Page 44 of Now That It’s You (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #5)

“My former-future-mother-in-law gave it to me at my wedding shower.”

“Okay,” Franklin said slowly, folding his hands on the desk in front of him. “If you need more time to think about this?—”

“She gave me a card with it,” Meg said, looking up at him again.

“It said the pen was so we’d always have something beautiful to use for signing important documents—our marriage license, maybe birth certificates for our babies someday.

” She set the pen down and looked at Franklin.

“But do you know what she said to me as she was leaving the shower?”

“I have no idea.”

Meg cleared her throat. “She said, ‘You can use it for other things, too. Maybe someday you’ll be famous and you can use it to sign autographs or something.’”

Franklin frowned and steepled his hands in front of him. “Meg, that seems like further evidence she considered the cookbook your project. If she gave it to you at your bridal shower?—”

“No, that wasn’t my point.” She slid her palm over the pen, rolling it back and forth across the big cherry desk.

“The point is that she believed in me. Matt might have seen the whole thing as a joke, but Sylvia didn’t.

Not totally, anyway.” She stopped rolling the pen and clasped her hands on the desk while her attorney continued looking at her like she’d lost her marbles.

“It was never just about me and Matt,” she said.

“That whole relationship, all ten years of it—it wasn’t just about the two of us.

It was more about family. About how we supported each other through lousy stuff and picked up each other’s slack and made up for each other’s weaknesses with our own strengths.

That’s what I loved more than anything. It’s also what I missed most these last two years. ”

Franklin nodded again. Meg could tell he was trying to look wise and supportive, but instead he looked pained.

He didn’t agree with anything in the documents she was ready to sign, but he’d prepared it just like she’d asked.

He reached out and rested a hand on the corner of the paperwork, drawing her attention back to what she was here to do.

“What did your agent say about your plans to credit Matt’s estate with such a high percentage?” he asked.

“She wasn’t thrilled.”

“You don’t say.” His voice was dry, but not condescending. She might be giving up a huge chunk of her royalties here, but she was still the one paying the attorney fees.

“There’s no telling if Matt’s family will retain Straight Shot Literary Agency to represent their portion of the deal,” Meg admitted, “which means Nancy’s only getting a portion of my proceeds, which means?—”

“Your proceeds get a helluva lot smaller if you go through with this.”

“Right.” Meg picked up the pen again and looked down at the documents. She’d studied them all morning, and the night before, and the night before that. She didn’t need more time to think about it. She knew what she had to do. What she wanted to do.

“You’re signing it.” Franklin’s voice was flat as Meg scrawled her signature on the first line, then the next.

She nodded and flipped to the next page, not looking up at him. “It’s the right thing to do. If I don’t, this could eat at me for the rest of my life. I don’t want to live with that regret.”

“You don’t think you could regret signing away such a huge chunk of money you’re entitled to?”

“Maybe.” Meg looked up at him, holding a finger on the page where she’d left off.

“But I’d rather go through life regretting that I tried to do the right thing—even when it doesn’t go like I hoped—than to spend my life wondering if I made the greedy choice.

The choice that only considers myself, instead of other people whose lives I affected. ”

“I see.”

Meg went back to scrawling her signature on the pages, flipping faster now.

She knew the words by heart, even though some of them made her throat tight and achy.

She scrawled her name again and again and again until she reached the end.

When she finished, she took a deep breath and pushed the whole pile at Franklin. “May I have two copies, please?”

“So you can send one to your agent? I already have that covered.”

“No.” Meg reached into her purse and found the decorative blue and gold box she’d kept tucked in her desk for two years. She opened it up and put the pen inside. “There’s someone else I’d like to give them to.”

“The Midland family?” Franklin shook his head. “It’s best if you let the lawyers handle it from here, Meg.”

She shook her head. “I need to do this myself.”

Meg walked out of the office and took a deep breath. She had an hour to spare before her lunch date with Kendall and her mother. There was just enough time.

She made the drive to the Midland home in a daze, her brain barely registering the blur of orange and red and gold on the trees that lined the boulevard. The sky was a milky gray, and she cracked her car windows to breathe the scent of impending rain.

The look on Sylvia’s face when she opened the door was one of stunned shock. In the instant before it could turn to fury, Meg thrust the blue and gold box at her.

“Here,” Meg said, holding out the pen. “You gave this to me. Do you remember?”

Sylvia looked at it, leery, then nodded. “Yes.” She didn’t take the box, but she didn’t push it away, either.

“I want you to have it back,” Meg said. “And I want you to use it to sign these.” She reached into her purse for the manila envelope containing the paperwork, forcing Sylvia to take the pen.

Her former-future-mother-in-law watched her with a guarded expression, her mouth tight.

When Meg pulled out the envelope, Sylvia frowned.

“Albert said you were making this offer. He didn’t tell me the details, but he said I’d be pleased.”

“You won’t be.”

Sylvia blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Your son is dead.” Meg felt the prick of tears at the back of her eyes. “Anything that happens from this point forward isn’t going to change that. No amount of money, no amount of apology, no amount of regret over what anyone should or shouldn’t have done.”

Sylvia’s eyes turned misty, and she gave a faint nod. “That’s true.”

“But this agreement. This is close to what you wanted. Maybe better. There’s a stipulation in there that Chloe gets a small stipend. It’s not much, but I wanted to make sure she got a piece of Matt’s legacy. Something that was his and will now be hers.”

“But why?—”

“Because she was his family. Even if they didn’t walk down the aisle together. That counts for something.”

Sylvia nodded. “Like you.”

“Yes.”

“I understand that.”

Meg swallowed, wondering if she should say something else. There was so much she could say—so much regret and anger and confusion she’d never given voice to.

But maybe voicing those things wasn’t the way to find closure. Maybe shutting the hell up was the best form of peace she could offer.

“I loved having you in our family, Meg,” Sylvia said at last. “For what it’s worth, I don’t hate you.”

“I don’t hate you, either.”

“That sounds like a start.”

It felt like an odd choice of words, considering they’d likely never see each other again after this. But it was a common phrase, something easier to say than acknowledging the end.

Meg turned to go.

“There’s something you don’t know about those weeks after you left,” Sylvia said.

Meg turned around. She stood rooted in place, waiting to see if Sylvia would continue or wave her away with those taunting words hanging between them in the damp, chilly air.

When Sylvia spoke again, her voice was barely a whisper.

“It all hit Matt very hard. The guilt, your leaving, the feeling that he’d disappointed everyone.

” She gripped the envelope tight in her fingers, her knuckles white as she creased the edge of it.

“I know you were hurt, Meg, and you had every right to be. But the sadness that took Matt—he went to a very dark place.”

Meg stared at her, trying to understand. “Depression, you mean?”

Sylvia gave a tight nod. “Yes.”

“I see,” Meg said, remembering Chloe’s words about Matt getting his mental health in order. Is that what she’d meant? “He always showed little signs of it,” Meg said softly. “Mood swings, anxiety, sleeping a lot. I used to suggest he see someone about it, but he refused.”

“This was worse.” Sylvia took a deep breath. “Much worse. It was terrifying. It took over completely after you left. He shut himself off from everyone except Kyle.”

“I had no idea.” A needle of guilt pierced her through the breastbone, and she ordered herself to keep breathing.

“No one knew,” Sylvia said. “That’s how Matt wanted it. He didn’t think I knew.”

“But how did you?—”

“Mothers know these things.” Sylvia pressed her lips together. “Just like I know Kyle is the reason your cookbook became a bestseller.”

“What?” Meg felt her blood run cold.

“He never said a word to me about giving the book to that actress. Do you realize that?”

She blinked, trying to make sense of what Sylvia was saying. Kyle might have betrayed her in one way, but he’d held back that crucial piece of information. He’d known his mother would use it against her, and he hadn’t said a word. Maybe it hadn’t mattered, not in the grand scheme of the lawsuit.

But somehow, it mattered to Meg.

Sylvia cleared her throat, breaking the silence that hung heavy in the air between them. “I’ll look these over with my attorney and get back to you,” she said, holding up the envelope.

“Okay,” she said softly, still reeling. She started to turn away again, pretty sure they’d said all there was to say.

“And Meg?”

She turned back to Sylvia, pulling her jacket tighter around her to guard against the crisp fall air. “Yes?”

“My son would have been lucky to have you.”