Danielle pressed down on the accelerator to barely make it through an intersection before the light turned red. “I’m not sure she told you, but we’re cousins. However, we only met when I was twelve and she was ten. Her grandfather had died shortly before. He and his brother, my grandfather, had some kind of feud for decades. My part of the family really doesn’t fit in with the rest. We don’t give a crap about money. My father’s a mechanic and would rather run his small garage than join my grandfather’s cigar trading company, no matter how rich it could have made him. Money can’t buy you love, right?”

Danielle’s rhetorical question left a bitter taste in Sherry’s mouth. Not love, but almost everything else.

“Anyway, because of this family feud, my folks hadn’t had any contact with Madison’s part of the family from even before I was born.” Danielle took a right turn at another intersection. Quieter than before, she said, “When I met Madison for the first time, I was totally shocked to see how Eileen treated her.”

“What do you mean?”

“Aunt Eileen paraded Madison around in expensive dresses as if Madison was a doll you just discard when you grow bored of it.” Danielle swallowed as if fighting against a lump in her throat. “I think that’s all Madison was for her: something to be shown off and then discarded. Whenever Madison was clumsy or didn’t do things the way Aunt Eileen wanted her to, she punished her.”

A gasp escaped Sherry. “Did she beat her?”

“Not that I know. But she always talked down to her. Told her she was a useless burden and a disgrace for the Fielding name.”

To think that Madison had lost her parents only to be exposed to her heartless grandmother… Sherry shook her head. What a nightmare.

Danielle stopped the car in front of Madison’s apartment building, turned off the engine, and shifted to face Sherry. Tears glistened in her eyes. “For the first two years after her parents’ death, Madison wasn’t exposed to this horrible person because she was mostly at a boarding school. But when she got caught kissing another girl, Aunt Eileen arranged for Madison to be homeschooled to avoid a scandal that could taint the family name. So from then on, the only contact with normal people”—Danielle made quotation marks in the air—“was when I and my parents came for a visit or later when Madison and I hung out together. I really regret not trying harder when she cut off contact with me.”

Sherry unbuckled her seat belt and raised her eyebrows. “Why would she do that?”

Danielle averted her gaze. “It’s silly. Madison got drunk one night, told me that she loved me, and tried to kiss me.”

“B-but she’s your cousin!”