“Did you miss the restraining order we all filed this week?” Eva shouted at the woman being dragged through the front door. “You can’t come within fifty feet of any of us! Pretty sure this is fifty feet, Mom!”
“Restraining order? What do you mean? I can’t be held back from my own family!”
Although she continued to play dumb, Isabella’s quick retention of a lawyer proved that she was willing to play the game. She was detained in a hotel room once released from jail within hours. Monica wasn’t going to face her, but when she put Abigail to bed that night, she realized her daughter had been crying.
“Is Grandma going to be okay?”
Monica pursed her lips while wrapping the bed covers around her daughter’s shoulders. “She’ll be fine, sweetie. Your grandma is a very resilient woman. We’re just going through some things right now. It’s… complicated, huh?”
“Will I get to see her before she leaves town?”
Monica couldn’t hold back her frown. “I don’t know. That’s for the police to decide.”
That was her cue to put her coat back on. Henry caught her about to leave.
“There’s a restraining order,” he reminded her.
“I’ll explain to everyone that I just want to talk to her one last time.”
“Monica…”
“No, Henry.” Monica finished fixing her hair over her coat and turned toward him. “There were things I couldn’t say to her in Thailand because Abigail was right there. Don’t worry. I’m not going to end up in jail, too.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about.”
“Then what? I don’t fear your mother.”
She didn’t know if she would even be allowed to see Isabella in the hotel. When she approached an officer on duty, he told her that it wasn’t usually a good idea. Just to be on the safe side, Monica called up the family lawyer, and while the man was in the middle of his dinner, asked him to come downtown to help handle this.
Isabella’s lawyer was there too. To overseeeveryone’sbest interests.
“How dare you humiliate me.” Isabella met her in the living area of her hotel suite, where she was still only dressed in her nightgown and robe. “First, you cast me out of my own house, then you come to my cell to talk terms of a restraining order? Against my ownfamily?”
“It was a long time coming.” Monica sat across from her at the small dining table. Their tired and cranky lawyers stood by the door, conferring about something Monica could not hear. “You’ve been upsetting this family foryears.Long before I even came into the picture.”
“Perhaps the issues my children have with me could have stayed private, Monica.”
“You would have never allowed it. You thrive on everyone knowing you’re in charge.”
Isabella didn’t try to defend herself. She merely drummed her fingers on the table while positioning her body language far away from her daughter-in-law. “I’ve hated you from the day my son fell in love with you.”
Monica didn’t take that personally. “You didn’t even know I existed back then.”
“I felt a current in the air. That everything I worked so hard for in this family was about to crumble.”
Something tightened in Monica’s chest.Such a familiar feeling…Was it something she shared with Isabella, but for different reasons?
“I’ve done nothing but love this family,” Monica said. “I gave you a granddaughter. She even looks just like her dad and aunt. You can hardly see a trace of me in her.”
“I see you in her eyes. They may not be the same color, but the spirit is the same.”
The spirit?“What do you mean?”
“When I look inyoureyes, Monica, I see that insufferable view of the world. The one that suggested that anything is possible if you justbelieve.If you roll over and show your belly to the beast. It’s the same look my children have started showing since getting to know you. Evangeline alone… if it weren’t for you, she would have never married that woman.”
“I had nothing to do with Eva and Nadia falling in love.”
“You encouraged it.”
