She and Dominic were so fucking understanding.

Bree put her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up slowly. Her head ached as if she’d gone on a drinking binge. She was naked, the dress, stockings, and high heels in a crumpled pile on the carpet next to the bed.

Her mother knocked softly on the closed door. “Bree, I made you breakfast.”

She realized it was the scent of coffee that had woken her.

“I’m coming, Mom.” She pulled on her robe and shoved her feet into a pair of old slippers she’d borrowed from her mother, then shuffled like an old woman to the door. The hall was empty, but the rich aroma of coffee led her to the kitchen like the pied piper.

“You slept late, dear,” her mother said, all cheery. Even her apron, patterned with bright red roses, was cheery.

“Ugh,” was all Bree said.

“I made eggs and fried tomatoes.”

Bree loved fried tomatoes, the tangy taste. Her stomach growled. She’d forgotten to eat dinner, and she was lightheaded from hunger.

“Did Luke find you last night?”

Bree slid down into a chair at the table. “Yes.” God, she wanted to get out of here, go home, stay in her bed for days. But she was trapped.

“Did you have a nice time?”

“Depends on what you consider nice,” Bree answered softly. If she hadn’t gone to the club without him, would he still be in her life? Maybe. For a few weeks or months. But she wasn’t worth more than that. Better to take the pain and get over it.

“You know what I mean, dear. Luke adores you.”

“Right.” Bree sighed, suddenly unable to touch the tomatoes and eggs on her plate. God, when would her mother stop with the whole Luke-is-a-gift thing? “That’s why he left me last night.”

“Dear, he didn’t leave you.” Her mother tutted. “He came here. He thought you were going to be here. He didn’t realize you were going up to the city on your own.”

She looked at her mother, the gay apron, the bright smile. “So you told him where I’d gone?”

“Of course I did.” Her mother flapped her napkin and laid it across her lap. “He’s a good man. He’ll take care of you.”

Something started rising in her. She couldn’t call it rage. Yet it was black and seething, and in a way, it was better than the despair in which she’d awoken. “He isn’t going to take care of me, Mom. He left me. Not just for last night, but forever. He’s gone. He’s not coming back. He doesn’t want me anymore.” Instead of the pain she’d expected when she said the words aloud, she experienced a blaze of satisfaction at the look of horror dawning on her mother’s face.

Slack-jawed, her mom stared. “How could you let him go?”

“I didn’t have a choice in the matter.” She wasn’t so sure about that. He’d certainly wanted something from her when he climbed out of the car. She hadn’t been able to figure it out, though. But this was about her mother’s attitude, not what happened last night. “He didn’t ask for my opinion on the matter.”

Then her mom’s face turned mean. It was the only word for it. “What did you do, Brianna?” she snarled.

Bree sat back, dropping her knife and fork on the plate. “Me?” She stabbed a finger at her chest. “I didn’t do anything. He left.”

Her mother stood, threw her cloth napkin in the middle of her plate of food. “You’re lying.”

“I am not lying.”

But her mother didn’t listen. “I had it all planned, how he was going to take care of you, make sure you were okay.”

“I don’t need that, Mom.” But a little voice said she did. Last night proved it. If Luke hadn’t arrived, what would those people have done to her?

“You can’t take care of yourself. You never have.” Her mother put her hands to her waist. “Look at your job, just a bookkeeper after your father paid all that money for college. He had to loan you the down payment on the condo, too. And don’t think I don’t know about all those men. Luke was the one that would have made all the difference.”

Bree felt a rumble welling up from her gut to her chest. “You mean Luke was the one who would have taken me off your hands so you didn’t have to feel guilty about me anymore.”

“I don’t feel guilty. I’ve always taken care of you.”

She ignored the irritating whisper. There were too many goddamn irritating whispers in her head saying she was bad and wrong and to blame for everything. Rising to her feet, she faced off with her mother. Bree was taller, she was younger.

And she was fucking angrier. “Have you forgotten the night your husband died? How sorry you said you were for letting me down?”

Her mother backed up a step. “We were both upset that night. We both said things.”

“We were speaking the truth.” Her eyes started to ache in their sockets. “And I am not the one to blame. You should have taken care of me.”

But she would say it. “You never listened to me. You never wanted to hear.”

This time, her mother backed straight into the wall. “Brianna.”

“You never wanted to see.” Her eyes burned, and fire raged through her blood. “Why didn’t you come out and look?” The words scratched deep lines inside her throat. She couldn’t breathe past them.

“I don’t know what you mean.” Her mother put a hand over her mouth.

“You’re such a liar. You’ve been lying for years. You didn’t even make him tear it down when I was gone. You just left it there.”

“Left what?” Her mother’s voice, so quiet, so timid all of a sudden. She knew exactly what.

“That fucking dollhouse.” Bree’s lips trembled and her teeth ached where she clenched them against the tears. She would not cry.

“The dollhouse?”

“Don’t tell me you don’t know what I mean,” she shouted. Then she grabbed her mother’s hand in a brutal grip and dragged her to the back door. “Don’t you fucking deny it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brianna.”

But Bree heard the truth in the weak tone with which her mother said her name.

She threw open the door, and together, they took the back steps and rounded the corner of the house, Bree pulling her mother all the way. The sun shone down on the pink shingles, the gay yellow siding, the latticed windows with their pretty lace curtains her mother had made, and the brightly painted flowers that hadn’t faded with all the years of weather and abuse.

“What did he build it for? Why was it tall enough for him?” She threw open the door. “Why did he put that chair in there?” His old lounge chair, still with the imprint of his ass after all these years. “Why do you think he didn’t get rid of it when he bought the one that’s still sitting in your den?”

Her mother clasped her hands tightly together in front of her. “You were just a little girl. You misunderstood whatever he did.”

“I didn’t fucking misunderstand a thing about what he did to me. And I told you I didn’t like the man in the dollhouse. I told you I didn’t like him.”

Then she was screaming, and she couldn’t seem to stop. Yelling and yelling at her mother who stood crying. She couldn’t even hear her own words anymore, didn’t know what she was saying.

Until she saw the woodpile. And the ax, still buried in the chopping block and rusted with disuse after sitting out in the rain all winter.

Her mother cringed when Bree yanked it out of the block as if she thought her daughter might actually use the ax on her. But Bree threw it into the side of the dollhouse with all her might. The glass shattered and flew, the flowers bled their red paint, the shingles trembled with the onslaught. She chopped and she chopped until the damn house resembled kindling. The only thing that remained standing was the chair, the one he used to sit in like a king. With her on her knees before him.

She was still on her knees, chest heaving, her cheeks wet, her eyes blind with moisture.

“I’m sorry,” her mother said from so very far away.

Bree blinked. For a moment, she could see, but could do nothing more than stare at the face of the woman who had carried her in her womb and was supposed to take care of her.

“You didn’t tell me details. I didn’t understand.” Her mother stopped. “Don’t look at me like that,” she whispered.

Bree said nothing. But she looked. Like that.

Her mother shifted, sunlight shining through the wisps of her hair. “I didn’t want it to be true.”

And still Bree stared at this woman who was supposed to have been a mother to her. Silhouetted by sunshine, the shadows fell across her face creating the illusion of great fissures in her skin. Or maybe the cracks were all too real.

“He told me he’d never touch you in a bad way,” her mother said.

Bree closed her eyes. So her mother had asked him. “And you believed him over me,” she finally said, her throat aching with all the things she’d screamed.

“I needed to believe him.”

“We both believed him about everything.” Bree was surprised she couldn’t hear the wail of sirens in the distance, that the neighbors hadn’t called the cops with all the shouting, screaming, and hacking. She stared at the ruined remains of her childhood dollhouse, her childhood prison. She’d believed him when he told her she was to blame, that she was bad, that he was forced to punish her for all the mistakes she made. That he did those things to her and made her do things to him because he loved her, because she was special, because it was his duty to train her to be good. “And oh, I was good, Mom, I was really, really good.”

“You’ve always hated me, haven’t you?”

Bree looked up, blinked, cleared the tears. Her mother was presumably the sane one. It was her father who’d been mentally deranged or whatever the hell was wrong with a man like that. Didn’t that make her the guiltier of the two?

Her mother shook her head very slowly. “I know I deserve the way you feel about me. But I always loved you.”

Bree believed that. “You were so weak, it didn’t matter whether you loved me or not.”

Closing her eyes, her mom absorbed the words like blows, holding her belly against the pain. “I deserve that,” she whispered.

Bree hadn’t said them to hurt. She wasn’t vicious anymore, not like she’d been in the moment she’d picked up the ax; she was simply drained of all feeling. “I’m sorry, but right this moment I don’t feel anything about you at all. You’re not even worth hating.”

She longed to go to Luke, wrap herself in his warm jacket covered in the scent of him. But she’d screwed that up. She’d lost him.

And if she didn’t get to work, she’d lose her job, too. She sure as hell couldn’t stay here. She pushed to her feet, her knees wobbling, and tossed the ax back into the wood pile.

“Will you ever forgive me?”

Wrapping the ratty robe tighter around herself, she turned to her mother and said the only thing she knew to be absolutely true. “I’m not sure. But I do know I’ll never love you.”

“I’m fine.” She was always fine. Isn’t that what she told everyone?

Rachel came to the door of her office. “I mean after that thing with Denton Marbury?”

“Why didn’t you ask me about it yesterday?” Bree had kept her head down, working in her office the rest of the day, but Rachel could have come in. She usually did. Bree didn’t mean the question rudely. She just needed to know.

“I figured you needed time to process. I know you don’t like to talk a whole lot.”

Rachel was so nice. Like a mother fish flitting all around the edges of her school of baby fish, keeping them safe, checking on them, circling them to keep them close.

She was a born mother. No one would ever hurt Rachel’s children. Especially not their father.

“Oh, well,” Bree said. “I’m fine. Thanks for asking.” It was her stock answer. She crossed the roundhouse to her office. She remembered that day last year, just before Christmas, when Rachel had walked in to find her crying. Bree had tried to say she was fine then, too. Rachel wouldn’t let her alone. Suddenly all the stuff about her father dying and her mom wanting her to come home had simply spilled out. All those things that she’d kept bottled up inside. Just as they had this morning with her mother.

She kept everything inside until it spewed. Until she couldn’t control what came out of her mouth. Because nothing had ever been fine, and she’d always lied about it.

What would happen if she talked?

What if she’d told Luke last night? What if she’d told him about Marbury and how he yelled at her and suddenly she felt like a little girl again, unable to defend herself, unable to stop it, the same way she’d felt in the dollhouse with her father? What if she told Luke that when her father decided she was too old to punish her any longer, she actually felt abandoned, rejected, no longer wanted or loved or special? That when she grew up, she found men who would treat her the same way and make her feel special again, even when they were hurting her? Especially when they were hurting her.

What if she’d told him everything? Would that have made him stay? Or driven him away forever?

Bree made it to her office before her limbs collapsed under her. In desperation, so she didn’t have to think, she grabbed her watering can. There was still a bit left in the bottom of it. She moistened the earth in the philodendron’s pot; it didn’t need much. Breaking off a couple of yellowing leaves, she threw them out, then wiped off the dust dulling the shininess of the new leaves. Nurturing the plant had given her such solace in the past. It was so healthy. Because of her. Because she cared for it, babied it. Like a child.

“How are you doing, Bree?”

Erin stood in the office door, her smile too bright as if she, too, were nervous about what might come spewing out of Bree’s mouth.

“I’m fine,” Bree answered. I just told my mother that my father molested me as a child and I hate her for not stopping him. So everything’s peachy-keen. She clenched her fists so the words didn’t escape.

But Bree wondered what her life would have been like if her mother had nurtured her daughter the way Bree nurtured her philodendron.

Then, very rationally, very thoughtfully, no spewing involved, Bree said, “You know, on second thought, I don’t really think I’m fine at all.”

The world didn’t fall apart. Erin didn’t yell at her or tell her she was stupid or call the men with the white coats. She simply said, “Do you want to talk?”

Bree was never honest. She never told people what she thought. She never revealed her secrets or her fears. Not to anyone. Not even to Luke.

Jesus, forget about her mother’s nurturing, Bree didn’t even nurture herself as well as she took care of her plant. She just took what everyone dished out. As if she deserved it. Did she deserve Marbury?

Maybe it was time to be honest. To say enough was enough. She would never grow if she didn’t. “Marbury makes me feel uncomfortable.”

Erin closed the door and took the chair across the desk. “I’m sorry about letting him get out of hand yesterday. Sit down. Let’s talk.”

Bree sat as ordered as if it weren’t her own office. “It wasn’t just yesterday. I always feel that way.” She felt otherworldly, as if she were having an out-of-body experience, her soul hovering near the ceiling and watching the two women below.

“You should have told me, Bree. You can always tell me anything. We’d have gotten someone new long ago.”

Bree wanted to open her mouth and say all the things she’d thought since coming to work at DKG. But she was scared. She was always scared. She could have been a controller if she wasn’t so scared. Or a partner at an accounting firm. Or a CFO.

Instead, she was a bookkeeper who had to borrow the down payment on her condo. She would always be a bookkeeper. She would always run out to a club when she felt bad and find the first man who wanted her, let him do anything he wanted, and she’d still feel bad in the morning.

Luke was the only one who hadn’t tried to make her feel bad.

“It’s okay, Bree, you can say whatever’s on your mind. This is closed-door here.” Erin sounded like a therapist.

“I could do a better job at it than Marbury,” Bree said and waited for the sky to fall on her head.

It didn’t.

Erin didn’t call her crazy or snort out loud with sarcasm or incredulity. She didn’t even laugh. “I believe you. Shall we give it a try?”

No, no, no. She was scared. What if she failed? What if she screwed everything up and they had to pay thousands and thousands of dollars in back taxes and penalties? All those forms. All those governmental agencies.

But dammit, she had to grow up. “I could take more classes and do online research.”

Erin leaned forward. “Tell me, honestly, how much of the work do you already do that Marbury simply transfers to a form?”

“All of it.” The truth. Bree almost sagged with the relief of saying it. “I know I should have said something before and saved the money on Marbury’s fees.”

“Maybe you didn’t know you could do it until just this moment,” Erin answered.

Bree realized how smart Erin was. Because Bree still didn’t know for sure that she could do it. She simply knew that she didn’t want to be merely fine for the rest of her life. She didn’t want to keep on living like a frightened mouse. She’d taken a lot of risks, but never the right risks. She had never stepped beyond her fears. She had only lived within them.

She’d moved in her father’s shadow for thirty-five years, always afraid, wanting to be special but knowing she wasn’t.

But he was dead. She’d held her mother’s hand and watched him die. It was time to forget. It was even time to forgive. It was time to become DKG’s accountant instead of just a bookkeeper.

“I think you can do the audit, too, better than Marbury ever could.” Erin smiled. “How about I call him and say we’ve found another accountant?”

“No,” Bree said, then took a deep breath. “I’ll tell him.”

It was time to be strong. It was time to start living outside her fears.