Chapter 15: The First Cracks in the Mercer Family

The morning after I left Newport, I woke to forty-three missed calls.

Most were from Grant.

The rest were from Eli, the wedding planner, and numbers I didn't recognize.

I ignored them all.

Instead, I opened the email my lawyer had sent before dawn.

The cancellation notices had been delivered. The property access revocation had been acknowledged. And every document involving my house had been frozen.

For the first time in years, no one else was making decisions for me.

Then another email arrived.

It was from the Mercer family lawyer.

Subject: Urgent — Wedding Cancellation and Property Dispute.

I opened it without hesitation.

Grant was claiming that I had abandoned the wedding without reasonable notice and that several expenses had been incurred on the understanding that the marriage would proceed.

He wanted reimbursement.

I almost smiled.

They had spent years teaching me that family came before money.

Now they were sending me an invoice.

I forwarded everything to my lawyer.

His reply came minutes later.

“Let them make the first mistake.”

I stared at that sentence for a long time.

Then my phone rang again.

This time, it was my mother’s old attorney.

“Mara, I found something in your mother’s estate file that you need to see.”

My heart stopped.

“What is it?”

There was a pause.

“A letter your mother instructed me not to deliver until you were about to marry.”

I sat upright.

“Why?”

His voice became quieter.

“Because she was afraid you would marry the wrong person.”

For the first time since leaving Newport, I felt something colder than anger.

Fear.

Because my mother had known Grant long before I ever brought him home.

And apparently, she had seen something I never did.