Page 100 of Beautiful Liar

“Remember the end goal. Remember this is for the greater good.”

A sob catches in her throat. I’m ready to lunge out of my hiding place when Maxwell turns the door handle and pushes it open. Mama stumbles forward, her high heels catching on the carpet. She turns and looks at Maxwell. Her face looks…pleading, her eyes great pools of distress. His jaw tenses and he jerks his chin at her.

“The greater good, Adele.”

Why is he saying that? From my hiding place I can tell what’s going on is the opposite of good. Mama is crying. That’s bad.

I have to save her.

I step out. Then immediately shrink back when I see the two men coming silently down the hall. They’re Captain Harrington’s assistants; they arrived with the Captain and are staying for the weekend at our plantation mansion in South Carolina. They both give me the creeps, the big, muscly one especially.

Maxwell sees them and steps back from the doorway. They’re both dressed in their pajamas and one of them is holding something in his hand. Like the video camera Mama got me for my last birthday. They enter and shut the door without speaking to him.

I plaster myself against the wall as Maxwell walks past me and returns to his bedroom. My gaze swings back to the guest suite door.

Mama is in there, doing something. Something she doesn’t want to do. Something that makes her cry.

And she’s doing it for the greater good.

I stay in my hiding place for hours and hours, the three words playing in my head. Eventually, my eyelids begin to droop. I want to go knock on the door, see if Mama’s all right. But my feet won’t obey me. They want to run in the other direction, back to my room. I don’t let them. Because I don’t want to leave Mama in that room.

Mrs. Harper finds me in my hiding place at sunrise. She hassles me back to bed. I want to ask all the questions bursting through my mind.

But the old biddy is crying again, sniffing into that damn white handkerchief she always has tucked in her pocket.

She promises me pancakes for breakfast, as if she’s offering me some rare, magnificent treat. It’s stupid, because I’m Quinn Blackwood. If I want pancakes, I’ll have pancakes. She has zero power over the delivery or withholding of pancakes. What I want her to do is to return to that room and get Mama. I’d do it myself but I can barely keep my eyes open. But Mama can’t stay in that room no matter what she agreed.

Because from where I’m standing, it’s very clear that the greater good sucks.

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