She nodded. “Mm-hmm. I mean, I’m entitled to half of what your father owns, but—”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait. You guys don’t have a prenup?”
She shook her head. “Nope. We don’t.”
I blinked. “Are you serious?”
“Yep. Dead serious.”
“That doesn’t sound like my father at all.”
She snickered. “Like I said, the man I’ve come to see now and the man he used to be when we first got married are two incredibly different people. He didn’t want me signing a prenup. That’s how much he believed in us at the time. I don’t know if he was that generous or I was that stupid. But, given your history with your father…”
“You’re not stupid, Cecilia.”
“Well, I definitely wasn’t this strong of a woman when I first met Howard. I was his puppy. I spoke only when he spoke to me and I was more than happy to accept his expensive handouts in exchange for loyalty. It was masked as love. But I don’t think we ever really loved each other.”
“What do you think happened then?”
She shrugged. “He provided me with a life I never had. Opulence. Expensive things. Wealth. All those concepts that were bad in my childhood he gave freely, and without me even asking. To me? It was romantic. And I fell head over heels for it. But not him.”
I nodded slowly. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“I don’t know. I guess because you have a right to know. Or maybe I don’t want you thinking badly about me. Or maybe I just need to talk about it.”
“I could never think badly of you. Not after all you’ve done for me.”
She smiled. “Well, you’ve done me a great deal of good. You helped me find my voice. Find my strength with your father. And when that happened, I saw the angry side of him. The side that wanted to control me. If I stayed his little toy, he was fine. We were happy. The presents and traveling kept coming. But, in the end, I had to stay that way in order for him to love me. And that isn’t love at all.”
“No, it’s not.”
She drew in a sharp breath. “At any rate, I must’ve been so silent and airheaded in the beginning that he didn’t think I’d ever change. Or leave him. So, yeah. I’m entitled to half of what he has. I’m sure he’ll rake me over the coals to make sure I don’t get it. But all of the things he’s gifted me with are mine. That’s what Miss Nichols told me over the phone today, anyway.”
“So your car?”
“I can sell it.”
“I take it you’ve already sold the clothes you were going to donate?”
She nodded. “And the ones that didn’t sell got taken to the donation place. I want to wait until I get moved out of here to sell the car. But that’s easily sixty grand in my pocket. I still have a ton of jewelry I can sell off. Shoes I know I’ll never wear, even though I’ve kept them for now. And there are some things I insisted we have in this house that your father can’t stand.”
“Like…?”
“Some of the artwork on the walls. The decorative vases. There’s artwork in the attic that should be on display that isn’t. Even three or so of those paintings sold at auction would set me up in this city for almost a year. And that’s if I wanted to keep living as opulently as I am right now.”
My jaw dropped open. “Dad’s got shit like that in the attic? All I found was the china stored up there.”
She giggled. “That attic is expansive. That’s my next project, actually. I won’t take anything off the walls. But, in exchange for that, things that have collected dust in the attic for years are mine to sell. That’s how I’m going to frame my argument. The lawyer advised me to cut up my credit cards, too. Take dated pictures of them. It’s all about covering my ass now in court. Proving that I’m not taking him for all the money in the world.”
“And cutting up your cards to his bank accounts would start to prove that.”
She nodded. “Exactly.”
I sighed. “It’s insane we even have to go to these lengths.”
Her hand settled on my knee. “It is. But I want you to see something.”
She pulled out her phone and started scrolling through it. I furrowed my brow as I watched her. When she handed it to me, I looked at the pictures. Beautiful pictures of what looked like a condo. Or an apartment of some sort.