Chapter 2

I zipped the duffel bag and retreated to my room.

First thing: turn on the light.

My room had no window. Without the light, it was a cave.

There were five bedrooms in this house.

Dad and Linda had the master suite. Madison's room was right next door — painted lilac, with a gallery wall of her favorite artists.

The remaining three rooms: Dad's tea and whiskey lounge, Linda's walk-in closet, and a dedicated fan merchandise room for Madison's celebrity obsession.

I lived in the storage room under the stairs. I hadn't even been worth a north-facing bedroom.

Linda nudged the door open a crack.

"Rachel, honey, I washed some grapes for you. Come have some."

The cluster she held out had dry, shriveled stems. The skin was puckering.

I'd seen Madison pick one off earlier, chew it, and spit it into the trash.

"Ugh. Sour. Disgusting."

What Madison wanted, I never got a taste of. What Madison rejected, Linda packaged up for me with a smile.

Mom had been gone one month when Dad brought Linda into the house.

He told me to call her Mom. I couldn't make the word come out.

Linda set the grapes on my nightstand, then dipped into her pocket and produced two hundred dollars.

"Here, Rachel. I don't have a lot on me right now, but take this — for when you get to campus."

Her nails were freshly done. A deep, aggressive red.

I stared at her.

"Drop the act."

Dad appeared behind her and snatched the money.

"See what coddling her gets you? She's completely insufferable."

"From this point on, she gets nothing from this house. Not one cent. Let's see how that mouth of hers does without our support."

He threw the grapes on the floor and ground them under his shoe.

"And she's not eating tonight. One day without food. Maybe she'll reflect on what she has."

"She needs to understand who runs this house."

In high school, my monthly allowance was three hundred dollars. When I started college, it went up to five hundred.

My first month of freshman year, I spent nearly all of it on the cheapest train ticket I could find — a hard seat, eight hours each way. I arrived on campus with three hundred and eighty dollars left.

By the last week of that month, I was surviving on discount bread and canned beans.

When I called Dad to ask for next month's money, he tore into me before I could finish the sentence.

"Already? It's been barely three weeks. Do you think I'm an ATM?"

"I work myself half to death and you're up there living it up at my expense."

"Keep spending like this and you can forget about school. Go find a factory job."

He wired the five hundred dollars two weeks later.

I slid Mom's photo out from under my mattress. Stared at it until my eyes blurred.

If she were still here.

The smell of dinner drifted under my door.

Madison's voice carried from the kitchen.

"Oh my god, Mom, you made so much! This is amazing!"

Nobody called me.

My stomach felt like it was folding in on itself.

I used to go hungry so often that my stomach had developed a Pavlovian response — any sign of an empty afternoon and the cramping would start.

Madison's voice again, bright and easy.

"Mom, your ribs are literally my favorite thing in the entire world. You're the best."

Linda's voice, warm and unhurried: "Eat as much as you want."

I crouched on the floor and made myself as small as possible, trying to wait out the pain.

My phone rang. The bank.

"Hello, is this Rachel Holt? A Certificate of Deposit opened ten years ago in your name has matured. Would you like to roll it over or withdraw?"

"I think you have the wrong person. I don't have a savings account like that. Ten years ago I was eight."

"Ten years ago, a Ms. Susan Holt deposited $800,000 into an account registered in your name."

"Can I ask — what is your relationship to Susan Holt?"

Susan Holt.

My mother.

I pressed the phone tight against my ear and lowered my voice to barely a whisper.

"Can I take the money out?"