Chapter 1 - The Woman in Red Ruined My Graduation
I want to tell you about the worst ten minutes of my life, and I want to tell it right, because for nineteen years I told it wrong.
My name is Emily Carter, and on the morning this happened I was twenty-two years old, standing in the center aisle of Hartwell Hall in a lavender cap and gown with gold honor cords hanging down my chest.
I had a dark-blue diploma folder in my hands with the university emblem stamped in gold on the cover.
I had worked for that folder since I was fifteen years old, and I was smiling at my guardian's camera like a kid at her own birthday party.
Then a woman in a bright-red evening gown walked up behind me and took it out of my hands.
Her name is Vivian Cross.
She is my stepmother, and she has been in my life since I was five years old.
"You really think you deserve this diploma, you spoiled little brat?" she shouted, loud enough that the rows on both sides of the aisle turned to look.
"Quit acting like you're some goddamn genius!"
I remember my mouth opening and nothing coming out.
She lifted the folder above her shoulder and shook it at me like it was evidence in a trial.
"You ain't fooling anybody with this fake-ass success!" she said.
"You're nothing but an ungrateful little fraud!"
Then she swung her arm down and threw my diploma folder onto the marble floor between us.
It landed flat, face up, and the gold emblem caught the light from the chandeliers.
I looked down at it and my hands came up toward my chest on their own.
She stepped in close and pointed her finger an inch from my face.
"Look at me when I'm talking to you, you entitled little bitch!" she said.
"You think wearing that cap makes you better than everybody else?"
I could smell her perfume.
"Nobody gives a damn about your little piece of paper!" she said.
"Get over yourself!"
I started crying in front of eight hundred people, and I could not stop it.
"What the hell did I ever do to you?"
I said.
"I worked my ass off for this!"
She did not answer me.
"You couldn't even let me have ONE happy moment?"
I said.
"You had to ruin my graduation in front of everybody?"
That is when Daniel Reyes stepped in from the side of the hall.
Daniel is my father's oldest friend and my legal guardian since I was fifteen, and he was wearing a black tuxedo he had rented for the occasion.
He saw the folder on the floor, crouched down beside us, and picked it up with both hands like it was something breakable.
Then he straightened up and turned to face her.
"What the actual fuck is wrong with you?" he said.
"She's graduating, and you're acting like a jealous, bitter-ass lunatic!"
Vivian's chin came up.
"You don't get to humiliate her just because you can't stand seeing somebody else succeed!"
Daniel said.
"That's pathetic as hell!"
"Oh, screw you!"
Vivian said.
"You have no idea what that little snake has been hiding!"
I saw Daniel's eyes narrow when she said it.
Before either of them could say another word, Chancellor Whitfield walked out from behind the stage and up to the wooden podium.
He is in his early seventies, silver-haired, and he was wearing his black academic robes with the dark-red and blue trim.
He was holding a cream-colored envelope with a dark circular seal on the front, and he raised it above his head so the whole hall could see it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, before this ceremony continues, there's something you all need to know!" he said.
The hall went quiet.
"This isn't some damn rumor," he said.
"The truth is right here, and it's time everybody heard it!"
He walked down off the stage and came straight toward us.
He held the envelope out to me, not to Vivian, not to Daniel, to me.
I took it with both hands.
My eyes were still wet and I could barely see the seal.
I lifted the flap and pulled out a folded white document with a circular emblem printed at the top and several paragraphs of formal text underneath.
Daniel leaned in beside me and read it with me.
My hands started shaking before I got to the end of the first paragraph.
The first line was not about my degree at all.
It was addressed to me by name, and it said the university had been holding something in trust for me since before I was born.
