Page 31 of Forget

Jayda stomped into the living room, where a faux-stone fireplace gave out a welcome warmth. She felt chilled to the bone. She stood in front of the fireplace, hands behind her back to stave off the ice filtering through her, making her extremities numb.

‘Jayda, I’m sorry—’

‘So you said, Mum, but a trite apology doesn’t cut it. Not this time.’ Jayda shook her head, her indignation rising along with her body temperature as she thawed. ‘You used me. You guilted me into working for you after I finished uni, playing on my love for Sasha. So I let my IT skills lapse, becoming your glorified party planner, only to learn I’m not the idiot you think I am when I discovered you and Dad have been siphoning massive sums of money from your so-called charity.’

Her mother’s bottom lip wobbled and Jayda ignored it. ‘So whateverproofyou have that you’ve rectified your mistakes won’t change the fact that I despise both of you.’

She spat the last words, wanting to hurt her mother as much as she’d been hurt by the only people in the world she assumed had her back.

The one thing she hated most in this world was being duped. Deon had done it, shattering her trust in men and feeding into every single one of her body-image insecurities, so discovering her parents’ duplicity in preying on her emotions because they needed a trusting stooge…

No matter what her mother said, it would take a long time to recover from their deceit.

‘You need to see this.’ Her mother took a folded document out of her designer handbag and smoothed it out. ‘Here.’

The faster Jayda took a look, the faster she could hustle her mother out of here so she grabbed the paper.

‘We’ve replaced every cent your father gambled away from our personal accounts. And he’s joined Gamblers Anonymous. He’s been attending meetings twice a week…’ She ended on a sob and Jayda clamped down on the urge to comfort.

Considering her parents had lied to her for years, they were skilled performers, and for all she knew this could be an act to draw her sympathy, despite what the figures on this bank document proved.

‘You have to forgive us, sweetheart. Your father went a little mad when Sasha died, and when I discovered he’d used funds from the charity to gamble, followed by how much he’d lost, I didn’t know what to do—’

‘You could’ve told me! You could’ve trusted me.’ Jayda’s throat tightened and she swallowed several times before she could continue. ‘Do you know what it feels like to discover thatall the hard work I put into the charity for years in an effort to help you was perpetuating a lie?’

Jayda thumped her chest. ‘I’ll tell you what it feels like. It feels like you stabbed me in the heart.’

Tears started flowing down her mother’s face. ‘We were grieving—’

‘I was too. And you never gave a shit about me.’ Jayda’s yell bounced off the walls but she couldn’t stop. Not this time. ‘I loved Sasha too and her death gutted me. I’ve always been invisible to you and I thought her death would bring us closer together as a family…’

She shook her head, tears blurring her vision. ‘I’ve never been good enough for you and Dad. Secondbest, always. But I accepted it because I loved you and wanted to help you as much as I could to ease your pain.’

The tears started spilling down her cheeks and she swiped them away with the back of her hand. ‘But what about my pain? What about recognising you still had a daughter? About acknowledging that while I could never fill Sasha’s shoes in your eyes, I’m special too?’

Her mother’s sobs grew louder but Jayda didn’t care. She was done trying to soothe her parents’ pain when they’d never cared about hers.

So she steeled herself to stare her mother down, an elegant woman in a pink designer suit, matching bag and shoes, with perfectly highlighted blonde hair and makeup that didn’t run despite her tears. Peony looked like a caricature of a wealthy woman, always had, and while Jayda had never taken her comfortable lifestyle for granted, she wished that for one second her mother would look approachable like the mums she saw at the supermarket in their jeans and hoodies, hair in ponytails with barely a slick of lipstick.

‘We love you—’

‘I didn’t invite you here to rehash the past. I wanted to tell you that I’m starting my own charity.’ Jayda squared her shoulders and stared down the woman she’d once looked up to. ‘I’m honouring Sasha’s memory my way. I loved her as much as you and this is something I have to do.’

Tears burned her eyes again and she blinked them away. ‘I extended the courtesy of telling you in case you get questions from your cronies about my new start-up charity.’

Peony blinked, her gaze morphing from hurt to shrewd. ‘But you could come back and work for us, now that we’ve rectified the mistakes—’

Mistakes?Was that what they called embezzlement these days?

‘Just go, Mum.’ She held out the document and when her mother didn’t make a move to take it she flung it on the sofa. ‘I need time away from you both. Time to process. Time to see if I can forgive you.’

Her mother opened her mouth, probably to protest again, but Jayda turned away to face the fire, wishing she could climb into it, craving comfort. A small part of her yearned to feel her mother’s arms around her, for her mum to come up behind her and enfold her in an embrace that would make all the hurt go away.

But Jayda had given up expecting anything from her parents a long time ago so it didn’t surprise her when she heard heels clacking on the floorboards, before the front door opened and closed.

Only then did her legs crumple and she slumped to the floor, bawling like a baby.

15

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