Free INDISPENSABLE: Part 3: A Billionaire Romance by Maryann Barnett

gone.”
    “Who’s gone?”
    “Barry.” Her mother’s shoulders shook with sobs.
    “He left you?”
    She looked up at Sarah and shook her head. “His funeral is tomorrow.”
    Sarah held the door jamb for support. “ He’s dead ?” This seemed unbelievable.
    “Cancer. Come in. If you want to.”
    Sarah reeled from this information. Brock hadn’t mentioned anything about her father being ill. Had he known? “Just for minute. I have some things I’d like to say.” Sarah kept with the speech she’d rehearsed in her mind. She didn’t know what else to do.
    This didn’t change anything. They both might’ve been dead a year ago and she would never have known. In fact, they’d dodged so many bullets in the drug game, they were lucky to be alive. Sarah had always expected them to turn up dead in a deal gone wrong or an overdose. But they hadn’t, and now her father was dead.
    They’d always laughed about death, said if they went, they’d go together. All they cared about was being together and being high.
    She followed her mother into the small home. It was nothing flash but a definite step up from their Aversham dwelling; it was never a home. So, he got cancer. Not surprising. Sarah tried to process the feeling she was having. Sorrow? Serves him right? Poor Mom? It was all a mish-mash; she needed to get these emotions out of her.
    “I’m sorry. This is the worst time, but I didn’t know that. As always, I’ve been shut out from you.”
    Her mother held up her hand. “Stop, Sarah. I know what you’re here about. The artworks. We sold them to Brock for you to have because we should never have withheld them, but also for medical costs. Your father’s treatments.”
    “Which clearly didn’t work.”
    “No. We were too late. But we wanted to try.”
    “It’s not just about that. It’s about my life. The way I am. What you both put me through, put Peter through—as kids. It was wrong. It was so wrong, but I’m not letting it define me.”
    Her mother cried again. Sarah felt like the worst person in the world. She had to keep coming back to why she was here, how horrible it’d been.
    “We’d been clean for six months. For the first time in our lives, we knew we’d kicked it. Then, they found the liver cancer. He battled it for a long time. He wanted to get well so we could come and make things right with you. I told him we never could. But he wanted to try.”
    The tears prickled Sarah’s eyes. Fuck . She wasn’t expecting that. Her mother looked withered, haggard, depleted. The drugs took their toll. Sarah couldn’t feel guilty about that; it was her mother’s own fault. She wasn’t celebrating the fact though. Her father wanted to make it up to her, so her mother said. For all Sarah knew, it was a ploy to get money out of her. She could check that story out using investigators and  hospital records—just to be sure.
    “I deserved to die right along with him. We should’ve adopted you kids out, at least then you’d have a family. I have many regrets, but that is my biggest, and I don’t want to be forgiven. I want it to stand as my punishment, just as the death of your father has.”
    “I don’t know what to say. I’d come here to hear you say all that, but I thought I’d have to force it out of you both.”
    “Sarah, you’ve done so well. We never deserved a daughter like you. So strong, and clever. So beautiful. Everyone loved you. You were always going to make something of yourself.”
    “And yet you told me constantly I’d never be a success at anything.”
    “But here you are.”
    “Thanks to me.”
    “Yes. I don’t want or expect us to play happy families now, but I do hope you go on to be happy, to find love, to have children and raise them right. Go and live the life we tried to snuff out of you because we were selfish, jealous idiots.”
    Sarah stood up. She had nothing else to say. Just nothing. Her mother had validated everything. Now, she could go and be free from