’m not here for Eleanor’s birthday, Maya. I’m here because I’m broke. The gallery is gone. I owe people. Bad people.”
The Moreaus were still deciding which one they wanted to be.
Eleanor cut in, her voice silk over steel. “Let’s not air laundry that doesn’t need washing.”
She wasn’t sure if she believed it yet. But standing there, in the broken aftermath of a hundred old wounds, she thought maybe it could be.
