She pointed toward the villa. “This should belong to Brent. He’s your son.”
“My son watched his wife call me lowlife and stayed silent.”
Brent lowered his eyes.
That was the first real thing he had done since he arrived.
Savannah turned on him. “Say something!”
He whispered, “You shouldn’t have said that to her.”
She laughed with sharp cruelty. “Oh, now you grow a spine?”
Then Oliver’s voice came from behind them.
“Mom?”
Everyone turned.
My driver had picked the children up from school, just as arranged through the court-approved emergency contact Savannah had forgotten she listed months earlier. Oliver stood near the gate, holding Lily’s backpack.
He looked at his mother and asked, “Did you really call Grandma trash?”
Savannah’s expression collapsed.
I had not planned for that moment.
But truth has a habit of appearing exactly when liars most need silence.
Part 3
Savannah hurried toward Oliver, but he moved back. He was only eleven, old enough to recognize cruelty and still too young to conceal the pain it caused. Lily ran to me first. I knelt down, and she threw her arms around my neck so tightly I nearly could not breathe.
“I missed you, Grandma,” she whispered.
“I missed you too, sweetheart.”
