My mother had been acting strange for weeks.
Extra perfume. New dresses. Smiling at her phone like a teenager instead of a thirty-six year old woman who swore off men after my father left before I was even born.
I didn't ask questions because I didn't want answers. The last two years had taught me that sometimes ignorance was the only peace you could afford, and I was tired of things falling apart the moment I looked at them too closely.
But now she was sitting across from me at our small kitchen table, hands wrapped around her coffee mug, and I knew whatever she'd been hiding was about to come out.
"I've been seeing someone," she said.
"I figured."
She blinked. "You're not surprised?"
"Mom, you bought red lipstick last week. You hate red lipstick."
She laughed, but it was nervous, and that made me put my phone down. My mother wasn't the nervous type. She had raised me alone since she was eighteen, worked double shifts, handled every crisis with her chin up and her voice steady. Nervous wasn't in her vocabulary.
"There's more," she said.
"Okay."
"We're getting married."
The kitchen went quiet. I could hear the fridge humming, the faint sound of traffic outside our apartment window, a neighbor's television playing something with a laugh track.
"Married," I repeated. "To a man I've never met."
"You'll meet him. This weekend, actually. He's been wanting to—"
"This weekend."
She winced at my tone, but I couldn't help it. She had been sneaking around for months, falling in love, apparently getting proposed to, and I was only now finding out because it was about to affect my life directly.
"I know this is fast," she started.
"Fast? Mom, I didn't even know he existed until thirty seconds ago."
"I wanted to be sure before I told you. I didn't want to introduce you to someone and then have it fall apart. You've been through enough of that."
She didn't say my father's name. She didn't have to. The man who got her pregnant at seventeen and vanished before the ink dried on my birth certificate. She was trying to protect me, and I knew that, but it didn't make this easier to swallow.
"What's his name?"
"Richard. Richard Thornton."
Thornton. The name sounded expensive.
"He's British," she added, and I felt something cold settle in my stomach before she even continued. "He lives in England. Kent, specifically. And after the wedding, we're moving there to be with him."
I stared at her.
"Moving," I said flatly. "To England."
"Ivy, I know it's a lot—"
"You're asking me to leave the country."
"I'm asking you to come with me. To start fresh somewhere new, somewhere better than this." She gestured around the kitchen, at the chipped countertops and the window that didn't close all the way and the water stain on the ceiling that had been there since I was fifteen. "You've seen this place. The mold in the bathroom, the heating that barely works. Richard's home is beautiful. You'll have your own room, your own space. Real space."
I looked around our tiny apartment and tried to feel something other than numb. She wasn't wrong. This place had been a struggle since day one, and she deserved better. She had always deserved better than what life had handed her.
But England. A new country. A new man. A whole new life I hadn't asked for.
And then another thought hit me.
"Does he have kids?"
She hesitated, and that told me everything.
"A son," she said carefully. "A bit older than you. Well, a few months younger actually. He's in his final year too. You'd be attending the same school."
"What's his deal?"
"What do you mean?"
"You've got that face. The one you make when you're leaving something out."
She sighed and set her mug down. "He's... a lot. Confident. Very confident. Richard adores him, but he's not exactly the warm and welcoming type. I just don't want you to take it personally if he's distant at first."
Distant. Confident. She was dancing around something, and I was too tired to pull it out of her.
The truth was, part of me wanted to go. Part of me was desperate for it. A new country meant new people, new faces, and nobody who had seen that video. Nobody who knew what I had done, what had been done to me. I could walk down a hallway without feeling eyes on my back and whispers following my footsteps.
I could breathe again.
"Okay," I said.
She looked up sharply. "Okay?"
"I'll come with you. I'll meet him. I'm not promising anything beyond that."
She reached across the table and grabbed my hand, squeezing tight. "Thank you. I know this is a lot. But I really think you'll like Richard. And his son... just give him time."
I didn't ask his name. I figured I'd find out soon enough.
---
The rest of the week passed in a blur of packing boxes and phone calls and my mother humming to herself as she sorted through our things. I had never seen her this happy, and that was the only reason I didn't fight harder.
By Saturday morning, we were on a plane.
By Saturday evening, we were in a car driving through the kind of neighborhood I had only seen in movies. Gated communities. Houses set back from the road behind long driveways. Cars parked out front that cost more than everything we owned combined.
"This is it," my mother said as we turned onto a private drive.
The house came into view and I stopped pretending I wasn't impressed. It was massive. Modern. Glass and stone and clean lines, surrounded by gardens that looked like they had never seen a weed in their life.
"You're marrying into this?"
She laughed softly. "I'm marrying Richard. This is just where he happens to live."
I didn't argue, but I also wasn't naive. Money changed things. It always did.
She parked near the front entrance and I followed her to the door. Before she could knock, it opened, and a man stepped out.
Tall. Silver-haired. A warm smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and made him look kind in a way that felt genuine. I understood immediately why my mother had fallen for him.
"There she is," he said, pulling my mother into a hug before turning to me. "And you must be Ivy. I've heard so much about you."
"Good things, I hope."
"Only the best." He stepped aside to let us in. "Come in, please. Make yourself at home. Asher should be down in a minute."
Asher.
So the stepbrother had a name.
The inside of the house was just as impressive as the outside. High ceilings, tasteful furniture, everything spotless and arranged like a magazine spread. It didn't feel lived in, but maybe that was just how rich people kept their homes.
I wandered toward a painting on the wall while my mother and Richard talked behind me, their voices soft and happy. Abstract, lots of dark colors with slashes of gold. I was studying the brushstrokes when I heard footsteps on the stairs.
I turned.
And everything in my head went still.