I had never wanted my father to grovel. I’d wanted him to see.
Now he did.
The divorce filing was swift. Marcus arranged it with another attorney to avoid conflicts. Victoria fought it, of course—she claimed Gerald was “confused,” that Bonnie had “turned him against her,” that the money transfers were “misunderstood marital decisions.”
But the documentation didn’t care about her feelings.
Facts are brutal like that.
Paige called me four days after the gala.
Her name flashed on my phone while I was sitting on my porch, the ocean bright and indifferent beyond the railing. I stared at it for a moment, then answered.
“Hello?” I said.
There was a long pause. I could hear her breathing, shallow and uneven.
“Bonnie,” she said finally, voice small, “I don’t know what to do.”
I didn’t soften immediately. Paige had benefited from Victoria’s cruelty for years. She’d laughed when my room was taken. She’d enjoyed the imbalance.
But she’d also grown up inside Victoria’s orbit. She’d been taught that love was transactional, that comfort mattered more than truth.
“What do you want to do?” I asked.