Page 7 of Mistaken Identity
The moment that my dad had come into the house that day, all divorce proceedings had been halted.
Dad was still married to Mom.
Mom was in an assisted living facility with half of her face, and a quarter of her brain gone, living life with the knowledge that she’d fucked her life up forever.
She was forced to go to therapy—because she was very much aware of everything that she had done. And still had to do.
She was forced to face her fears.
Dad was miserable.
I was miserable.
Mom was certainly miserable.
Everyone was miserable.
“Laney, honey…” I said to my good friend. “This is a terrible idea.”
“But we have to sell it,” she continued, acting like I hadn’t said a thing. “We can’t do this half-ass. We have to make it look real when we’re in public.”
I stared at her, still not biting. “And the money that I get out of this…I can pay off your mom’s medical bills.”
That had my stomach somersaulting in my belly.
My mother.
My goddamn mother.
Fuck her.
Fuck everything about her.
I looked away.
“Audric,” she whispered. “This is going to work great.”
“I don’t think…”
“Just fucking do it,” Creole interjected as she came out of the bedroom looking as beautiful as ever. “We both know that you’re going to. Laney needs a husband to gain her half a billion-dollar inheritance. You need money to pay off your mother’s medical bills. And let’s not forget your family home in Hawaii that you were just about to list for sale.”
I gritted my teeth.
My great-grandmother and great-grandfather had died in a small plane crash when they’d been island hopping years ago. They’d left my grandmother the house in Oahu. My grandmother had then passed it on to me when she’d decided to move closer to her family. She’d left our other cousins the money.
Both had equaled out the same, but the bad thing about my part of the inheritance was that I couldn’t afford the taxes it was going to cost to keep the damn place.
At least if my cousin had gotten it, he would’ve had a way to keep the place.
Me, on the other hand?
I barely had enough money to rub two pennies together.
I was Broke, with a capital B.
My mom’s medical bills were outrageous, and they were drowning us.
To keep her in assisted living each month was five thousand dollars.
