“Enough! Enough lying,” May sighed. “Haven’t all your lies made enough of a mess already? Don’t treat me like a fool.”
“You want the truth? We barely have enough money to pay for the paper to go to print. We won’t make rent, let alone pay all the wages we owe. I didn’t tell you because knowing how honest you are, you never would have let me print the first issue. You would have let everyone go. And you seemed so happy frolicking around with my bastard of a brother, I didn’t want to spoil it for you, as crazy as the whole thing has driven me. It was wrong. But I’m begging you to stick with me and see this venture through. We go to print with the first issue, and if you never find it in your heart to forgive me, so be it. We go our separate ways.”
May straightened up in bed, her eyes haggard. “Now . . . it’s my turn to ask what you’re talking about.”
The two women looked at each other, angry and confused. Sally-Anne took the first leap.
“I’m talking about my mother’s dirty trick, her latest and greatest work: seeing to it that our loan was rejected. What else would I be talking about? We’re up to our ears in debt. She wiped her hands of me with a silly little check that doesn’t begin to cover our debts. See? We actually needed those dishes. We don’t have a cent for new ones. That’s all. That’s the only secret I was keeping.”
May reached past Sally-Anne to grab the copy of the newspaper from the foot of the bed. She held it out, stabbing a finger at the offending text.
At the end of the month, a masquerade ball will be held at the home of Mr. Robert Stanfield and his wife, Hanna, in honor of their son Edward’s engagement to Miss Jennifer Zimmer, daughter of Fitzgerald and Carol Zimmer, and heiress to the bank that bears their name.
“I didn’t know! I haven’t even been invited,” Sally-Anne whispered. “They’ve cut me out of my own brother’s engagement party. And, my God, you had to find out about this through the paper?” She sighed, defeated.
She moved in closer and put her arms around May. “I swear on my life: I had no idea.”
May let Sally-Anne rock her softly, their faces cheek to cheek.
“He used me and threw me away . . . like some kind of whore,” May sobbed.
Sally-Anne hugged her closer. “It’s as though I don’t exist to them . . . like I’m something to be ashamed of. It’s so humiliating. I can’t even say which of us got it worse.”
May rose and led Sally-Anne to the door of their room, the glow of the candles still reflecting off the porcelain debris.
“I was cooking a special dinner for your brother. I tried calling him three times. Your butler kindly informed me that Mr. Edward was in a meeting, but would relay my message to him. So, I sat reading the paper while I waited for his call. And that’s how I found out he wouldn’t be coming. Can you imagine anything so cruel? The only thing worse than the lie is how much of a coward he was. To think that he took me to his island and swore up and down that he loved me. He played me for a fool. I’ve been a fool. But, I’m begging you, don’t say ‘I told you so.’”
“It’s even worse than you think, worse than him just being a coward. The whole thing was a plot that my mother and Edward hatched together. While my brother drove a wedge between us, my mother sharpened her knives and stabbed me in the back, and you in the heart.”
A silence fell over the space, as though the awful reach of Hanna Stanfield’s power had extended all the way into the apartment.
“Let’s sit down,” May said. “There’s a nice dinner just sitting there, and we can clear a spot on my desk.”
They sat down across from each other. Sally-Anne shook her head. “We can’t let this stand,” she whispered.
“We got double-crossed and now we’re ruined. What choice do we have?”
May thought about the weekend on Kent Island, just days earlier. She had been so happy, but Edward had ruined it. Sally-Anne, meanwhile, was peering across the warehouse at the part that had been transformed into a newsroom. Just days earlier, the Independent had been taking its first breaths, but her mother had killed it.
“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to take back what’s ours,” she said.
“I think I’ve had my fill of your asshole brother.”
“That’s not what I meant. I mean the paper.”
“You said it yourself: without funding, the paper is finished,” May said. She crossed the room and lit the stove burner under a pan of watercress soup.
“My father has a small fortune in bearer bonds in the safe in his study. It’s a favorite payment method of art collectors who want to keep some transactions tax-free. Officially, the painting is resold at cost, then all taxable profit is settled this way. No one’s any the wiser. The bonds are anonymous. They can be cashed at any bank, without any kind of proof of origin.”