I'd only wanted a simple reunion, nothing complicated, no drama, which was exactly why I'd dressed so plainly.
It had never occurred to me that in their eyes, that plainness would read as country-bred, unfit to be seen.
I smiled at myself. Whether they played favorites or not, I couldn't say. But which child they loved more was plain as day.
Watching the whole family cluster around Madge, I felt something in me let go.
Thank goodness the years of my godmother's love had already filled the hollow places inside me. Otherwise, today might actually have cut deep.
At that thought, I lifted my eyes and looked calmly at all of them.
"Mom, I'm really not trying to force your hand. It's just that my godmother genuinely…"
I couldn't come right out and name who I was, so I meant to use the excuse that my godmother couldn't manage without me, and leave with my dignity intact tomorrow morning.
I'd barely opened my mouth when Madge suddenly cut in.
"Sis, if you've really forgiven me, then accept your little sister's gift."
She straightened up as she spoke, eyes rimmed red, and came to stand right in front of me.
"Sis, this bracelet was passed down to Mom from her grandmother, and Mom gave it to me. Now I'm giving it back to you. Please, stop fighting me over Benjamin, okay?"
She yanked the bracelet off her wrist, tears dripping, and shoved it hard at me.
I was just about to push it back when there was a sharp crack. The bracelet hit the floor, splitting clean into three pieces that scattered at my feet.
"Sis, I gave you back the bracelet that marks us as daughters of the Hughes family. Why would you smash it?"
"Do you hate me that much? You'd really fight me for Benjamin no matter what?"
Madge screamed the words at me, grief and fury mixed together, then dropped fast to the floor and snatched the broken jade into her hand. Blood fell from her palm, drop by drop, onto the boards.
"Mom, I'm sorry. I don't deserve to be your daughter. I couldn't even protect the bracelet Grandma passed down to you."
Three seconds of shock, then I stepped back and looked coldly at Madge, crouched there weeping her heart out.
This time my brother charged first, slamming a palm into my chest.
"Zoe Carrington, how can you be so vicious? You really won't rest until you've driven Madge out?"
"Let me tell you something. Madge is my real sister. The idea that I share the same blood as someone as shallow and ugly as you makes me sick."
Even as he spoke, he'd already grabbed Madge's hand, pressing down hard on the wound, shouting for the butler.
Mother was crying too, holding Madge close.
"Silly girl, broken is broken, why go picking up the pieces? You've bled so much. What if it scars?"
Then she turned back to me, her voice heavy with sorrow and helplessness.
"Zoe, what exactly do you want? Do you want your mother to pay for this with her life?"
"We only just found you, and already you're making a scene about leaving. You're really set on breaking my heart like this?"
She wept as though I were a daughter with no feeling at all for a mother's tender heart.
She'd already agreed to compensate me. Agreed to find me a good second-tier family's son down the line.
They hadn't wronged me.
Compared to my days in Dragon Bay, digging up medicinal herbs and living in a thatched hut, this was a thousand, ten thousand times better.
Why couldn't I just be content?
Everyone was looking at me with disgust, and even that last thread of tenderness in my father vanished.
"Zoe, Madge has been raised at our side for twenty years. There's no blood between us, but she's long since been our own daughter."
"If you go on making trouble like this, with no sense of your place, then you can forget ever returning to high society and living in silk and comfort."
I looked at his grave expression and knew he meant every word.
After all, a daughter with a mind of her own who knew how to please was far better than a stiff, country daughter like me.
Set against profit, blood sometimes didn't count for much.
Fine. In the end, at least there'd be no more tangled ties to sort out.
