Ben pulled out a piece of paper and held it out to me.
“I made a promise, and I’m going to keep it. Just… it’s much worse than you think,” he said. “You’d better sit down.”
I took the paper with shaking fingers.
The first thing I noticed was the letterhead.
It was from my father’s law firm.
“It’s much worse than you think,”
The next thing I noticed was the payment schedule.
A six-figure sum.
Money to be paid to Ben if he married Rosie.
My parents’ signatures…
Ben’s signature.
The scream tore out of me before I could stop it.
I thought I understood exactly what I was looking at, but I would soon find out that there was so much more.
The payment schedule.
“You SOLD yourself to marry my sister?”
“I know what it looks like, but let me explain—”
“Explain WHAT, Ben?” My voice cracked against the walls. “That you took money from my parents to marry Rosie? She is fighting for her life in there! And you stood beside her at the altar with a check in your pocket?”
Ben slid down the wall.
Then he said something that stole my breath.
“Explain WHAT, Ben?”
He was crying.
“I never cashed a single one,” he whispered. “Every check they sent went into an account in Rosie’s name. Every dollar. She’ll have it when she needs it. Every penny is hers.”
I wanted to believe him.
But something wasn’t adding up.
“Then why sign it? Why put your name on something so disgusting?”
Something wasn’t adding up.
Ben looked at the floor.
“Because I saw where they planned to send her… A place called Willow Grove.”
The name meant nothing to me.
But the way he said it made my knees weak.
I sank onto the tile across from him because my legs would not hold me anymore.
“Your mother showed me the brochure. She said you both were adults, and Rosie was becoming a burden nobody in the family would carry.”
“I saw where they planned to send her.”
“That’s not true. She’s not a burden, and I would’ve looked after her IF she needed me to.”
“They never planned to tell you.” His voice was so quiet I had to lean forward. “Your mother said, ‘Cathy deserves a life of her own. We won’t chain her to Rosie.’”
“She said that?”
