Page 15 of Things Left Unsaid

She’s an anachronism—a walking reminder of the times when the McAllisters had money and she was sent away to Switzerland for her education.

It’s because of her that I know how to comport myself at a charity dinner while rubbing shoulders with local bigwigs.

It’s why the triplets, despite their rabble-rousing tendencies, can tie the neckties they never wear into nineteen different types of knots, are able to waltz and understand which flowers mean what in a bouquet.

I always railed against the confines and constrictions she placed on us, but after the fire, I found comfort in them.

Until I jumped at the first chance I got to leave...

“We need the Korhonens’ help, Susanne.”

My fingers tighten around the papers in front of me. “I’m not a pawn in this game.”

“You are. Just as all McAllisters are when it concerns the Bar 9.”

My throat clutches. “This is my life,Grand-mère. You can’t expect me to do this.”

How can I marry Colton when he thinks I’m capable of setting fire to his stables and killing those innocent horses?

How could he marry me when he believes I’m an arsonist and a horse killer?

This has to be a joke. He’d never agree to this.

“You think I married your grandfather for love? I did it for the ranch?—”

“It’s always about the damn ranch! My life is in New York. Not here. And we all know how successful that marriage was. He’s one of the reasons we’re poor!”

“Your place is in Saskatchewan,” she barks, the demure lady act finally quivering as the queen of sulfur reasserts herself. “This foolish game you’re playing in New York City is beyond a joke. It’s time you came home. It’s time you did your duty.”

“My duty?” I jerk to my feet, the chair scraping noisily at the abrupt gesture. “I will not be bartered into?—”

But I'm not the only one who stands.

Thatis when she hits me.

Her palm connects with my cheek and the pain ricochets down my jaw and to my neck, my skin burning from that one point of collision.

It's crazy, but I think of all the times Clyde Korhonen used his fists on Colton—how did he handlethatwhenthishurts?!

I gape at her, staggering aside to avoid another blow. But there won’t be one. She takes a seat and picks up her bone-china cup as if that didn’t happen.

Except, it did.

She hit me.

And with more bite than I’d have thought possible with her current, fragile,demureninety-two-year-old grandma act.

Because itisan act. That’s how she rolls.

“You’re a McAllister,” she tells me, but there’s a growl to the words, transforming her from society belle to cast-iron bitch. “You belong here. This is your place.

“I should never have let you leave for university. You should have stayed in Pigeon Creek. But I gave you an inch, and you took a mile. Twenty-one hundred of them. It’s time for you to come home.”

Her stony words have me flopping backward onto the horsehair-filled cushions of a sofa that saw better days in the fifties.

Still unable to believe she hit me, I stop shielding my cheek with my hand, but the stinging continues.

She’s done many shitty things in my life, but this is the first time it’s ever turned physical.

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