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“I’m sorry,” Beth said again. Th

e shitty part was that her voice was

breaking, and her eyes were tearing up. She honestly sounded truly sorry. “I

thought we could get there ahead of them. Or put something better out

there.”

“But you couldn’t have got much for them.”

“I didn’t.” Beth laughed harshly. “That’s the worst part. I got a little bit,

but not much. I have lots of friends that I’ve met over the years who work

in other companies, and I had lunch with one of them last week. She

mentioned how they’ve been trying to do a kid’s shoe line for ages.

Something fun and unique. I told her I might have some designs if they

were willing to compensate for them. I don’t know why I said it. It just

came out and then it was out and done and they liked the designs. They paid

me more than enough. They’re not even a shoe company. They do clothing

for kids. It’s all for kids, but I still thought we’d be so much further ahead,

we’d blow them out of the water.”

“By putting out the same designs and sending their whole production into

a funk?”

“They don’t recycle anything, so it wouldn’t have been the same.”

“But similar enough that June could have gotten sued.”

“I-I thought I could change them enough that maybe that wouldn’t

happen. We would have put ours out first anyway. In my head, I was going

to make it work,” she moaned. “I thought I could work it all out, but I didn’t

have time.”

Beth wasn’t a dumb lady. Arabella knew that. She was very smart and

very capable. If she said she thought she could have worked it out, then she

really did think so. She wasn’t being malicious. She wasn’t trying to hurt

anyone. She knew that she could, but she had hoped she wouldn’t.

Arabella didn’t understand why Beth had taken the risk, but she did

understand one thing. The love that one person could have for their family.