Page 5 of Her Submission (Monica & Henry #2)

Damocles

No amount of reassurance from her accountants made Monica feel secure when she met with them again the following Monday. Can I help it? Everything’s a mess. Another weekend with the in-laws had come and gone. Monica didn’t think she could handle another fortnight of her father-in-law’s offensive remarks and Isabella’s veiled threats. Now, here she was, sitting in her parlor with two of her three accountants going over their most recent findings and communications with the IRS.

“The money is missing, Monica,”

said Lysa.

“We’ve gone over your documents from two years ago as much as our manpower allows.

You claimed on your form that Le Chateau brought in fifteen million dollars of profit.

When we match that up with your subcontractor’s statements, it looks like you brought in thirty million dollars in profit, meaning you were not taxed for that other fifteen.”

“How is this possible?”

Monica had long kicked off her shoes and now rubbed her feet on her couch.

“I always go over everything multiple times. At most, there might be a discrepancy of a few thousand dollars if something wasn’t properly logged, but it always is. How could I have made twice as much as I thought? Is that even possible?”

“Of course it is,”

Lysa said.

“These things do happen. But we admit that even we’re confused, considering how meticulous you usually are at bookkeeping. We’ve also looked into possible missing investments, and there’s nothing unaccounted for.”

“I don’t mess around with money coming into my business.”

“No, of course not. I didn’t mean to imply that you did.”

Monica shook her head, her temples throbbing.

“Fifteen million. Someone on the roster must be lying about how much they made. Or didn’t make. Maybe more than someone.”

She couldn’t think of a single woman on her payroll who made fifteen million in a year. The most successful was Judith, and she was far from wealthy. She could retire well, but…

There was no getting to the bottom of this now. Monica had to move on with her day, all with this hanging over her head.

“I’m going to pick up Abigail from school.”

Monica appeared in the doorway to her husband’s home office, her coat hanging over her arm.

“Maybe take her out for a treat. God knows I need one.”

He bade her farewell, but Monica was already on the way to the main house, where she summoned her car and driver. At that time of day, she didn’t have to say where she was heading – but she did, just in case.

The line for child pickup at Winchester Academy was always backed up when the elementary school let out.

No matter how early Monica arrived, she was at least ten cars deep, idling exhaust fumes filling the air with God knew what kind of chemicals.

When will I buy an electric car already? It wasn’t a matter of money for her.

It was the fact that she was cautious about waste, having been raised to never throw a single thing out unless it had truly run its use.

Her current car was perfectly fine, even if it was several years old. It was comfortable. She could drive it herself if she had to.

(But God assured her she didn’t. Monica hated driving more than she hated dealing with her mother-in-law. To her, a driver’s license was a dirty necessity.)

She scanned the faces of the first graders lined up for pickup. Their teacher distracted them with a singalong as one by one they ran off to a car or into the arms of a parent, nanny, or other guardian who was on pickup duty that day.

Where’s Abigail?

Monica always got out of the car to greet her daughter, but today she flew out of the backseat, hurrying up to the first-grade class with her heart alighting in a mother’s worry.

“Abigail?”

That was the only time the teacher acknowledged her.

“Where’s Abigail?”

The teacher looked between her and the remaining students in her class.

“Mrs. Warren!”

She waved to get Monica’s attention.

“Abigail’s already on her way home.”

Monica felt like she had stepped into some alternate universe, awakened from a coma, or died. This was purgatory. This was hell.

This was her without her daughter.

“What are you talking about? Who picked her up?”

The teacher nodded to the children before turning her whole body toward Monica.

“Her grandmother, I believe. That’s what Abigail called her, and she was on the list of adults cleared for pickup…”

Isabella!

Monica flung herself back into her car and told the driver to hurry home. While he pulled away from the school, she called Henry, impatiently waiting for him to answer.

“Henry! Is our daughter home? Your mother picked her up!”

“I was just about to text you,”

he greeted.

“Not ten minutes after you left, Abigail ran in here to show me the pottery she made at school. Colored me confused – I thought that was the fasted pickup in Winchester Academy history.”

Monica lived through a huge sigh of relief while falling back into her seat. She hung up a second later, allowing her panic to completely ravage her body so it would properly diffuse into the ether.

When she got home, she once more had enough energy to tear through into the house while calling Abigail’s name.

“In here!”

Monica frantically followed the sound of her daughter’s voice. She was in the back of the main house, having a tea party with her grandmother in the sunroom.

“That’s right. Just like that.”

Isabella supervised the way Abigail poured tea from a pot and added a lump of sugar. Her gentle stirring of the spoon ensured it never once clinked against the sides of the porcelain cup.

“What a good girl! Such a quick learner.”

Abigail beamed in pride as she sat back down in her chair. Monica entered, eyes hurling flames at her mother-in-law’s upright body. I’ll see it on the floor in another minute!

“Look at how gingerly my Abby serves tea.”

Isabella’s sharp nail came in for a landing on Abigail’s nose, making her giggle.

“Go on. Show your mother. Pour her a cup.”

Monica was stunned silent as Abigail rolled up her sweater sleeves and once again picked up the heavy pot of English Breakfast. She pushed an empty teacup and saucer toward the seat in front of Monica, careful not to let a drop spill before placing the pot back on the tray in the center of the table. Without another word, she poured a dollop of creamer into her mother’s tea, just the way Monica liked it.

“Then we stir…”

Abigail spoke to herself as she used a fresh spoon to stir the creamer well into her mother’s tea.

“Go on, Mom. Have some tea with us.”

“The correct way to invite a lady would be to say, ‘Why don’t you join us for tea?’ but close enough, dear.”

Monica was not keen to be reminded that her mother-in-law existed. Yet there she was, quite glib as she pretended not to smile in Monica’s direction.

She pulled out the chair and sat, still wearing her coat and holding her purse in her lap. Abigail proudly presented her mother with the perfect cup of tea and waited for her to drink.

Monica brought the rim up to her mouth.

“Psst,”

Abigail hissed at a low volume.

“You’re supposed to stick out your pinky.”

She picked up her own cup and demonstrated with hers perked right up in the air.

“Like this.”

Monica mimicked her. Usually, she loved amusing her daughter, but something felt off.

Could it be the way Isabella looked at her as if she had won this round of chess?

“She’s a thorn in everyone’s sides,”

Henry agreed later that night.

“but she just wants to feel involved in the family. We’ve been over this quite a few times.”

His tone implied that he wanted one night where they didn’t talk about what asinine thing Isabella had said or done that day. Monica attacked her hair in front of her vanity while holding back what she was really thinking.

Your mother did that on purpose. She wanted to scare me. Prove that she could interfere without getting into trouble.

Monica knew Isabella’s type long before she met the woman with that name. They weren’t just the kind of women with enough bravado to visit the Chateau – alone. They were a part of every garden party, country club, and church service. They threw galas for attention and made every wedding about them, whether they knew the bride or not. (And Heaven forbid if they were the mother of the bride. Absolute anarchy once the woman in the white dress got the most attention for ten minutes.)

Picking up Abigail without notice, let alone permission, was a power move. Isabella had warned that she was more involved in Abigail’s life and development than her own parents knew, and here it was, staring them in the face.

“Would you at least entertain my worries?”

Monica slammed her hairbrush onto her vanity. Henry, who had just wandered out of the bedroom in his pajama pants and not much else, was alerted to her direction.

“Your mother is not a trustworthy woman. Maybe she won’t hurt Abigail, but you see what happened with your sister. With me. If you don’t fit into the perfect mold of what she considers a ‘proper’ woman, you might as well be dead to her. And when Isabella Warren thinks someone in her family is worthy of death, that’s it. Therapy time.”

“Monica.”

Hands in pockets, Henry stood just to her side, both cajoling her with his voice and distracting her with his bare chest.

“I know as well as anyone else in this family what a monster my mother can be. Remember, I got a good taste of it once I came of age and started going against her commands. Not to mention the mess I’ve cleaned up around here…”

“I don’t want her having so much influence over Abigail. It’s not good news.”

“What’s the worst you’re thinking can happen? She teaches her etiquette? All right, so I know you’re worried about what happens when Abby hits puberty and starts popping zits and gaining some weight. Mom can be ruthless about a woman’s appearance. Just ask Eva…”

“That should be more than enough, honestly.”

“But aren’t we also teaching our daughter boundaries and how to stick up for herself? She knows Grandma loves her now, but there will, unfortunately, come a day when Abby has to learn that GramGram isn’t all presents and pleasantries.”

Monica hadn’t wanted to mention this, but her husband wasn’t seeing enough sense.

“Your mother is communicating with the Beaumonts of Nice about our daughter’s marriage potential. Does that sound mostly harmless to you?”

Henry slightly shuddered.

“Not ideal, but what’s she going to do? Try to introduce Abigail to Leon, Pierre, whatever that kid’s name is…”

“Louis. That’s the oldest boy.”

“Right. Louis. So, my mom will want them to get to know each other with the hopes of them falling in love or something. It might happen. Maybe it won’t. Honestly, Abigail is seven. Why would we even entertain her potentially falling in love now?”

“I’m thinking something more terrifying, Henry. Like her trying to arrange marriage.”

“You’re kidding. She didn’t get anywhere with me and the Nicholsons, and she got nowhere with Eva and the Monroes. This is no different. Obnoxiously meddlesome, but at the end of the day, we’re the parents. Not to mention that in ten years Abigail will be eighteen.”

“Don’t remind me, Henry. She’s already growing up so fast.”

He stood behind her, hands on her shoulders. “I know,”

he said into the top of her head before kissing it.

“Savor each day we have with her as a child. That way, we’ll have plenty of memories when she becomes a lovely woman.”

Damn him for always knowing the sweetest thing to say. Monica couldn’t help but smile as her husband’s knuckles grazed her cheek.

“Do you have any big events at the Chateau this weekend?”

She slowly emerged from her romantic reverie. Now? Lost in a world of IRS bullshit.

“No. Not to my knowledge. This time of year is usually slow for bachelor and birthday parties.”

“Why don’t we put something together, then? It’s been forever since we had a private party of our own up in the mountains. Might be good to be around some friends who want to take their minds off things.”

He squeezed her shoulder, hitting her right in the spot that made her crumple over in delight. Squeeze me harder. Kiss me. Take me to bed… Weren’t they in the middle of a conversation.

“I know how much you love to throw a party. Even better if it’s not around my parents.”

She chuckled.

“Sounds like you want to get away from them.”

Ah, there was the annoying reminder of what she did… and what Isabella thought of it.

“Who will watch Abby? I thought your sister was traveling next week.”

The look on Henry’s reflection told her what he was thinking… and that he dreaded bringing it up.

“My mother would be more than happy, I’m sure. Maybe I can convince her to take Abigail to the aquarium. That was one of her approved activities when I was a kid, and that hasn’t changed.”

“Abigail does love aquariums…”

Sighing, Monica weighed leaving her daughter with Isabella – who might be a worse influence than was worth entertaining – to have a weekend full of Henry and their friends in a judgment-free place.

“At least think about it. I’ve got a few people in mind that we could invite up to the Chateau.”

He got into bed, the TV near Monica now on and playing a show on low volume. It might be good for us… She and Henry had not had much time for themselves since the in-laws arrived, and if there was one thing that kept the stress down, it was indulging in their favorite form of recreation.

Between this and the IRS…

Monica tapped her hairbrush onto her vanity and turned off the lights. As soon as she climbed into bed with her husband, she willed herself to stop thinking about the stress pressing in on her and wrapped her arm across Henry’s chest.

It didn’t take long for them to turn off the TV and pull the covers over their heads.

“No, we’re not taking this somewhere private! You can hear me tear your ass apart in front of everyone we employ!”

Monica had just come into the main house on her way to work, but the scene unfolding between Eva and Isabella was too bombastic to overlook. Especially when Eva was that red in her usually pale face and shaking a piece of paper at her mother.

“I can’t believe you… you…”

Isabella turned her nose up at her daughter.

“Can’t believe I what? Looked out for the best interests of this family?”

She barely acknowledged Monica as she approached from behind.

“Please. Look at you, Evangeline. Acting like a child to me. If you had half the sense I do, you would have done the same thing before marrying your…”

She struggled to spit out a word with as little vitriol as she espoused. “Wife.”

Monica’s brows arched on her forehead. She was about to detach herself from this confrontation when Eva bypassed her mother and handed Monica the wrinkled paper.

“Look what she’s done! Can you believe this?”

Monica didn’t want to get involved this soon before work, but here she was, sucked into Eva and Isabella’s drama. Plenty of my own to create with my mother-in-law. But she also had Eva’s trust, and that was an asset in Warren Manor.

“What am I looking at?”

Monica cocked her head at Eva, who still burned fire in her eyes.

“Is this a DNA test?”

“It’s Nadia’s! This witch paid my wife’s doctor to compile a genetic test from a sample!”

While Eva pivoted on her high heels with her hands shaking in the air, Isabella kept her cool, as if those were completely normal words for a woman to string together.

“You make it sound so insidious, Evangeline. Any matriarch such as myself would do the same thing. After all, if you plan on introducing Nadia’s genetics into this family sometime soon, we should know what we’re dealing with.”

She glanced at Monica, who stood with the paper in her hand.

“I would have done the same thing to you if you hadn’t gone and… well, become with child before the wedding. But we didn’t have to worry about that with Nadia, now did we?”

Her laughter bubbled beneath a tenuously stable surface.

“But if she did, there wouldn’t have been a wedding, now would there have been?”

“I swear to God!”

Eva barked, spit hanging from her teeth and the fire in her eyes now liable to spread to the house walls.

“Why can’t you be normal? Who talks about their daughter-in-law like that?”

“Normal? I’m sorry, are we pretending that either of you are normal?”

Isabella snatched the paper out of Monica’s hand.

“Because you aren’t. Which is why I have to be so diligent about the generation after you. My children may have gotten away from me, but I’ll be damned if my grandchildren are half as debaucherous as you two.”

Eva and Monica shared a silent look.

“She’s talking about your daughter!”

Those were the words licking Eva’s eyelashes as they coiled from her irises to the whites of her eyes.

“And my not-yet-born kid!”

These were the times when Monica envied Nadia, who didn’t have to be around for this mess.

She was still at work, sure, but she was neither Isabella’s flesh and blood daughter, nor the heir-apparent for the faux-title Lady Warren.

She has to show me a modicum of respect because I’m her precious son’s wife and the mother of her golden granddaughter.

But Monica knew that she was not truly respected, just like Nadia knew she never had a chance of gaining Isabella’s favor, and Eva needed biweekly therapy and the same doctor on speed dial because her mother had driven her to a nervous breakdown at sixteen.

“I had to ensure that there was nothing we should be concerned about in your partner’s medical history.”

Isabella adjusted the fashion scarf around her neck with a naughty sniff.

“You never know what ticking time bomb diseases might be in someone.”

“Bullshit! You wanted to see if she was more than 2% African!”

“I don’t have to tolerate this.”

Isabella hastily zipped up her purse. Was she on her way out somewhere.

“For years, you have been a hysterical thorn in my side, Evangeline. It’s like you refuse to understand what’s at stake in this family!”

“Hysterical. She calls me hysterical.”

Monica curtly shook her head at Eva when the woman was about to sink her vampiric histrionics into her mother’s throat. Instead, Eva hid a scream behind her palms.

“What exactly is at stake?”

Monica calmly asked.

“Surely, you wouldn’t furtively get a genetic panel done on Nadia if you weren’t concerned about something in particular.”

She knew better than to give a woman like Isabella the benefit of the doubt when it came to ethnic backgrounds, but she had specifically called out health abnormalities. Was there something to that? Even in Isabella’s crazy way?

Isabella considered her with caution. Clearly, Monica had laid a trap to ensconce Isabella’s special brand of bigoted.

“This family is small and depleting,”

Isabella warned.

“Despite me having two children, Gerald has no siblings, nor did his father. The Warrens are hanging by a tenuous thread since long before I came into the picture.”

She scoffed at the way Eva looked at her.

“Don’t give me that. My mother-in-law was in a nursing home by the time I married your father. She couldn’t give me any advice. Couldn’t tell me what was at stake, what I had to do besides the obvious. I’ve had to maintain this family even through your father’s gambling and owing half of our lives to some of the most unscrupulous characters you’ve ever met. There is a proud legacy in this family. We would have lost this home if it weren’t for your father finally seeing sense and moving with me to Montana. Henry has steered the financial ship around. It’s up to us women to get our numbers up so this never happens again!”

“Is this about me not having a son?”

Monica asked.

Isabella chuckled as if that were too limited of a scope.

“If there’s one thing having my own children has taught me, it’s that we have no idea how they will develop.”

She now directly addressed Monica, Eva forgotten.

“My husband was a son and almost destroyed this family with his addiction. Henry is a son and, try as he might, will be known as the man who had to right a ship instead of forging his own legacy. That leaves it to the generation after him. Son, daughter… children can disappoint you in their ways. It’s better to hedge bets with multiples. Any gender at this point.”

“You’re acting like they’re not legitimate numbers if they come from your daughter.”

“Monica, darling, you just don’t understand. Even if they’re genetically Henry’s, we still don’t know what might happen. As for testing Nadia’s blood… I had to know what we might be up against as a family should she mother those potential children. Luckily, as you will see from the paper, nothing to be concerned about. So let’s just put all of this behind us.”

Eva’s exasperate.

“Are you listening to this?”

look was duly noted, but Monica couldn’t say or do anything without exacerbating the situation. She’ll be out of our hair again soon enough. Isabella’s influence outside of New England was minuscule compared to what she wrought from within the city, let alone the family house.

Pleased enough, Isabella finished adjusting her things and excused herself from the main house. Eva and Monica remained in the foyer, their eye contact tenuous at best.

“I’m sorry,”

Monica said.

“She shouldn’t have done that.”

The thing about their relationship? Neither of them really held rank over the other. Monica was next in line for the casual title of matriarch, but Eva was a flesh and blood Warren, let alone an active and trusted member of the family. She could make Monica’s life hell just as well as Monica could make her life hell now. Monica had been a Warren long enough for seniority and loyalty among the staff. Some still remembered Eva as a selfish heiress who didn’t think of many people below herself. Then some still thought of Monica as an interloper. No matter what, they didn’t win.

So Monica offered platitudes, and Eva held in the worst of her affliction. At the end of the day, neither of them held as much power in this family as they should.

Not as long as Isabella was around.

“How can I think about having children with her for a grandmother?”

Eva said the moment Monica prepared to leave for work.

“If I have a son, she’ll think he’s being sissified from having two lesbian moms. If I have a daughter, she’ll assume the kid’s born corrupted, never mind how she’ll sink her teeth into the poor child. Just like she did me.”

Now was not the time to downplay Eva’s fears, although something told Monica that by the time Eva was a mother, Isabella’s influence would have drastically waned. Either from age, health, or the changing tides of the world, there were only so many years left for the woman who thought she was born to bear the title of Lady Warren.

“You and Henry are going to the mountains this weekend, right?”

Eva tsked.

“Leaving Abigail with my mother might be more trouble than it’s worth. Even for a couple of nights. She’ll have her watching some terrible straight-to-streaming movie with the wackiest tradwife undertones.”

A sigh finally released the tension in the foyer.

“I hate that I know what that is. I mean, no offense, I don’t think of you that way.”

Monica tilted her head.

“Why would you think of me that way? From what I understand, it’s not a lifestyle I’m interested in.”

“Well, because you’re…”

Eva grimaced.

“Never mind! Like I said, I don’t mean to be offensive.”

“No worries. I really must be off, though. I will see you later.”

Eva watched after her, Monica aware that her sister-in-law stared at the back of her head like Isabella often stared at the opening pages of such literary classics as Atlas Shrugged.

It is what it is in this family. Monica’s live-and-let-live attitude certainly had her labeled as a libertarian by her mother-in-law, but Isabella couldn’t be further from the truth. Monica subscribed to no particular political ideology other than trying to leave the world a better place for her daughter. It was in her blood to make people happy and to help them forget their troubles for a while. For every person she met, she considered it her mission to ensure at least half of them walked away from her smiling.

Servile. Domestic. Maternal. Those three words often described Monica, and only sometimes were they said in derision.

Yet she owned them. They described her as well as the words risqué, entrepreneurial, and independent.

She always held her head high on her way to work. That evening was no different.