Page 113 of Now That It's You
“You don’t say.” His voice was dry, but not condescending. She might be giving up a huge chunk of her royalties here, but she was still the one paying the attorney fees.
“There’s no telling if Matt’s family will retain Straight Shot Literary Agency to represent their portion of the deal,” Meg admitted, “which means Nancy’s only getting a portion of my proceeds, which means?—”
“Your proceeds get a helluva lot smaller if you go through with this.”
“Right.” Meg picked up the pen again and looked down at the documents. She’d studied them all morning, and the night before, and the night before that. She didn’t need more time to think about it. She knew what she had to do. What she wanted to do.
“You’re signing it.” Franklin’s voice was flat as Meg scrawled her signature on the first line, then the next.
She nodded and flipped to the next page, not looking up at him. “It’s the right thing to do. If I don’t, this could eat at me for the rest of my life. I don’t want to live with that regret.”
“You don’t think you could regret signing away such a huge chunk of money you’re entitled to?”
“Maybe.” Meg looked up at him, holding a finger on the page where she’d left off. “But I’d rather go through life regretting that I tried to do the right thing—even when it doesn’t go like I hoped—than to spend my life wondering if I made the greedy choice. The choice that only considers myself, instead of other people whose lives I affected.”
“I see.”
Meg went back to scrawling her signature on the pages, flipping faster now. She knew the words by heart, even though some of them made her throat tight and achy. She scrawled her name again and again and again until she reached the end. When she finished, she took a deep breath and pushed the whole pile at Franklin. “May I have two copies, please?”
“So you can send one to your agent? I already have that covered.”
“No.” Meg reached into her purse and found the decorative blue and gold box she’d kept tucked in her desk for two years. She opened it up and put the pen inside. “There’s someone else I’d like to give them to.”
“The Midland family?” Franklin shook his head. “It’s best if you let the lawyers handle it from here, Meg.”
She shook her head. “I need to do this myself.”
Meg walked out of the office and took a deep breath. She had an hour to spare before her lunch date with Kendall and her mother. There was just enough time.
She made the drive to the Midland home in a daze, her brain barely registering the blur of orange and red and gold on the trees that lined the boulevard. The sky was a milky gray, and she cracked her car windows to breathe the scent of impending rain.
The look on Sylvia’s face when she opened the door was one of stunned shock. In the instant before it could turn to fury, Meg thrust the blue and gold box at her.
“Here,” Meg said, holding out the pen. “You gave this to me. Do you remember?”
Sylvia looked at it, leery, then nodded. “Yes.” She didn’t take the box, but she didn’t push it away, either.
“I want you to have it back,” Meg said. “And I want you to use it to sign these.” She reached into her purse for the manila envelope containing the paperwork, forcing Sylvia to take the pen. Her former-future-mother-in-law watched her with a guarded expression, her mouth tight. When Meg pulled out the envelope, Sylvia frowned.
“Albert said you were making this offer. He didn’t tell me the details, but he said I’d be pleased.”
“You won’t be.”
Sylvia blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Your son is dead.” Meg felt the prick of tears at the back of her eyes. “Anything that happens from this point forward isn’t going to change that. No amount of money, no amount of apology, no amount of regret over what anyone should or shouldn’t have done.”
Sylvia’s eyes turned misty, and she gave a faint nod. “That’s true.”
“But this agreement. This is close to what you wanted. Maybe better. There’s a stipulation in there that Chloe gets a small stipend. It’s not much, but I wanted to make sure she got a piece of Matt’s legacy. Something that was his and will now be hers.”
“But why?—”
“Because she was his family. Even if they didn’t walk down the aisle together. That counts for something.”
Sylvia nodded. “Like you.”
“Yes.”
