Chapter 6 - Paisley's Shadow
Monday morning at Highland Park High School smelled like floor wax, raincoats, and entitlement.
The Mercer scandal hadn't hit the school paper—high school papers didn't report on family court filings—but Dallas society moved through teenage whispers faster than a brushfire in August. By second period, every senior in the AP hallway knew that Willa Mercer had been bussing tables at her stepsister's party, and that Reid Mercer’s wife had cleared out the master bedroom on Preston Hollow.
I kept my eyes down, my textbooks pressed tight against my chest, navigating the crowded hallway toward my third-period government class.
"Willa!"
I didn't stop.
"Willa, wait! Stop walking for one second!"
A manicured hand caught the strap of my canvas backpack. I spun around, ready to swing my locker key like a knuckle-duster, before I realized it was Paisley.
She wasn't wearing her crystals or her cashmere coat today. She had on an oversized vintage Harvard sweatshirt, black leggings, and running shoes, but her face was pale, devoid of makeup, and her blue eyes were red around the rims. She looked like she hadn't slept in thirty-six hours.
"Let go of my bag, Paisley," I said, my voice dangerously low.
Two girls from the cheer squad stopped near the water fountain, their eyes darting between us like spectators at a tennis match.
"Come into the stairwell," Paisley whispered. Her lower lip was trembling. "Please. Just for five minutes."
I hesitated. Paisley had spent four years making my life a quiet, suburban hell. She had 'accidentally' spilled bleach on my favorite sweater; she had told her friends that Owen was 'developmentally delayed' because he didn't talk much; she had taken my mother's silver locket from my jewelry box and claimed she bought it at an antique fair in Round Top until Dad made her give it back with a lukewarm apology.
I didn't owe Paisley five seconds, let alone five minutes.
"Go to class, Paisley," I said, turning away.
"My mother is lying about the car," Paisley blurted out.
I stopped dead in the middle of the hallway.
The warning bell rang, its harsh, mechanical buzz echoing off the metal lockers. Students began scattering toward their classrooms, the hallway clearing until only Paisley and I were left standing under the flickering fluorescent tubes.
I turned back to face her. "What did you say?"
"The stairwell," Paisley insisted, her voice breaking. "Please, Willa."
I shoved the heavy fire door open and stepped into the concrete stairwell, the heavy latch clicking shut behind us, cutting off the noise of the hallway. The air was cool and smelled of damp concrete.
Paisley leaned back against the yellow cinderblock wall, hugging her arms around her chest. "She told me my dad paid for the BMW. My real dad. She told me he had an offshore dividend account that finally cleared probate in San Diego."
"He didn't," I said coldly.
"I know that now," Paisley cried, tears spilling over her mascara, leaving black tracks down her cheeks. "Reid called me this morning from a burner phone. He was screaming, Willa. I've never heard him scream like that. He said my mother was a criminal. He said she stole Eleanor’s nursing home money to pay the lease deposit."
"It wasn't a lease deposit," I told her, stepping closer, wanting her to see the truth without the softening filter of her mother’s excuses. "It was eighty-eight hundred dollars. Grandma is getting kicked out on Friday. They're going to put her in a transport van and dump her at a state holding ward in Mesquite because your mother took the care checks to buy you a status symbol."
Paisley slid down the cinderblock wall until she was sitting on the concrete landing, her knees pulled up to her chin, sobbing violently into her sweatshirt sleeves. "I didn't know. I swear to God, Willa, I didn't know. Mom told me Eleanor was fine. She said Eleanor had a three-million-dollar trust from her husband's oil leases, and that she was just being cheap because old people get paranoid about money."
"Your mother lied to you," I said. "Just like she lied to Reid. Just like she lied to Grandma."
"She’s sick," Paisley whispered into her knees. "She’s completely crazy, Willa. When we got to the Ritz last night, she had three lockboxes from the house. She opened them on the bed. She had your mother’s pearl earrings. She had Reid’s grandmother's wedding ring. She was taking pictures of them and texting an estate appraiser in Austin."
My stomach lurched. "Mom's pearls?"
"She took everything from the safe before Reid came home from the bakery," Paisley sniffled, looking up at me with genuine, pathetic terror in her eyes. "She said if Reid wants a divorce, she's going to bleed him dry until he's living in a studio apartment in Garland. She said she has documents that can get his brokerage license revoked for tax fraud."
"What documents?" I demanded, kneeling down in front of her, grabbing her shoulders. "Paisley, look at me! What documents does she have?"
"I don't know!" Paisley wept. "Some blue folders with corporate seals. She put them in the hotel safe behind the mirror. She told her lawyer on the phone this morning that Reid signed three different false disclosure statements when he bought the logistics hub in Fort Worth last spring. She said if he tries to touch any of the accounts to help his mother, she’s sending the folders to the Texas Real Estate Commission."
I let go of her shoulders and stood up, pacing the narrow landing of the stairwell.
Taryn hadn't just embezzled Grandma's nursing home payments; she had spent two years setting up a dead-man's switch. She knew Reid's business practices better than he did. She knew where the shortcuts were, where the gray-area tax write-offs were buried, and she had collected every single piece of evidence like an assassin stocking ammunition.
"Where is the car right now?" I asked.
Paisley blinked through her tears. "The BMW? It’s... it’s parked in the senior lot. Spot forty-two."
"Give me the keys."
Paisley shrank back against the wall. "What? No! Mom has the title in her name—"
"Give me the keys, Paisley," I said, my voice dropping into a register that made the hair on her arms stand up. "You want to prove to me that you didn't know? You want to be able to look in a mirror for the rest of your life without seeing a thief? Give me the keys to that car right now."
"What are you going to do with it?"
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"I'm going to take it back to Park Place Motorcars," I said. "And I'm going to find the general manager who sold it to your mother with stolen funds."
***
