Chapter 24 - VICTORIA AND MEVictoria asked to meet.
I said no twice.
Then agreed through lawyers.
Neutral conference room.
No Julian.
No Eleanor.
Victoria looked older.
She said:
“I should never have reached for your purse.”
True.
“I thought you were going to call Thomas’s people and take everything from Julian.”
“Thomas was dead.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes.”
Then:
“I sold my condo because Julian told me the lake house would be mine to use.”
“I told you it wouldn’t.”
She looked down.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you believe me?”
Her answer took a long time.
“Because if I believed you, then I had to admit my son had asked me for three hundred fifty thousand dollars without knowing where I would live afterward.”
There.
Not greed.
Fear.
She had chosen the story in which the lake house was available because the other story meant Julian had accepted her sacrifice without protecting her.
“Did you know about Section Fourteen?”
“No.”
“Did Julian?”
“He remembered there was some clause. He said it was unenforceable.”
That mattered.
He had gambled with both of them.
Victoria cried.
I did not comfort her.
May you like
Not because I hated her.
Because she needed to carry her own realization.
